You Got Me Running

The miles I travel, I feel them in the pads of my left toes first. Three miles into today's run, my hat barely keeping the misty rain off of my glasses, I took to the steeper part of Lake Ave losing a bit of my momentum. I had updated my running playlist to not only make more minutes of music available (yes, I run with headphones in... but I wore a red headlight in the fog... I get my safety elsewhere) because with restarting Bridge to 10k, my runs will be nearly an hour or more from now on. On comes Katy Perry's “Part of Me” and though I wouldn't call this the most influential song of the times, tears started streaming down my face. I'm still so overwhelmed by what I can do. What I have overcome. The strength I have for so many things. What I let go of when I didn't care for myself and the growing relationship I have with the person I am now.

I wonder what the world would be like if everyone could feel this feeling. The freedom and pride. Probably people would be a lot less stressed and angry. Confident. Friendly. That's why I want to share it.

I remind myself that I keep this blog for a couple reasons. The first is to keep me honest. The idea of getting here on Sunday mornings to tell you, “Yea... I completely failed at everything this week” isn't my ideal, so the result is I don't fail. I'm accountable to something, even if no one reads it (but I know you do, so thank you!). The second reason is hoping that it helps someone. Maybe if I can get it across that it gets easier, more people won't be afraid to set goals to get there.

I get to take this to another level soon. My boss is letting me start a Healthy Living Support Group at work and I've been so excited ever since I sent out the first meeting invitation. Wednesday we meet for the first time to discuss short term goals. Folks are going to weigh in if they're interested in that. I don't want it to be all about weight loss because honestly, when you take on healthier living, that's sort of when weight loss becomes something you no longer have to work for.

I ate so well this week because last weekend the handsome gentleman and I ate complete crap for two days and my poor belly couldn't handle it. It sort of went into Monday when my bowling league finished up in a tournament. We got 9^th place so we didn't go on to the second round so, you know, after you lose track of how many pitchers of beer you've shared and you decide against your better judgment to order fried dough. I wouldn't recommend anyone with eating habits like mine to eat fried dough. Ever. All the Tums in the world don't help you sleep.

But Tuesday night I hit the grocery store and was such a good little girl as I put fruits and vegetables into my cart, nearly staying under my $40 weekly budget. Tried a couple new things this week that I would like to share. First... Chobani Bites. I've had Chobani Champions which are their “for kids” yogurt line. These are essentially the same concept I guess, but just for grown ups. I got the Coffee with Chocolate Chunk yogurt and I'm very pleased. It tasted a lot like the Stoneyfield coffee frozen yogurt that I have in the freezer. 9 grams of protein. 100 calories. 1 gram of fat. No artificial sweetener that I can tell. I'm really proud of Chobani for that.  I seriously want to try the other flavors.

Another thing I tried was those Lean Cuisine “Salad Additions.” I had seen the commercials and you know, can't resist corporate marketing so... but I was pleasantly surprised. Not the greatest option in the sense that it's frozen food and yay preservatives and sodium, but it was pretty good. These have all of your “salad swag” and you supply the lettuce. I actually weighed out one serving of lettuce and wow, 2 cups of lettuce is really not that much. 2 cups of green leafy vegetables is one serving, where ½ cup of other vegetables is “one serving” if you're looking to actually squeeze in 8-9 servings of vegetables in your day (I'm definitely not there yet, but I'm trying). The chicken wasn't gross, it had good dressing (I didn't use all of it) and the other stuff just made it taste good. I liked it. Wouldn't get it too often probably, but it's something worth giving a try.

In an attempt to get more vegetables in my day, I've tried mixing some veggies in with my scrambled eggs. I had eggs with green beans and eggs with peas this week. Both were fine and tasty.

Also got to enjoy some variations on oatmeal this week. Had some peanut butter and banana oatmeal for second breakfast earlier this week and this weekend when handsome gentleman and I found ourselves at a local cafe for breakfast, I enjoyed some banana and brown sugar oats with an english muffin with peanut butter. I'm drooling right now. Slurp.

In the world of my physical fitness I'm trying my best to step it up a notch. For all intents and purposes, I'm at my goal weight and I can relax a little there. But I want to tone it up. I've got two piece bathing suit dreams here. So for the umpteenth time, I'm starting Ripped in 30. Every freaking time I try to do this thing the whole way through, I get sick. One might could say I'm setting myself up for sniffles.

But so far so good. I've done Week 1 so many times now that I can actually increase the weights, so I'm doing circuit 1 and 2 using 7.5 pound weights and then circuit 3 I take it back to 5 pounds (just can't do those reverse flyes in chair pose with 7.5 pound dumbbells). I've got a calendar that I'm scribbling in my workouts and my rest days. This past week looked a little like this:

Monday: Ripped in 30 (R30) Week 1, Day 1. Bowling.

Tuesday: R30, Week 1, Day 2

Wednesday: Bridge to 10k (B210K) Week 1, Day 1. Tap Class.

Thursday: R30, Week 1, Day 3

Friday: REST

Saturday: B210K, Week 1, Day 2

Sunday: B210K, Week 1, Day 3

I'm also trying to keep a better record of my fitness.  I follow Runner's World on Facebook and at the end of 2012 they asked how many miles everyone logged... and I didn't know.  But I wanted to know!  So in my little calendar I found I can log my miles and keep notes on every day (note, I got this for $7, it looks like it's gone up since.  Glad I scored it when I did).  I'm keeping notes on the non-running workouts here as well.  

So as you can see, I'm not doing Ripped in 30 to the specifications of Jillian who says to do it 5-6 days a week. But I am going to do each week 5-6 times. So tomorrow, that will be R30, Week 1, Day 4. It's going to take me 2 weeks to do each “week” since I'm incorporating my running into it, but I think that'll be fine. And I'll always make sure to have that all important rest day. This coming week, that's going to be Tuesday, which is my 28^th birthday!

I have a lot more to talk about this week about fitness over food. I just ate well. Ate tasty vegetables, didn't do much hardcore cooking. I got myself a heart rate monitor which I wore on Thursday's workout and today's run. For Ripped in 30, I was overestimating my calories burned, but I remained “in zone” for longer. For my run, Bridge to 10k doesn't know anything about your run other than your weight and your times. So where B210K thought I burned 525 calories today on my 4.73 mile run, my heart rate monitor said 597, even though I was only “in zone” for 13 minutes of the 54 that I was out. It knows when the road is at an incline because my heart rate increases.

Here are the maps of my three runs this week. I really like when I get to run so far that you can't tell the road names on the map. These are in order according to the workouts listed above. That means today was the one that I ventured over to the other side of the river. That's sort of been a dream of mine, to run on both sides. Achieving dreams pretty much kicks ass.

The weather for these three runs was harsh. This weekend has been misty and foggy, as you can see from this picture. Wednesday, though my boss is awesome and let me take a short lunch to start my workout earlier, it was still dark and cold. The sidewalks are melting and freezing and melting, so there's times when you find a deep puddle or an ice patch and I slow down and get through it rather than keeping my pace. I'm hoping that that means that when this stuff melts off, I'm going to make much better times.

I told myself I had to get through typing up and posting this blog post before I could take a nap... a nap I seriously could use. Then I'm off to the grocery where I'm planning to try this nifty thing called Chia Seeds... I'm thinking that's the same stuff that you spread on a Chia Pet.

If you have Netflix and watch the instant queue (I stream it on my PS3) I highly recommend a movie that's on there called “Hungry for Change.” Learned a few new things and got justification for some things that I've noticed along my journey. I always take things with a grain of salt but this was very informative. It also gave me some ideas for books to read.

Nap. On it. I think I earned it.