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 38: Running On Fumes

Well, not really, I just thought it was funny. :-)

After going to put gas in the car, I went outside to run. I normally don't go outside to run when it's hot out but it was probably 77-78 degrees and I thought I could swing that. I did C25K W3D2, which is composed of a 90 sec run-90 sec walk, 3 min run-3 min walk; repeated twice. It was sort of easy on the treadmill, but it was definitely harder on the pavement.

I ran very slowly. I was worried about running too hard at the beginning and then petering out right before I stopped running. And trust me, it got tough. I was running at a 22 minute pace, breathing hard and about to stop in the middle of it. But I decided to keep on going, cause I was like, I've only got 2 minutes left, 1 minute left, and so on and so forth. I have to admit that I'm guilty of looking at the clock, especially when I have no pockets to put my phone in. Plus, if I have no guidance for how much time I have left it is much easier to give up! But still, I put in around 1.32 miles, which isn't bad at all. :-) I have done 26/50 of the 50 day challenge and am over halfway through the Lazy Girl Marathon at 14 miles ran this month! :-)

After pounding the pavement in City Hall Park.

 

 



Me and Frodo's butt. He decided he was going to get in the fun too!

My 5K is in 11 days! I am not super nervous, but I know I will not be running the whole time. If I'm lucky I will get to week 6 or 7 (I run each segment of C25K for three days in a row, then amp up the intensity. It's pretty tough, but I make it.) of C25K and at least get a fairly major part of the 5K where I actually run! I'm trying to beat my last time of 58:23 (but I was walking it, so that's not bad!) so hopefully I will be able to do that. My fiancé will be running with me so that will be good at least. He definitely encourages me when it gets hard. :-)

Well, I gotta go study for my Chem exam, but I will definitely check in this evening. I will be biking 9.11 miles in honor of 9/11 victims tonight, so hopefully it will let me record it without there being a glare on the screen. :-) We'll see, my dad's bike isn't very photogenic when it comes to recording times, lol. :-) I hope everyone has a fantastic day and is blessed! :-)

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!