Day 57/58: Last Day of September and First Day of October

I seem to be getting into the habit of posting every other day. Nothing personal, just had other things come up and blogging kind of took a backseat. Still, I'm going to be updating whenever I can.

I walked/ran a total of 8.1 miles in the past two days. Yesterday I ran 1.68 miles and walked 2.74, and today I walked 3.7 miles. I got injured this morning though, a dull pain in my right knee when I straighten it all the way, so I've decided to take a few days off running and just work on my upper body. Today, however, will be a full rest day. Just chilling, putting a bag of frozen green beans on my knee for a little while (isn't that what we all do? I'm too cheap to buy a fancy ice packet, lol) and watching some good videos on YouTube.

Later this week, I am going to Career Services and looking into some job placement type of things, either using my previous degree or not. Either way, it would be a step in the right direction. I had some really bad experiences with jobs in the past and I needed some time to recover emotionally and mentally from that. I won't reiterate all the gruesome details, but it really sucked. I finally feel comfortable enough to be selective. I remember having similar issues with my relationships, just dating whomever came along first, until I got into a horrible relationship and realized that I could be selective. Two and a half years ago, I had my choice of three different guys. Two of them were D-bags, and one of them was super nice, and one of the most fun guys to be around. I decided to be selective, and two and a half years later, we're a year into being engaged and happy as can be. I chose my fiancé because he was the best choice. Now I will do the same for my job situation. Find the same equivalent and not choose a job because they were the first to offer. :-) It should guide me towards something amazing.

I am also considering going back to church, although a different one this time. It was nothing personal against my old church, I just didn't see eye-to-eye with them on a lot of different things, I thought it was a little too politically charged and a little too legalistic. But there were some great people there and I really liked them. However, it just wasn't the church for me. I have been listening to some sermons online from the church that I am considering going to, and I really like the minister who delivers them. Granted, I don't want to base the church solely on the minister or fancy lights or anything. I'm a little too cynical for that. I just want somewhere where people won't judge me or my disabilities, and just where I can grow as a Christian. That seems like a good place to start. :-)

I hope everyone has a good day. Be blessed and enjoy the journey!

Day 44: Why I Am an Overcomer

Some days, God tests me.

The following is very spiritually involved, so if you're not interested in that sort of thing, I give you permission to overlook that bit. But still read on, you may learn something.

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I am a huge Joyce Meyer fan. I think she is hysterical, and preaches a good message most times she speaks. I admit there are times when I've turned off the program because I wasn't yet ready to hear what she had to say. But most of the time, she brings it on home.

God seems to like it when I watch Joyce on the internet and seems to give me "homework" after viewing one of her shows. As in, well you've learned the lesson mentally, so let's see if you can put it into practice.

One of my favorite lessons by her is not to become offended at oneself. To become determined that no matter what kind of things are thrown in your way, to not become derailed from the purpose that God has called you to. She advocates being active and articulating things aloud, and she mentions having a very determined sit-down with herself and saying that she is NOT going to be kept by the devil from enjoying her life. She said there was a shift in her attitude from that point on.

Well, I experienced a more benign but similar episode today. For whatever reason, this nagging feeling inside me was that I was a loser and I was a horrible runner. I don't usually think that, normally I'm so excited to be running I can look past the fact that I'm slow. It nagged on and when I got to the hard part of my run,  I was fighting it and just so disappointed that I was, in my opinion, too slow. Eventually, it got intense and I just said to myself for about 5 minutes, "I'm an overcomer," like the Mandisa song. Sometimes I had to say it to myself more harshly than other times, sometimes I had to yell (to myself) at the devil that he was NOT going to take me down. About halfway through my cool down my insistence took, and I realized that yes, I was an overcomer, and yes, I was good at what I did. I decided to continue walking and put in an additional 35 second run at high speed. My total was 1.70 miles, 495 kcals, and 40:18, 9 minutes over the C25K time. :-) I also found out that I had beaten my original fast pace on the run at 2.7 mph instead of my usual 2.3.

After my run. Day 32/50 and 23.2 miles into the Lazy Girl Marathon! :-)

 

 

Mandisa has also put out a series of pictures on her website, and I have used one of those repeatedly on my page. This is the picture in question:

I can't even tell you how many times I've felt that way on the elliptical, lol. :-) But it just means that everyone who has been on a weight loss journey at some point has felt like that picture. But thank God that we are overcomers and have Someone who has overcome even the worst of circumstances. So, if you feel like giving up sometimes, remember that Christ has made us more than conquerors and we can overcome anything! :-)

I hope everyone has a terrific day. True to form, I'm going back to chem homework, lol. Be blessed everyone! :-)

Day 29.5: More Superhuman than Human

Well, I finally did it. I beat my dad's consecutive time by 3.01 miles. I have been wanting to do this for quite some time since my dad has been a bit too smug for my liking that he has done 10 miles on the bike, and I wanted to show him how it's done. :-) (In a friendly way, of course!) I got on there and kept riding... and kept riding... and eventually my butt went numb and I was able to ride better (it really did, I'm just now starting to get all the feeling back, lol). I rode a total of 50 minutes, and burnt around 330 calories. 13.01 miles ridden. Wow.

I remember when it was such a struggle to ride even a mile on the bike. I would watch, disgusted with myself, as my fiancé obliterated my time. I would sit on the brick partition as Bryan owned me over and over. Now, I ride longer than he does. By about 20-30 minutes, I believe. I have come a long way.

Thank goodness my Android takes good pics! :)

What was super cool was my playlist. Normally my musical taste is somewhere along the tobyMac, Chris Tomlin, and Todd Agnew vein but when I really want to get into hardcore mode I put my Rob Zombie playlist on. No joke, I have been a fan of his since the 5th grade when he was still in the band White Zombie. It plays a lot of hardcore stuff, but thankfully has stopped playing Marilyn Manson every other track and has got some better stuff on there like Cage the Elephant, and some other songs I know but don't know the artists. I don't know what it is about that type of music, but it really gets my butt in gear. :-) If I play Christian contemp for too long, I start to slow down because it puts me in a peaceful mood, lol. :-D If anyone has some hardcore Christian artists they like, let me know and I'll put em on the playlist! :-)

I got over 30 new likes on my page today. I was so excited, I never thought I had so many people that wanted to support me! It is very encouraging to know people are in the same boat as me and we are supporting each other along the way. The running/fitness/WL community on Facebook is one of the coolest groups of people I have ever known. :-)

I have decided to add a Lazy Girl Ironman Bike Ride to my list of challenges. I want to get to Tri length sometime soon, but I thought it was super cool to try to do an ironman bike ride over a month! I was thinking of picking an arbitrary number like 100 and going with that, but when I found out the bike ride in an Ironman is 112 miles, I thought it was the perfect number. So I'm going to try to do that in a month. I'm also trying to run a Lazy Girl Marathon over a month, 26.2 miles. I'm already to 2.5, I believe. :-)

I hope everyone has a great night! I'm going to rest and put some food in my belly, it seems to be telling me that is the best course of action. :-D Be blessed!