Days 55/56: A Fun Weekend and Back to Running

I had a fantastic weekend with my fiancé. We decided that we were going to go to Taste of St Louis and to the Soulard Farmer's Market. I have been meaning to go to the Farmer's Market for some time now and haven't gotten to. We started at Taste of St Louis, which I looked at very carefully, ever eager to monitor my calorie count. I did fine there, eating a chicken kabob with all kinds of veggies.

The fiancé and I with the sous chef of Taste of StL. :-)

 

My fiancé's culinary school was there making food (yes, my fiancé is a chef, don't you love that? :-D) but we didn't get to try any of their food. He is trained primarily in French cuisine but has tried a number of different things and he makes a lot of good food. I was hoping to find the folks from LCB but we couldn't find them! It was too bad, too. We got to go to a lot of different places there, including some of the best foods in StL. Local Harvest Café, which is a favorite of ours, was at the festival as well, and they had $2 vegan chili! Sadly, I stuck to my chicken kebab, which was really good.

 

Afterward we went to the farmer's market and it was totally crowded! I have never seen that many people there. It was kind of hot and I was getting tired, so I also noshed on a polish sausage. I kind of wished I hadn't afterward, cause it was sort of okay but I ended up getting sleepy and crashed on the couch for like 3 hours. (Could be why I gained weight, lol.)

 

But the next day was much better. I decided that I was going to go for a run. I went to my usual park only to discover there was a HUGE 5k and triathlon being held at the park! I was insanely jealous, but still packed up my gear and went to my second choice, which was mercifully free of events and had good parking. Since it was around 65 degrees, everyone and their mom was there, lol. I decided to go a different way that time and walk the opposite perimeter of the park. I started running and realized that I was starting off at a 14 minute/mile pace, which was 2 minutes faster than my usual pace. I continued between 14-16 minute miles, until the very end when I got down to 17:01 minute miles, still a good 2 minutes faster than my last run. I even passed someone, which was a huge NSV for me because I am usually too slow to pass someone. :-)

 



Nice and sweaty after my run! :-)

 

I ran 1.47 miles, walked 2.03, for a total of 3.50 miles. I burned 919 calories and 3.5 miles took me 1:14:09. :-) I'm totally getting into running for more than a hour, though sometimes I wonder if I do anything else in the morning besides run, lol! I totally love logging long distances though, and as long as I can do it I will be doing it. And hopefully getting faster each time. I'm in my second-to-last week of C25K this week, so I'm hoping I can pull off a 2-mile run by the end! That would make me super excited. :-)

 

I hope everyone has a fantastic day. I'm going to finish reading my new running magazines (I have 3 now, it's seriously awesome!) and hopefully put a dent in some chem homework. Be blessed and enjoy the journey!

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!

Day 27.5: Encouraging News!

I have discovered the run/walk combo, and it was good.

I originally started out adding a consecutive minute each day to my run, until I got to 22 minutes and was so exhausted when I got done I could barely walk. After 16 days of doing this, my knees were burning and literally everything on my body hurt. This was even when I wasn't running!

I have a friend from high school who is totally rocking it and is about to start a running program. She is doing C25K, and is off to a very good start. :-) But she was running/walking it, and I have to admit that it was on my mind. I started off on the run intending to tough it out for 15 minutes. But instead, I decided to run 3-4 minutes, and walk 2 minutes. Sometimes I walked less than that, but I was getting so out of breath I decided to keep it at 2 minutes. And keeping that pace, I ran/walked for 27 minutes! I only walked about ~8:30 of that too, so my total running time was about 18:30, which was a 2:30 boost from yesterday's run! I was super excited.

I learned something important today as well. There's no shame whatsoever in treating your body kindly when you exercise. If you have to run/walk instead of pound out a 22 minute run, that's okay! Especially since I've really only been running for about 19 days. I am learning that pacing myself doesn't make me a weakling, or settling, or whatnot. It makes me smart! I'm honoring my body and taking care of it, and not putting it under so much stress it gives out on me and knocks me out of commission for weeks. You're not running to punish your body or punish yourself for being out of shape. You're running because it makes you feel good, it makes you feel alive! Running is good and healthy no matter what form it takes. I'd say a 27 minute run/walk combo is very good.

So, all that to say... be smart. Take care of your body, even when you're trying to work it out hard. God only gave you one, and you don't get to trade it in for a newer model! And trust me, a 27:00 minute run/walk, even when it's 101 degrees outside and about 70 degrees in will make you sweat profusely! Just for proof, here's a picture I took after my run:

I am definitely red faced and sweaty and proud of it. Own your sweat, to quote Definition Transformation. You got out there and did it, and that's something to be proud of! :-)

Well, I hope everyone has a fantastic day. I'm about to get some more water and get dressed up to spend some QT with the fiancé (and yes, I took a shower already, cause that would be some serious stinkage otherwise! :-D) Be blessed all! :-)

Day 25.5: Demotivation Becomes Motivation

I have had a very... interesting day today, as in, really kind of blah. My mom was in the same mood I was but for a different reason, and when you add two people who want to kill everyone and especially each other in the same room, it does not bode well for either person. Mom was telling me about how I spend so much money and how they aren't going to pay for my overdrafts (Which really is not a huge deal, it was a glitch in the system and I will pay it off tomorrow after I get my paycheck. It was just the way she said it, she knows how to push all my buttons!) I don't consider myself to spend massively either. I just have things that come up that I need to take care of, like having some gym shorts and some deodorant, and I take care of them when they come up. There is a lot of stuff I want but I am still prudent. :-)

Anyway, my mom's words and my general bad mood apexed today when I went and tried to bike. I made it 2 miles (actually, closer to 1.76) and I just broke down. I'm sure I kind of surprised the guy next to me, but I got up and left, feeling completely defeated and just blah. I posted to my GOF page on Facebook, thinking everyone was going to knock me for it. What can I say, sometimes I can be a tad pessimistic. But I got a lot of encouragement from some great people, even some I didn't even know. I decided then that I am a lot of things sometimes, but a quitter is not one of them.

I got home just as my parents were leaving to go out of town and I was determined to attack my dad's stationary bike. He has a different type of bike than I'm used to using, I usually use a recumbent and he uses one that looks more like a regular bike. I got on and turned on the beauty hour on HSN, and proceeded to kick butt. I rode for about 40 minutes, and knocked out 10.3 miles out on the treadmill, beating my dad at both time and mileage. My dad and I have always been a bit competitive when it comes to the stationary bike. I am always trying to beat him, and now I have. I rode for a grand total of 12.06 miles. :-)

What is really sweet is that I have obliterated another mini-goal of mine which was to do my gym's requirement for biking for a short-track tri (10.2 miles), which I set kind of half-jokingly cause at that point I was much heavier and knew that it would be a bit of a long shot. Now I have not only met that goal but I have beaten it by 0.1 miles! That is completely awesome.

I am so glad for everyone's encouragement. :-) It is super awesome on a bad day like this. I get on my blog and write about it and I hope other people are encouraged by it too. Sometimes you just have a blah day. You can still get it done! Never settle and never give up. You're just one step away from a breakthrough!

I hope everyone has a fantastic evening. Me, I've got to get some chemistry homework done, because as far as I know, it has not done itself, lol. :-D Take care everyone!

Day 23: And It Was A VERY Good Day

Oh my goodness! I saw 212 on the scale this morning! It was on my gym scale that always measures me a little light, but I am so ridiculously excited! I screamed (quietly, as I was in a public place, lol) when I saw that number. Plateau has bitten the dust and 19 lbs along with it. I also ran 1.24 miles, 23 minutes, and burned 133 kCals. I'm so proud of my progress and I'm one pound away from 20!!! :-)

I was happy to see my first piece of motivational mail today. I heard from this wonderful person at a forum I have attended for over 5 years. She told me she had read my blog and that she was inspired by me and that I had motivated her to go work out. I almost cried, I was so happy to hear that. That has been my goal all along, to help inspire others and now I'm getting closer to doing that. Because it's great fun to go running and lose weight, it's so much more fun when you can take a few people along with you. :-)

I will get to see my little sis ride horses for the first time today. For those of you who don't know, my sister has a severe form of autism and although she is very even-tempered and easy to get along with (and one of my best friends!) she is completely nonverbal and is prone to depression because she can't communicate effectively. But from what I've heard from my mom, she feels very much in her element when she rides horses, she smiles and is excited and her depression lifts. That sounds great and I can't wait to see her ride! I will definitely take pics with my cell phone camera and play proud sis for a little while. Then my sister will ride home with me and we will hang out for a bit. I think she will take a snooze for a bit and I will work on my chemistry homework, but I love hanging out with her. :-)

Well, I have to get ready and throw some makeup on before I go to Wentzville. I wish you guys the best in your workouts and thank you to all my new patrons! So excited to see more traffic to the site. Have a fantastic day all!