Weekly Recap

• Saturday: this was the day before the marathon, so no workout, but I did park a little over a mile away from the expo for the marathon and walked there and back.  I still gotta get my 10K steps if I can!  I know they say you shouldn’t do a lot of walking or standing the day before a marathon, but I like to walk as much as I can.  I feel like it keeps my legs looser and warmed up. 

• Sunday: ran the Austin Marathon!!!  It was a great race and my second time running it.  I finished in 4:35:15.  That’s 5:16 minutes shy of my goal, but I’m still really happy with it.  I need to work on my early pacing as I did the first half too fast and I’m sure that’s what did me in and made me finish over my goal in the end.  (as soon as I get the official photos, I will post my recap)

 

also earned this!

• Monday: cashed in the free 1 hour massage certificate I won at the Thin Mint Sprint back in October and got myself a lovely sports recovery massage!  Then, I walked as much as I could to help break up the soreness in my legs the rest of the day.

• Tuesday: ended up picking up overtime at work Monday night, so no workout.

• Wednesday: went to the gym and just did my 65 minutes on the elliptical.  Usually I use the ellipticals that don’t have the moving arms, but only one of those that has its own mini TV screen has working closed caption and someone was already on that one.  So, I went to one of the ones with moving arms and discovered it had working closed caption, so I hopped on that machine for my workout.  I kinda like the moving arms.  Will probably use that machine from now on.

• Thursday: ended up picking up overtime on the night shift on Wednesday, so no workout this day.

• Friday: went for a nice, easy 5K run.  I had my Cupid’s Arrow virtual race medal to earn!

 

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Now that the marathon is over and I don’t have another one until November, I can focus more on losing weight again.  So, I made an effort to stick with my intermittent fasting eating schedule and not eating processed junk.  I will come clean and say that there were Valentine’s cupcakes at work on Monday and I did eat one.  However, there were regular sized ones and mini ones…I just had a mini one.  For my lunches this week, I bought a skirt steak, seasoned it with my Stubb’s BBQ Dry Rub and threw it in the crockpot on high for 8 hours and then portioned it out into 6 oz portions.  I’m still doing my 6 eggs for breakfast (unless I go to the gym that day, then it’s a protein shake in almond milk pre-gym and 4 eggs for breakfast).  For snacks this week I had 2 honeycrisp apples and then dinner was homemade mashed potatoes (made with almond milk, garlic powder, onion powder, lots of pepper, a tiny bit of sea salt, and some country crock light).

I kept the exercise fairly light this week to help my body recover from the marathon.  But next week, I’ll be upping things a little bit.  I did get my generic TRX straps and the mount ring with self-tapping screws in the mail this week and got them installed in my front entry way, so I’ll be able to do my TRX workout at home now!  YAY!  This is really good because frequently I’m not able to do this workout when I plan to because that area of the gym is full of people.  So now, I can just go to the gym, do the elliptical and then come home and do my TRX workout!

Let’s see how my efforts this week worked out on the scale.

While I was honestly hoping for a bigger drop, I’m still quite happy with a 2 lb loss this week.  My goal is to get as close to 170 by February 29^th when I have to do my 2000m rower test for work.  The less I weigh, the more time I have to complete the 2000m.  Your allowed time is based on your age, gender and weight.  Last June when I last did the test, I rowed the 2000m in 8:40 minutes and got 86% of my max VO2.  I weighed 181, I think, at that time…so I’m already ahead of the game. 

I recently bought a new workout log that has spaces to log all sorts of measurements, including caliper measurements.  So, I bought a body fat caliper and it arrived in the mail the other day.  So, this morning, I took my measurements…all of them!  First, I have a slight muscle imbalance between my right and left sides.  Mostly in my arms, not so much in my legs, but the massage therapist also discovered a muscular imbalance in my core the other day, so I suppose I should work on that.  I have a free personal training session with my gym, so I’m going to talk to the trainer about this imbalance during that session and see if they have any advice for me. 

Anyway, the results of the tape vs the caliper measurements.  Per the caliper I have 20.23% body fat with 35.21# fat and 138.79# lean muscle.  Per the tape measurements I have 33.73% body fat with 58.69# fat and 115.31# lean muscle.  My FitBit scale says I have 34.7% body fat.  That means that the scale and the tape measurements are pretty much the same.  I can tell by looking at myself that I am nowhere close to 20% body fat.  This strikes me as really weird because I have always believed caliper measurements to be more accurate.  Unless, of course, what the calipers is measure is just my surface body fat % (not sure if that’s a “thing” or not) and actually I have more of the dangerous body fat that is found around the organs.  I really hope not.