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| WOOHOO!!! |
I bought a new heart rate monitor this week!
It’s the Polar M400 and it may be a little overkill. See, I didn’t
realize this until after I clicked “complete purchase” that it has GPS.
This is fine, but I don’t really need GPS on something
that will primarily be worn in the gym and during home workouts. But, I
suppose if I wanted to just go for a walk instead of a run, then I
could wear the M400. But, I don’t really go for walks all that often. I
mean, it can be used for a backup for my Garmin.
Say, I forget to charge the Garmin…well, I can just use the Polar
because it holds a charge longer as it’s meant to be worn 24/7 (not in
the shower, of course) as a general activity tracker. But, the reason I
didn’t just get a new regular Polar HRM is because
this one also has all sorts of other data on it that I will happily jot
down somewhere. Haha. If I haven’t said it before, let me say it
now…I am a data junkie…big time! But, really, a LOT of runners are.
I’m sure I’ll really love my new M400 the more
I use it. (I will post a review of my experience of using it within the next couple weeks)
Here’s a run-down of this week’s exercise!
• Saturday: I made it to the gym!!! *cue choir
singing hallelujah* Did my 2 circuits of the circuit training area at
Planet Fitness (minus the step cardio in between machines, of course),
then went home and did some Zumba Core on the
Xbox Kinect. I was going to do level 2 of my new Jillian Michaels’
Yoga Meltdown, but my heart rate monitor died. Wah wah.
• Sunday: ran 19 very speedy (for me) miles.
Like, seriously. During this 19 miles, I re-PR’ed the half marathon
distance by a whopping 5:26 minutes, I hit the 17 mile mark 10 minutes
faster than last week’s 17 mile finish AND I finished
the 19 miles 26:33 minutes faster than when I hit the 19 mile mark
during my 19.5 mile run I did Nov. 20th. What the
what?!?!?! But, I was so sore that I slept horribly Sunday night. I
need to slow down on my long runs so I still have fresh legs
when the Austin Marathon rolls around Feb. 15th. I don’t want to overdo it or hurt myself.
• Monday: did a 4 mile shakeout run and, unlike
last week, I now know what a shakeout run is supposed to be. Slow.
Which was totally fine because even if I had wanted to go faster, I
physically couldn’t do it. I’m sure when I started
the run that it looked hilarious…kind of a hobbling shuffle. The legs
loosened up at about the 2 mile mark and, while still slow, it didn’t
hurt as much anymore. I also wore my new Mizuno Wave Creation 15’s for
this run and I have to say…I really like them.
They felt good. My arches were a little achy post-run, but that’s just
because these are neutral shoes and not support shoes. I was thinking I
could get some inserts, but the shoes don’t have any wiggle room in
them so I don’t think inserts would fit. I’ll
just freeze a couple small water bottles or use my lacrosse ball to
roll my arches after I run in them.
• Tuesday: ran 5 miles at an 11 min per mile
pace. Faster than Monday but definitely still feeling it from Sunday’s
ridiculously fast long run.
• Wednesday: I was still sore from Sunday’s run
(shocker! Haha), so I decided to give my legs a break from running and
hit the gym *cue choir singing hallelujah again* and some Zumba Core for
my workout. This was also my first workouts
with my new Polar M400. I was a little taken aback by the fact that
when I wore it for my strength training circuit that it said I only
burned 65 calories. My Polar FT4 usually says 200-something. For
Zumba, it said 451, which is about the same as the FT4
would say, so I’m just guessing this one is a little more accurate.
(stay tuned in the next couple weeks, I’m going to do a review of the
M400 and related items)
• Thursday: worked a 16 hour shift at work, so
no workout today. However! I did wear my new M400 all day at
work…since it’s an activity tracker on top of everything else and can be
worn all day/night to see your activity and sleep stats.
• Friday: ran a cold, wet 7 miles. Also wore my
M400 along with my Garmin for this run. Guess I should have put it in
workout mode because even though I was running for over an hour, it said
I was only running for 30 minutes. But, it
did say, by the time I got done, that I had completed my whole day’s
worth of activity. So, I’ll wear it again when I run one of my shorter
runs next week and will remember to put it in workout tracking mode.
Had a few non-scale victories (NSV) this week!
First, on Saturday, after I went to a toy & comic convention with a
couple of my friends, I went to Chick-fil-a for lunch. I was going to
get the regular chicken sandwich with some waffle
fries. Then I took the calories and such into consideration. Even if I
got the small waffle fries, it was still a large amount of calories, so
I perused the board as I was considering leaving and going next door to
subway when I spied their salads. Now,
Chick-fil-a is one of the fast food places that posts the estimated
calorie count of their food. Their Asian Chicken salad looked really
good and was conservative with the calories, so that’s what I got and I
did not regret my choice at all. It was as yummy
as it sounded and saved me over 300 calories and the calories I got
were from fresh foods and good protein. Second, last year, I joined
Team RWB (red, white, blue). This is an organization that helps “enrich
the lives of veterans” and offers free membership
to veterans. With my membership, they sent me a free team tech shirt.
I ordered a women’s large and when it arrived and I tried it on, I was
very sad to discover that it was super tight and therefore completely
uncomfortable to wear, especially for running
in. Well, I put this shirt on for this day’s run and what do you know
but it fit perfectly!!! Love it! Now I can’t wait to wear it for one
of the 5K’s I will run this year!
This week’s snacks were these multigrain chips
with hummus, and yogurts. I tried these new
yogurts this week, they’re the Dannon Light & Fit Greek. Soooooo
good. And only 80 calories! The perfect little light snack to make the
hungry monster go away. Monday I also had an avocado
because it was in my fridge and needed to be eaten, so I ate it. And
it was delicious. Next week, I'll have 2 grapefruits each day for one of my snacks since it’s now
citrus season now!
One of the ladies brought in a pastries platter
to work on Thursday afternoon. Seeing as how Thursday was my 16 hour
work day, even though I wasn’t hungry, a pastry sounded like a great
idea. So, I grabbed a coffee cake muffin and it
was delicious. It also hit my stomach and poofed up and made me feel
ultra full. I don’t regret it because it was yummy and I was going for
my 7 mile run the next morning, but I was kind of wishing I had skipped
it shortly after eating it. And then, it
ruined my appetite for the rest of the evening. HA!
I didn’t do a What’s Cookin’ Sunday installment
this week. I was just so tired from running so hard for 19 miles that I
just wanted to eat and then go to bed. Which is what I did. I mean, I
had all the ingredients for what I was going
to cook, I was just too tired to do it. So, don’t worry, there will be
a WCS tomorrow.
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