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.

Weekly Recap

This week was the final week before THE MARATHON!!!  Dun, dun, dunnnnnnn!  Haha.  So yea, I needed to take it somewhat easy to make sure that my body is well rested and able to tackle the “aggressive” time goal I have set for myself.  Sure, it’s “aggressive,” but I also think it’s totally attainable.  With that said, I took my friend Kirsten’s advice and took it easy.  I did my workouts, but I didn’t “kill” my workouts.  I went easy.

• Saturday: ran 10 miles with my friend Stacey!  I’ve missed her!  She’s been out of town doing mission work and things for her school, so we had plenty to talk about as we ran.  The 10 miles pretty much flew by.  She struggled a little the last 3 so I had to turn up my motivator-ness and push her to the finish. 

• Sunday: I ran a 10K this day!  The Chocoholic Frolic down in San Antonio, TX.  I did my best to not “race” this race.  My goal for 2016 was to run sub-1 hr 10Ks…but not this one.  With just 1 week before the BIG DAY, I wasn’t about to wear out my legs by seeking a new 10K PR.  So I just ran and enjoyed the run.  (race recap will be posted as soon as official photos are purchased and received…as per usual)

• Monday: no workout, just caught up on some costume making and all my house work.

• Tuesday: went and ran 7 miles at a moderate pace at the Brushy Creek Park trail.  I really like this trail.  I was mostly just trying to 1) log some miles and 2) keep my legs loose for Sunday.

• Wednesday: went to the gym and did just the elliptical.  Again, just trying to keep my legs loose…and make sure I hit my 10K steps for the day.

• Thursday: part of me wanted to run and part of me didn’t want to run.  I didn’t get out of bed until 8am, but I only had a 4 miler planned, so I still had PLENTY of time.  I was actually leaning more toward not running but then my friend Ken posted about his 5 mile run and then I HAD to go for my run.  Thank you Ken for motivating me!  I ended up running the first 2 miles at 10:30 and the second 2 miles at 10:22.  It felt a little harder than that pace should have felt, but my pulse was in the 140s for the most part.

• Friday: managed to pick up overtime on the night shift Thursday night (YAY!), so no workout this morning.

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I thought a lot this week about weighing in versus not weighing in.  I knew I’d be up.  Due to pre-marathon nerves and anxiety attacks over other things going on in my life right now, I ate things I shouldn’t have and too much of just about everything this week.  My work uniform didn’t really get any tighter.  I know I’ll burn off a good deal of stored energy running the marathon tomorrow.  After the marathon tomorrow, I want to really try and recapture what I had last fall where my exercise and my eating were all on point and I felt great.  If I can get that back, the weight loss will just happen like it did in the fall.  I just need to have a plan in place so that upsets don’t derail me.  I hate saying these same things over and over again.  I really hope it doesn’t make me sound disingenuous to you guys.  I hope that every time I start over you’re not rolling your eyes at me while you’re reading my posts and muttering “oh, here she goes…AGAIN.”  I will eventually get to my goal weight and the maintenance phase.  I don’t like using excuses or crutches.  I don’t like saying things about how having an eating disorder make this whole process 100 times harder than it should be, but it’s the truth.  Maybe I should find a book about how to deal with an eating disorder and get a handle on it?  I’ll look into that.

Anyway, I weighed in this morning, so I might as well share that with you.

I have to say I am surprised.  I didn’t think that, after the way I ate this week, that I would have LOST weight.  I was prepared to see a gain. 

Marathon Hopes

Back in December, after accidentally getting a new marathon PR after only running and training for less than 2 months after fracturing my ankle, I decided to set a time goal for my next marathon: the Austin Marathon (this Sunday).  I didn’t just want to PR by a few minutes, I wanted to PR by over 14 minutes!  What?!?!?!  Am I crazy?  Yes.  Yes, I am.  To help myself work toward this goal, I started doing some speedwork, though I’m still really new at this whole workout run thing, so they were very simple speedwork runs.  I also started doing hilly runs.  Not hill repeats, though.  I would just pick a route to run that had HUGE hills in it.  I also did a couple runs along the hilliest portion of the Austin Marathon route.

Am I ready?  Maybe…maybe not.  I’m as ready as I can be, I think.  I’m always super nervous before a marathon.  The last couple runs I’ve done, the effort felt like more than it was.  My heart rate was in the 140’s to low 150’s, so I wasn’t over exerting myself during these runs.  I think it’s just nerves.  Plus I hear other runners talk about how running during the taper feels like it’s harder than it is and that makes them more nervous about how they’ll run come race morning.  So we’ll see come race morning.  I’m hoping it’s just the taper and come race morning all will be well.

Yes I want to PR by over 14 minutes and finish in under 4 hours and 30 minutes.  However, ultimately, I want to have fun.  Of the 5 marathons I’ve ran, this is one of my favorites and I’m really looking forward to running it for a second time.

Are any of you running the Austin Marathon or Half this Sunday?  If so, let me know!

SLS3 Dual Pocket Belt Review

Recently I was offered a chance to review the SLS3 dual pocket belt. 

“This belt can hold your big phone in one pocket, while holding other items inside of the other pocket. Another great feature is that the pockets are water resistant so you don’t have to worry about sweat getting to your phone.”

I’ve had the belt for a couple weeks now but hadn’t had a chance to try it out.  Why?  Because I no longer wear a gear belt when doing my regular runs.  I only wear one when I’m running a race.  Since I got my new hydration pack, it has a place for my phone and I don’t have to worry about it getting damp from sweat from my lower back seeping through the gear belt I had it in.  Well, with the new SLS3 dual pocket belt, I no longer have to worry about my phone getting damp because I forgot to put it in a Ziploc baggie before putting it in my gear belt.  Why?  Because the inside of the pockets on the SLS3 dual pocket belt are coated so that it is water resistant!!  How cool is that?  Seriously.  How. Cool. Is. That?  Very, if you ask me.

So, anyway, today was the first chance I got to wear it as today was the first race I had ran since receiving the belt.  It’s a dual pocket belt and both pockets are LARGE.  You could seriously store 2 iPhone Pluses or Samsung Galaxy Notes in this thing.  I put my car key fob in one pocket and my phone in the other without any issue.  The other gear belt I’ve been using has 2 pockets but the big one barely fits my phone (a regular Galaxy S6) and then a smaller pocket that it’s like reverse birth trying to fit my key fob into it.

Another great thing about the SLS3 dual pocket belt is that it is seriously NO BOUNCE.  It has a nice, wide, comfortable elastic waist band.  It has a very sturdy clip buckle.  One thing I didn’t like about the gear belt I was previously using was that you could only cinch it on one side.  This one cinches on BOTH sides!  Woohoo!

One down side to this belt is that there are no loops for gels, but that’s not a problem for me, personally, because I have a FuelBelt that has 10 gel loops. 

My opinion of this belt?  I say it gets 5 stars out of 5 possible stars.  I love this belt and will continue to use it for all my races.  You can get one by going here.

disclaimer: i was given an SLS3 dual pocket belt in return for a product review.  all opinions are my own.