Today is a good day. Up early to do Insanity - Core Cardio & Balance - and by early, I mean 4:flippin':30 am.! Healthy breakfast eaten and now I'm working at home. I love the productivity while at home, and I love that I can be here while Nicholas is on winter break. I can't wait for Hunter to get home this week!!

Weight loss is going well. This Elite business is driving me to look deeper into areas of my life that I've avoided for a long time. I'm not complaining... just sayin'. Wow, right?

When I take time off from exercising I forget how much I enjoy exercising with intention. It feels good. It makes me look better. My skin is naturally so pale that I love the glow I get when I start the day with cardio. I've wanted to work on better, more healthy circulation for years .. this ought to do it, right?

Still tracking my nutrition with Leanness Lifestyle. Did Cardio Coach 4 on the spin bike last night. AND watched the Saints whup the dirty birds!! Geaux Saints!!!!

Today is my first "Elite" call with Coach David Greenwalt of Leanness Lifestyle. I've worked with him previously when losing weight and getting fit. Now I'm embarking on a year long program to not simply reach my weight loss goals but to learn to live at my goal weight in a healthy manner, obviously minus any of the eating/compulsive exercise disorders I used to maintain "thin" in my younger years.

I'm a little nervous and a lot excited. I began using the LL tools again 2 or 3 weeks ago and I'm already doing better at planning healthy meals. Planning enough meals. And eating according to plan. I still need to work on consistent exercise, and this is one of the reasons I see this as a year long journey. Not only will the transformation not occur overnight; I also cannot expect to perfect my actions immediately.

Every day I make choices. This morning I chose to get up 20 minutes later than planned and do squats and lunges rather than 60 minutes on the treadmill. I'll do treadmill work tonight, but only because the thing we thought the kids had to do tonight is actually scheduled for Thursday night instead. yippee! I got lucky there. Otherwise, I'd have skipped some much needed cardio in lieu of sleep.

And that's something else I'm changing. I'm sleeping much more. Not because I'm depressed. Not because anything's wrong. Simply because I feel better when I go to bed early and rest. It's also a heck of a lot easier to wake up at 4a.m and exercise when I am in bed by 9pm.

Week 1 Day 1 DONE!

I feel good...na nana nana nana..


you sing the rest. Go on. You know ya wanna...

Holy wow ~ I'm back! Last year was tough. First an ankle injury, then a lengthy healing process, then weight gain due to being on my tail (as opposed to a trail!) for most of the year. I'm fortunate in many, many ways, and I am quite thankful for them all. But wow, the things that went wrong last year took a toll on my body and it ain't pretty!

Of course I'm certain it will be again, with much hard work. I'm eating clean again and that's the best start for me. I'm also trying to begin running again with the ultimate in babysteps - the Couch to 5k program. I've done it before and it works, and I just happen to have a cool iPhone app for it, so there's no excuse really.

Week 1, Day 1 tonight. I can't wait!

This has been a crummy week. Last week, Nicholas came down with a horrible tummy thing on Thursday and then Sunday Cindy had it. I stayed home with the kids on Monday, ran very l ittle that night and bam! about 4:30 a.m., I was awake wishing I could die rather than continue the violent retching that had begun. Missed work Wednesday, Thursday, Friday... finally able to eat on Friday and dang it all if I didn't get up and run 13.12 miles with the group this morning.

That's right ~ I did. Those days of purging all the crud from my system actually left me feeling better than I had pre-illness and today's run, while slow, was a good one. My legs are going to hurt so badly tomorrow. Good thing we're not doing much but going to the Texans' game and then home to the Brownie troop meeting.

Life is good again.

I haven't had time to blog in what feels like ages. I haven't made time to run in that long either. Everything is catching up with me and there's no way I can slow down the time between now and the marathon, so.... some stuff will just have to wait while I train.

I did run with the group on Saturday. We were slated to do 12 miles but the turnaround was filled with debris from Hurricane Ike; we cut it short and thought we'd made it up on the extra distance to the restrooms. As it turns out, we didn't. The run ended up at a distance of 11.67 miles: 2 hrs 56 minutes. That's not going to be good enough for the <6 hour target for the full marathon. It was really humid, somewhat hot, and toward the end, my legs (hip flexors mainly) were causing me serious pain so I walked more than I planned. I can counter that negativity by saying that prior to Saturday, I'd done one 3 mile walk/run (mostly walk) in 2 weeks. I think that was it. I did run 9 miles two-Saturday's before but then I didn't do much of anything else. Well, I did loads of stuff, just not running/fitness-stuff. Considering that, I'd say that even finishing the almost-12 miles was an accomplishment.

We have 10 miles on the plan for Saturday and I'm looking forward to it. I will try to finish in 2 hrs 15 minutes. This week I've already logged 6+ miles. Sunday, Dakota and I did almost 3 miles of a fast walk with a little bit of running ~ just to stretch my legs and to get her accustomed to pacing herself. Monday all the kids and I went for a 1.5 mile walk to the track, around it once and back home. After they went to bed, I did another 3-ish miles on the treadmill. Overall, it felt good and my legs were strong. Consistency this week will make it all that much easier on Saturday.

Gotta run now ~ work is still a priority. Happy running!

After the 10k w/ Hunter

While waiting on Dad, Nicholas showed us his push-up form!

the boys - same night

In the caverns - next day

No time for updates, except to say I had a great time at the Nike Human Race 10k in Austin, and just last Saturday I ran 9 miles with KatyFit. It was fun and I felt like I could have gone farther. Very odd, but good since we're running 10 miles this Saturday ~ assuming the hurricane doesn't smack us.

If it does, at least it will get cooler. This place is still like a sauna.

Ya know, it's absolutely freaking unreal that every single time I write about a new outlook and feeling good about just being out there and "oh, going slower than the slowest little turtle out there isn't *that* bad" .. every single time... I end up going into some sort of illness inducing depression and I skip a week of workouts. What the heck is that about ?

So last week was a wash. It sucked. I did next to nothing from Sunday through Saturday. Granted, on Saturday morning/Friday night I woke at 1:00 a.m. with a migraine that I'd had most of the day and I didn't get back to sleep until about mid-morning when Joel returned from his cycling. He was sweet enough to let me rest most of the day but dang that headache just wouldn't dissipate. On Sunday, I woke up and ran out to the neighborhood track (paved 1k) and did just under 3 miles. Holy cow but it was hot at 8:00 a.m.!! Again I ask, what is that about?? Will it ever cool off in this godforsaken climate??

I was scheduled to run 8 miles. This was the long run before the Nike Human Race 10k coming up this Sunday. Well, 8 miles didn't happen. However, lest you readers think that I bailed after "just under 3 miles", allow me to set the record straight. I came home, told Joel he could head out for a ride before it got too far beyond 100 degrees, and I cranked up that treadmill. Another 3 miles and I was done. So I didn't do the full 8, but I did almost 6. Talk about intervals!

Tonight I ran a 5k on the treadmill. I'm still terribly slow. The finishing time (on the treadmill, in a climate controlled environment, with a treadmill fan blowing on me!) was 35:36, which by the way, is just one second slower than my fastest [treadmill] 5k ever (35:35).

They (the infamous *they* who decide these things) should just let me run all my races on treadmills. Under climate controlled conditions. With loads of water and a tv at my disposal.

It wouldn't be as pretty as it was on Sunday morning. Our little park is actually looking much better these days and I enjoyed seeing the neighbors, but I can't wait for it to cool off.

Check back with me when I begin whining about the cold rainy days. It's certain to happen.

Until then, I run... and run... and run.

Last week's workouts
Running

11 Aug: 35 min/easy DONE! 5k
12 Aug: 30 min / DONE! 2.51 mi.
14 Aug: 30 min / DONE! 2.63 mi.
16 Aug: 7 miles / DONE!

Pushups
11 Aug: 15/12/12/10/max DONE! 18/12/11/10/12
13 Aug: 16/14/14/12/max
15 Aug: 20/15/15/12/max

NOTE: I'm repeating this week 3 due to doing too many pushups in the P90 Sculpt 1/2 workout on the off days and screwing up my timing and recovery. Will just do extra squats and lunges and curls during the pushup section in the future.

Edited to add: I almost forgot!! I saw a rainbow Saturday morning. If I hadn't been running slower with M, I would have missed it. I am so thankful for that!

Saturday was weird. I woke up on time to meet the girls for a 6:00 a.m. 7 mile run. But I think I wasn't quite fully awake. See, I put on the wrong shoes, but I didn't realize it until we were a few meters into the run and I thought "better turn that nike+ thing on ~ don't want to miss out on logging this great run!" And guess what? It couldn't find my sensor. Know why? That's right. There was no sensor. I'd put on my Nike's but had my sensor in the shoe wallet on my Asics. Okay, so I'm a spaz.

So we were rocking right along ~ Trish and I discussing how we're going to continue motivating ourselves and each other ~ and I looked at my garmin and saw that we'd only gone 1.37 miles. What the hell? It felt like we'd been running forever. That's when Trish said we'd gone almost 2.5 miles and were 35 minutes into the run. My garmin showed a 20 minute run thus far. Clearly I was more of a spaz than could have been anticipated that morning and somewhere along the way I hit the stop button. That meant my nice 7 mile run wasn't even going to record properly on my garmin. Could I not catch a break??? just a little one???

Anyway, off we went to the turnaround point where we stopped to stretch. I felt surprisingly good. We had jogged at a slow enough pace that it felt comfortable for that "long-slow-run" day. Here's where things got a bit hinky though.

A few of the group came up as most of us had finished stretching. Rather than head off with the larger group I stayed behind to stretch with one of the gals and then we took off. She was struggling a bit so we went slower than I might have done alone and certainly slower than the rest of the group. We had a really good talk about motivation and continuing to run even when you think you suck. For instance, going that slowly felt to both of us like "wow, we suck at this" but one could argue that just being out there qualified us for as non-suckers. Or something like that. During the course of our conversation, we realized that we both tend to try to overdo things. From having been athletic in the past, it's a struggle to admit that a few decades and couple of babies later and we're no longer capable of the same things. That doesn't, however, mean we need to lie down and give up, right?

Giving up seems to have been what we've both done in the past. We made a pact that we wouldn't get down on ourselves for moving slower than others, and instead, we'll consider it a victory to continue.

Okay, that all sounds good but at the end of the run I felt like the 7 miles had been easy. Partly because of the squats and lunges I'd done during the week ~ my legs felt strong. But also because we moved so slowly on the way back that I felt like the second half of the workout was negated. I mean, you can't actually cover 3.5 miles and have it count for nothing, can you? And there was no way in the world I was going to leave her behind. Even though the path is well-lit and there were tons of people out there, you just don't leave someone behind. Especially when that someone is mentally struggling to continue.

So I'm glad I hung back with her. I was able to get to know a really nice person by doing it, and it's the sort of thing that I would have wanted someone to do for me. Knowing how I can't just accept things as-is, I worry that this could be something I allow to become a repeat event. The only downside to that is my not being fully prepared to run the marathon in under 6 hours. If I go too slowly on the Saturday runs, will I be able to pull it together on the big day? I mean, I like helping others but I didn't volunteer to coach. I'm actually out there trying to improve my own running and ..... wow, I sound like a witch, don't I?

I think that I'll just have to step up my weekday runs so that if our group coaches aren't able to accommodate all the runners in our group, I can do it again, if needed. That way I can meet both goals ~ improve my running and maintain my ability to face myself in the mirror.

Yesterday was a great day. It was a bit too hectic at work, as is normal, and I even had to bring work home, but I didn't let that interfere with other priorities. Other priorities being: 1) eat clean and 2) exercise.

I swear, this is such a huge feat for me that I should make it a public announcement: I ATE ALL OF WHAT I PLANNED TO EAT AND ONLY WHAT I PLANNED TO EAT, AND I DIDN'T BINGE ALL DAY (OR NIGHT)!!!!

Silly? Sure. But a huge accomplishment nonetheless. See, I had this plan to go home and fix salmon and I actually did it. Often in the past, I'd have that plan, get home, realize I had tons of work to do and wanted to carve out time to exercise, so I'd either skip dinner altogether and find myself too exhausted to have a good workout or binge on cheese-its & bbq sauce (yea, weird, but it's my thing) and find myself too queasy to have a good workout. So not only did I fix the planned healthy meal, I was so glad to find out it was quite delicious!

It's been a long time since I've tried to plan my meals and log them and eat according to a 40/40/20 distribution of macronutrients. I seem not to be one of those people who can just make good choices at each meal and have it all balance out at the end of the day. It's safe to say I'm not there yet, although I still remain hopeful.

Today looks to be another good day, even if it will be another long and busy one. More later on an interesting e-mail I received from TrainingPeaks.

This week was certainly not my best effort. Although effort wasn't the problem as much as being unable to breathe or think due to the cold/fever-ish stuff I picked up at last week's group run. Yuck.

So due to feeling like crap, I did Monday's run r-e-a-l-l-y slowly and skipped Tues & Thurs, did Friday's pushups and Saturday mornings long run. Long, slow run. Very slow and no shame in that!

The pushups were a bigger challenge than I expected. Well, first I still couldn't breathe and had just taken more Advil Cold & Sinus (this stuff workeds, but I still had no energy and was worried about not recovering from whatever it was). But also, it was a total of 47 pushups, I think. That's quite a bit for someone who hasn't done any in months. It felt pretty great to finish and even better to realize that my biceps were twitching for the next 30 minutes. Sort of a "wow ~ I did something!" moment. I loved it!

Training Plan for Week of: 4 Aug 2008

Running (looks like an easy week)

• 4 Aug: 25 minutes run/jog / 25:26; 2.15 miles (treadmill)
• 5 Aug: 30 minutes run/jog / skipped ~ ill
• 7 Aug: 20 minutes run/jog / skipped ~ ill
• 9 Aug: 6 miles long, slow run / 1:30:00 ; TH Park

Hundred Pushups Challenge

• 4 Aug: W2D1: 9, 8, 6, 4, max / 9, 8, 6, 4, 9
• 6 Aug: W2D2: 11, 9, 7, 7, max / skipped ~ ill
• 8 Aug: W2D3: 10, 10, 8, 8, max / 10, 10, 8, 8, 11

Other Stuff

• 6 Aug: Muscle Breakdown spinning dvd / skipped ~ ill
• 8 Aug: Recharge spinning dvd / skipped ~ ill
• 10 Aug: Recharge spinning dvd

Week 1 of Hundred Pushups Challenge

• W1D1: 7, 7, 5, 4, max / 8, 7, 5, 4, 9
• W1D2: 9, 8, 6, 5, max / 9, 8, 6, 5, 10
• W1D3: 10, 8, 8, 5, max / 10, 8, 8, 5, 8

Day 1 of Week 2 of the Hundred Pushups Challenge. Despite having a cold/sinus thing from hell, the pushups went rather well. Jogging for 25 minutes went less well, but I didn't expect much. Still 2.15 miles, as medicated as I am, I'll take it.

I've decided I need to be a bit more clear on what I'm doing with this challenge. I need to better track my training, and although I do track it on Training Peaks, I don't keep up with all the little details. One day they might matter. I suppose the best way to track it is to do a post at the beginning of the week with the plan, and return to it to update/edit as the week progresses.

Okay, off to do that now!

Day 2 of the Hundred Push Ups Challenge completed last night. Holy cow but that can be tough! Tonight I run for 30 minutes, but not until after I return home from a "Tour de France" Cooking Class. I'll have to go light on the vino or I'll fly off the back of the treadmill.

Well, I'm keeping up with my weekly training schedule. It's nothing too ... what's the word I'm looking for? Too ambitious maybe? My goals are reasonable. I'm not trying to break any records ~ good thing, too! I'm simply following the KatyFit plan, and it seems not to be too much of a jump from doing little bits of not much to what I'm doing now.

Nothing is hurting too badly, anyway. Nothing more than my left Achilles' tendon, although I find that icing it after a Saturday run is sufficient to keep it from flaring up too wildly. This getting older business sucks. I suppose it would suck even more if I didn't do anything to try and improve my fitness level.

So, Monday was day 1 of the Hundred Push-Up Challenge for me. O U C H !!! Actually, I did not so great on the initial test, but I was able to complete the full day of pu's without any problems. (I guess that's what happens when you're on the slow/weak person's program!) It's a Mon-Wed-Fri thing, so I look forward to trying this again tomorrow. I could definitely feel a soreness in my chest while I was jogging tonight. That's good, right?

I heard tonight about an alleged hazing incident at a local high school. All I can see is that I don't look forward to my daughter growing up. Too many young girls (not all obviously, but the ones you hear about on the news) have no sense, less class, and a dire need to have their butts whipped. What the hell are they thinking to pee in their undies and put them on someone's head?? Someone you're going to be cheering with all year long. Someone who is likely to be on your shoulders at some point... Someone who could easily have an OOPS! moment in the near future.

Clearly I'm about revenge. It'll be interesting to see how this is managed. The girls are all said to be away at cheer-camp right now, so nothing happens until later. District policy is supposed to specify that anyone participating in "hazing" will be removed from the team and not allowed to participate in other extracurricular activities. hmmmmm I hope that if these girls really did do this that the punishment is applied fairly and not ignored because of *who* they are. (note: I say that without knowing a single thing about who these girls might be.. it's the principle of the thing in my opinion.) I guess we'll see what happens soon enough. Until then, yuck!

I ran 30 minutes on the treadmill last night. Nothing phenomenal about it ~ just getting the minutes in to increase my endurance. I'm working on lengthening my stride on the treadmill so that I'm working harder and hopefully, better mimicking what I'd be doing if I ran outside.

I've scheduled a very early morning run on Saturday with the girls. 5 miles. It'll be nice to get out and run with them while it's still somewhat cool. The group is meeting later for the same distance, but I prefer completing the run earlier this weekend.

Not much else going on here, except that I learned about this neat little Hundred Push-up Challenge I'm thinking of doing. It should be quite difficult, very challenging, and lots of fun.

Work is so crazy right now that I can't even think to blog. My mind is a blank because it's so filled with work stuff. Since I don't blog about that, I'll end this now.

Patricia, if you're reading, I ran again today! 35 minutes, well 34:36, and I did 3 miles. yay me! Last night's run was super slow because I took the doggie out with me. She had fun, but she stopped and sniffed a lot, too. Tonight was quicker because I was in a climate controlled environment with a/c and a fan ~ yes, I ran on the dreadmill.

Gotta love the t/dreadmill; it makes my overall average speed look much less pathetic.

Tomorrow is a night off, but think I'll try to do yoga or pilates or something useful. Hunter also has to film an audition for a Target commercial. Wish her luck!

So I haven't blogged in a while... again. I have been running, minus the business trip to Toronto. It would have been great to run there, and I did take my stuff with a plan to do just that ~ run. Then there were the long hours of work and then the long hours of networking and then the multiple glasses of wine and/or vodka. It just didn't add up to a landscape that said "put on your running shoes & go!"

Actually, it did but I felt obligated [read: weak] to do the social thing with the boss I only see rarely and the team members from other places. The course I attended was great. I can't wait to begin instructing. But I needed to run, and I didn't.

I paid for it on Saturday morning. Trish was unable to join us as she's still in Cali, so Tina asked that I run with the front of the group, while she ensured that we didn't lose any stragglers off the back end. That worked out well as our group is full of different paces and fitness levels. I felt badly because we had one woman who had to get to work fairly quickly and so she needed to run faster than the group was going. If I'd gone with her, the bulk of the group would have been left behind. What I did was keep an eye out for her going on without us and one of the guys ran up with her (safety, and all that). It worked out well. We all finished slowly, but we finished and I felt good in the end.

Only note on aches/pains is that this is the second Saturday in a row that my left Achilles tendon has felt tight and painful (not excruciating, just not good) toward the end of the run. Then it gets worse throughout the day. I avoided much of the "later in the day" pain by first taking the kids and the rottie to the park then returning the rottie to the house and taking the kids to the pool. We hung out there all afternoon and had a blast. I also think the water & stretching worked to relieve some of the pain. Oh yeah, and the ice I put on it. That didn't hurt.

At this point, I'm not worried about it but I am going to keep an eye on how it feels. The goal is to do this stuff without getting hurt. Doing it is not enough ~ it must be that I'm doing it pain-free.

Next event is 8/31/2008 ~ HR10k in Austin ~ woohoo!