Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Crawling out from under my rock


Well, well, well…I finally decided to crawl out from under my rock, it seems.  At least for a moment.  It’s awfully cold in central Texas…per central Texas standards, that is.  We’re having the coldest temps that have been recorded in 2 years.  Yea, sure, it’s not like they’re record breaking temps, they’re just not temps we normally get here.  Not recently anyway.  The last couple years winter has lasted all of a couple weeks for the most part.  So an actual winter is right up my alley.  I will complain about the wind, just so you know.  The actual cold temps don’t bother me so much…I *AM* an Oregon girl, after all and it DOES get cold there.  I remember when I was a teenager and it was around 17°F and I was running around outside in a tank top, short and no shoes or socks and I was perfectly fine.  But I was used to it.  I’m freaking acclimated to central Texas so I’m no longer as used to it, but after a few days I do readapt.  As long as there’s little to no wind.  Like I said, the wind is one thing I WILL complain about.  Anyway, it’s not like it’s snowing 2 feet overnight or the roads are icy and causing 67 car pile ups like some places.  

 

So, what’s new with me?  A few things.  First, I’m a year older.  I’m now 39.  I ran 13.9 miles for my birthday.  I for sure am not running 39 miles by myself at this point in my running career…I do plan to one day do a 50 mile race, but that won’t be by myself.  And then 3.9 miles or 39 minutes just didn’t seem like enough, you know?  So I did the 3.9 and stuck a “1” in front of it and came up with my new birthday mileage formula!  So next year, for my 40th it’ll be 14.0, then 14.1, and so on.

 

I’ve run a couple races since I last wrote.  I’m going to spoil the race recap for the Decker Challenge Half Marathon and go ahead and tell you I PRed the half marathon by almost a minute and a half!  On a SUPER hilly course!  I was also the most festive runner.  Decked out head to ankle (sorry, no elf shoes) in Christmasy attire!  I ran the first 10K with my friend Rob, so that was pretty cool.

 

I signed up with Gold’s Gym!!!  I’m super stoked about this!  I signed up last Thursday and this Monday was my first visit to there.  I had my initial welcome session with Josh, one of the trainers there.  We spent the first half of my session going over paperwork and waivers and goals and hopes and plans and stuff.  Then the fun began and I got to knock out a short workout with him.  We mostly did exercises I wanted to do, but he guided me thru the smart ways to warm up for each exercise seeing as how I like to just dive in and go all out.  One thing I was ridiculously excited about when I toured the gym before signing up last week was that they have a Jacob’s Ladder machine!!!  You have no idea.  This machine was like my unicorn piece of cardio equipment.  I’ve seen it on the weight loss TV shows but I’ve never been to a gym that actually had one.  So the first stop for my mini workout was, of course, 5 minutes on the ladder!  Loved it!  It wasn’t really easy, but I still loved it.  I will be using it every time I go to the gym.  Every time.  Then we moved onto squatting wall ball, then kettlebell sumo squat to front raise, then push press, and then we ended with the “glute buster” (a glute kickback machine).  I like their machine more than one that was at Planet Fitness because you can adjust how much you tuck and get a wider range of motion, which I really like. 

 

I’ve gained a little more weight and am completely frustrated with myself as a result.  So when I was talking with Josh about my goals, I stated that not only do I want to boost my running performance and efficiency, but I do want to drop 20 pounds.  I also signed up for their 12 week bootcamp program that starts on January 21st.  So, I’m pretty excited about that, and I’d like to see that 20 pounds GONE by the end of that program.  To supplement the bootcamp, I’m hoping to purchase a personal training package to get me 1 session with Josh per week and I know that will help me greatly in reaching that 20 pound loss goal.  Heck he even said that if I did that, as long as I ate right, then he could pretty much almost guarantee me success in that area.  So I’m pretty excited about that prospect.

 

Speaking of controlling my eating.  I’m starting back up with trying to keep my caloric intake below 1500/day…preferably as close to 1200/day as possible.  Yep, even on days I exercise.  At least until I can drop the weight off, then I can up the calories to a maintenance level of like 1750-ish/day.  But right now, I’m focusing on cutting the amount of food I’m shoveling into my face by a lot.  I’m going to treat my eating like it’s a financial budget.  I’ll make a list of what is mandatory and what is discretionary (aka: not necessary…superfluous food items).  I’ve done it all before and it worked fantastic for me.  But I’m having issues recovering from the medication fiasco.  But it’s been too long now since that and now I’m just using it as an excuse that I’m tired of parroting to people to explain the weight gain.  I should have lost most, if not all, of the weight that medication made me gain by now.  Instead, I’ve gained a few pounds.  I need to get a handle on this and stop being one of “those people.”  You know the type…the type that big talk about how they’re going to do this and that and then never follow through with it. 

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