Thoughts on Running

At various points in my life I get it in my head that I want to be a runner. Not necessarily a fast runner, or a long distance runner, but someone who can comfortably run a 5K in 30 minutes. And maybe does this several times a week. And maybe because she does this, she can age without gaining a lot of weight and without curbing her mint Oreo consumption. Providing of course that when she's not eating Oreos, she's eating fruits, vegetables, grains and lean meats.

Look at Lee running a mini-marathon. He's kind of disgusting awesome like that.

I'm wanting to run again. Of course I can't run right now with the pregnancy. (It's not that pregnant women can't run, but they shouldn't start running during pregnancy. It's cool if you're already doing it.) So I keep thinking about how I'll start running again after pregnancy. I'll get new shoes and start the Couch to 5K program I had some success with a few years ago (if I can find it). Running can be my 30-minutes of escape from baby for some glorious me time and some quality daddy-daughter time for Lee and Elizabeth. I've even been looking for a 5K to sign up for this fall. I've been working on getting in a more consistent walking habit (It would help if the rain finally stopped. And if I wasn't lazy.) so it won't be as big of a deal to add in some running in a few months.

We'll see how I feel about this in a couple months. ;)

Moving in the Right Direction

I'm finally starting to emerge from my moving-induced abandonment of healthy foods and activities. Yesterday morning I finally went for a run jog/walk. Last week I started eating healthy-ish again like the above wrap. I modified it from my beloved Mediterranean Wrap at Jason's Deli: turkey, hummus, lettuce tomato, cucumber, and onions. (No olives. I love them but I'm too cheap to buy them at the grocery.)

Of course, after the run I decided I deserved 3 5 mini Twix. Oops?

It's Not Like Riding a Bike

I told you months ago (October 27 to be exact.) that I was going to start biking. But I was afraid to start biking without Lee's company since I haven't gone out in years, and we were lazy retrieving Lee's bikes from his parents, and then we've been busy so last week was our first bike adventure.

Fortunately there's a commercial parking lot by our apartment that's empty outside of business hours so we went there for me to re-learn biking. Not that this should be difficult, right, because they don't say "It's easy like riding a bike!" for nothing!?

Wrong.

Apparently I get on and off my bike incorrectly. I sit on the seat with my tippy toes on the ground to push off. When I stop, I stay in my seat and put my tippy toes back on the ground. I like this. It makes me feel in control. I have some paranoid issues with falling so being able to sit and place my feet on the ground gives me comfort that I can deal with sudden stops or anything else that might sway my balance.

However, Lee says that my legs need to fully extend while pedaling, and if my seat is low enough for my tippy toes to touch the ground, it's not high enough for my legs to fully extend. Which is why I should board and exit the bike correctly: from a standing position. But this requires so much more BALANCE!

No worries though, we have been doing circles in the parking lot just like I did when I was 8, re-learning how to get on and off my bike. I finally got confident enough to do a loop around the low-traffic, wide-lane section of our neighborhood. Baby steps to success! (Or baby pedals?)

In other fitness-related news, I just spent the most on running shoes ever! (Not sure that deserves an exclamation mark.) Lee convinced me that I might like running more if I had my gait examined and got proper shoes. So I went to a fancy running store, had my gait examined (I don't need stability after all!), and got some extra nice shoes and insoles as well. (The insoles do make a big difference and will last for three pairs of shoes.) I have yet to really test them out, but hopefully tomorrow they will make me a runner. Or at least a regular jogger.

No Way Out

I think I'm running a 5K.

Lee and I decided a month ago to run the Throo the Zoo 5K together (I can't run it alone in case I give up or get lost or trampled. It's my first "big race"). But the weeks went on, we still hadn't signed up, and I hadn't really started running. (I have got to get new running shoes this weekend!) I had started to assume we would be skipping this one.

Lee calls me last week to see what we're doing the weekend of May 8 because he was wanting to play in an ultimate frisbee tournament. I reminded him it was my cousin's wedding and we had mentioned doing that race but whatever, go to the tournament if you want to.

But no, once he remembered about the race he insisted he skip the tournament so he could run the 5K with me. Because he had promised. And I was going to get my butt in gear and do this. Silly boy.

So now I have no excuse. Let the training begin! (Once I get those new shoes which I am so doing this weekend. For sure.)

The Wall

When Lee goes running with me, he often instructs me on "the wall": that place where you feel like you can't run any farther, but if your husband is with you he makes you keep going anyway because he's mean, but then in five minutes you realize you're doing just fine and feel awesome and maybe husband was right.

Walls in Europe are extra pretty. Even the leaning ones.


As part of my ongoing struggle with running, I had been going through a phase where I decided not to tackle the wall. If I just took it easy and avoided the wall then I would be happier, run more, and improve more. Except I didn't start running more and I still ran at the pace of a fast walk.

So after months of running rarely and always stopping for a walk break after a mile, on Saturday, I ran through the wall, and ran my whole loop of 2.18 miles without stopping! We don't need to discuss my pace (Okay, it was 12 minutes.), but I ran a little over two miles without stopping! If that doesn't deserve a handful of cookies, I don't know what does! (Curing cancer definitely. Also, completing your EGOT. How did I not know before that Audrey Hepburn is an EGOT-er?!)

But I don't think metaphorical walls are just present in athletic activities. I hit walls every afternoon, Monday through Friday, right after lunch. And last night I came home and was convinced that I would not be able to get anything done on my to-do list (Hello, chore chart!) and would probably just wind up being lazy and frustrated at my laziness all night. Somehow though, I managed to give Zoey her bath, and after that, I had a sudden burst of energy! I conquered my "I've been sitting at a desk for eight hours and am now incapable of accomplishing anything" wall and crossed most of the things off my to-do list! In under an hour too! I am master of wall conquering! For the past 72 hours at least.

(You get a virtual pretend cookie if you thought this post was going to be about The Greatest Wall of All Time. I'm looking at you Pinju.)

Edited to add: I ran 12 minutes per mile, not two miles in 12 minutes. Oops! That would've been pretty awesome though!

Be Healthy

It's March (crazy huh?) so it's time for a new resolution to tackle: be healthy.

I have never been athletic. In high school, I started trying to take up exercise. Not that I looked like I needed it, but I didn't want to be the skinniest person to get winded by a couple flights of stair. (It's so annoying when people look at you and say "You don't need to exercise." The thing is: Everyone should exercise.) And I figured that some day eating whatever I wanted would catch up with me (Hello, that day!) and if I started doing healthy things now I would either never reach the point of having to start a for-real diet or if that point is reached, I could just step up my existent regiment.

I have yet to establish a consistent regiment though. And I've developed a bit of a muffin top. Hopefully this month I can start something that sticks. For forever.

On the exercise front, I want to workout 4-5 days a week. I like working out in the morning best and last week I actually worked out four mornings for 20-30 minutes. Hopefully this will continue and hopefully I can add in some strength (crunches and arm weights). The earlier it gets lighter out , I'll run outside. Otherwise it's to the apartment gym. (And hopefully when there's a house and no apartment, I'll get some kind of exercise equipment for cold, dark or rainy mornings.)

As far as what I eat, I'm currently avoiding foods with ingredients I can't pronounce and making sure I have an apple lying around instead of a box of Tagalongs. In the spirit of full disclosure, I actually have six boxes of Tagalongs sitting by my desk right now, waiting to go into storage until after Easter. Some say that Lent is about more than giving up candy, and I agree, but Lent is also the only thing that can get me to give up candy. (I'm doing other more spiritual things too, in case you're curious.) And I'm not opposed to eating candy, I just eat way too much of it. Oreos do not make a proper snack, even if I've had a rough day (Or so I'm trying to convince myself.). They do make an excellent dessert though.

Any healthy snack ideas or secrets to sticking to a work out plan are much appreciated! (I hear I need to sign up for a 5K.)

My Love/Hate Relationship with Running

I have tried running off and on since 2002. At my "peak", I could do a ten-minute mile and a little over 3 miles per excursion. I currently average about 11 minutes per mile and the farthest I've ran in the past year is probably about 2.5 miles.

I get frustrated that I'm not very good at running. Then I remind myself that I've never stuck with it enough. And then I question how much does one have to stick with it because even if I get pretty good about going out 2-3 times a week for a month or more, I don't feel like I really see much improvement.

Toward the end of the summer I decided to say goodbye to running and started going to the apartment's gym. As it got colder and darker in the morning, I exchanged that for the 30 Day Shred. My hate for push-ups and my growing dislike for the sound of Jillian's voice and wretched workout video phrases like, "Abs like this don't come for free." or "That is fear leaving the body!" are making me feel like I need a new workout alternative.

And oddly enough, I find that I miss running.

I feel strong when I run. Even when old men pass me on the sidewalk (and they do), I love the feeling of the pavement passing away underneath my shoes. Feeling that I'm strong enough to carry myself this distance on my own. Sometimes there's an uncomfortable pain (at which point I start power walking and trying not to feel too ridiculous), but sometimes there's the amazing feeling of tension in my muscles, knowing that they're working and getting stronger.

Lee got up and went running with me Thursday morning. I appreciate it so much because I don't want to run alone in the dark, and Lee, being a long-time runner, could easily run MUCH faster (like a seven-minute mile). But he runs at my slow pace, extra early so I can still wash and style my hair for work, because he is awesome.

My first mile time? 12:20. But it felt amazing. 

image: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/helga/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

In the Morning or the Evening

For the past several months, my infrequent run/jog/walk trips have been occurring after work. They used to occur before work, but that was when I didn't have to be at work until 9. Now that I have to be at work at 8:30 (That 30 minutes makes a big difference!) I've been running in the evening, but I'm thinking about switching back.

• Morning runs are the PERFECT temperature (at least for now).
• I already feel accomplished by the time I get to work.
• I run better in the morning without food (or Dr. Thunder) in my stomach.
• Stuff comes up after work, like meeting friends or errands, which can prohibit making a strong running habit.
  
• And the world is just prettier in the morning:

But, the one con (other than sleep deprivation) is how s...l...o...w I move in the morning. When I would go running in the morning, my runs were normally cut short because I had taken too long to get up and get going. In the evening I can be lazy and take my time.

I think the answer though is to return to the morning run. Starting next week. Wish me luck.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clairity/ / CC BY 2.0

Feeling Old

I feel old.

First it was my neck. A couple weeks ago my neck really started to bother me. I would wake up okay, but by mid-afternoon it hurt to turn my head to the point I was miserable. I would go home and pop some Advil and spend the evening with a heat pack avoiding movement. After several days of this I went to a chiropractor and learned that it's only taken 2+ years of a desk job to make my neck/shoulders out of wack. Awesome. I knew that ultimately sitting at a desk and staring at a computer would take some toll on me physically, but I was hoping it could at least wait until my 30s. Oh well.

Today it's my left knee. I was actually really good about going running this weekend. I went Friday after work, again on Saturday morning, and last night I did some crunches and girl push-ups. I still plan on doing something after work, but I might just speed walk. My knee doesn't really bother me that much, I'm just mildly aware of it. It's something I would run through, if I were running, but it bothers me that it's been bothering me all day when I've done nothing. I'm probably over thinking it. We'll see how it goes.

Domestic Disasters and Trying to Re-Board the Wagon

Last week I decided that I would take an exciting new idea I found in the land of home blogs to try to cut down on my grocery bill: shop for the month. Plan a monthly menu and shop for that in one trip. You'll need to run in again for milk and produce of course, but get everything else. It sounded like a good idea, and I plan on trying it again, or at least maybe trying to cut it down to twice a month, but this month did not go well.

First off, if I plan dinners, I plan nice dinners. Normally in a month, despite the best ideas, I might pull out one new recipe. The rest of the time it's cheese tortellini with olive oil, parm and spices or frozen pizza. I say I'm going to plan a weekly menu, but just wind up going to the store to pick up foods for lunch and some generic spaghetti dinners. When I pull out all my cookbooks and try a new Giada recipe once a week, it's a bit more expensive. I need to find some cheaper recipes.

Secondly, that one grocery trip wass hell. I was frustrated when they were out of something (Purina One Adult Dog Lamb and Rice) because this was my "one trip." After an hour and a half, our cart was full, we were exhausted and depressed by how much was still on the list. We gave up and checked out. This lead to an additional problem of me wrongly assuming that I had everything for the lasagna I had planned to cook that evening. Who knew lasagna needed eggs? I didn't until I had already started making some special Giada sauce. We ate frozen pizza instead.

I regrouped and adjusted our menu for the rest of the month with what I had managed to buy. I'll try again for next month, but maybe just shopping for two weeks at a time.

So on a slightly different topic but I'm actually going to tie it all together today (Gasp!), I've fallen off the exercise wagon. I fell off several weeks ago. I'm hoping that the longer days and warmer weather will help, and I'm trying to devise a new workout plan. I'm also trying to remind myself that it's better to do something than nothing, because I often wimp out because I know I don't have a full 30 minutes or I think this is the only day I'll have time this week so why bother. I need to start bothering. Maybe I need to try to find a 5K or something so I have a goal. I'll look into that. But yesterday, as I was eating Doritos (I try to eat healthy more often than not but I can never give up my bad food! I rely on exercise because dieting kills my soul.) I had an idea. What if I bought junk food for the month and that's it! This would be a way to curb excessive junk food eating, perhaps, by buying so much and then having to spread it out over the month. So I can have a monthly bag of Doritos, but if I eat it all in the first week, then it's gone and I can't get anymore. I don't really eat that much junk food, Girl Scout cookies excluded which is really more of a special season that one must savor while it lasts, but this might be a good way to keep from overdoing it.

New Goals, Renewing Goals

I have a new goal! Apparently England has cross-country bike trips and despite my current lack of a bike or biking abilities. Lee and I have discussed that it would be nice to take up biking. (I also want to take up tennis, but that's mostly for the cute clothes.) We'll see how this new and moderately lofty goal goes since my basic fitness goals have not been going well so far, which I blame on a variety of factors. Mostly, the fact that it is currently 5 degrees outside (unacceptable) and I'm going to a wedding this weekend for which I need a wrap. To be economical I decided to make a wrap which turned out to take many hours because I don't have a sewing machine and can barely attach a button. I finally finished my project last night and think it turned out well. At least I don't think the flaws in workmanship aren't too apparent. It does look like a bit of a bubble wrap, as in a wrap edged in the style of a bubble skirt, something which I have on occasion been strongly against. In my attempt to keep the fabric together, I found it best to pull the thread tight and kind of scrunch it so you can't see the threads pulling apart. I think it will work. I'm overall proud of me on the domestic craft front, not so proud on the physical front.

Winter Morning Runs and Other Miscellany

I'm starting to think these winter morning runs are a bad idea.
A. By the time Lee and I get up to go running, we only have about 20 minutes to run before I absolutely have to start getting ready so I can be at work on time. I would like to run for 30 minutes. I doubt getting up any earlier would help and getting up before 6 a.m. just depresses me.
B. This week the temperature at 6:30 a.m. has become particularly ridiculous. I never thought I would run in 27-degree weather, which I have been, but 17 degrees with a windchill of 10 is a no go.

So I'm going to try to work out at the apartment's "gym" after work. I packed my sweaty clothes so I can change before I leave work because if I enter my apartment post-work, I will not leave it again until the next day, especially not to exercise.

Also, I kind of miss sweating. It makes me feel productive and at this time of year I'll sweat more on an indoor stair-stepper than trotting around outside.

In other very important news...

Jodie Meeks' performance against Tennessee last night was amazing! I'm trying to get Lee to let me name our first-born Jodie Meeks (so far I've been unsuccessful) and I'm rewording Chuck Norris jokes to Jodie Meeks truths. See examples below.

Jodie Meeks doesn't get frostbite. He bites the frost.
Jodie Meeks destroyed the periodic table because he only believes in the element of surprise.
There is no "ctrl" button on Jodie Meeks' computer. Jodie Meeks is always in control.


Also, if I had a couple million, I would totally do the same thing.

Scheduling

Getting up and going running at 6 a.m. has not gone well this week. Surprise! We managed to go Monday morning. Tuesday and Wednesday was a nasty rain/snow mix. (I'll run in the cold but not in the wet!) And this morning was just general laziness. Last night Lee was actually the one to ask if we were going running in the morning and when I tried to get out of it he insisted. (What an excellently supportive running partner I have!!) However, I was able to get him to retract that at 6:15 this morning. (Even the best running partners have weaknesses.) Maybe tomorrow morning? I'm more likely to just wait it out and run on Saturday.

I've decided that I need to set a specific fitness schedule. I did pretty well last year when I started my 10-week beginning runner plan because I had a specific schedule so hopefully I can have the same luck this year. Let's try this:
Monday 30 minute a.m. run
abs/arms pilates p.m.
Tuesday Take Zoey for a long walk p.m.
Wednesday 30 minute a.m. run
arms/legs pilates p.m.
Thursday 30 minute a.m. run
Friday Take Zoey for a long walk p.m.
Saturday 40+ minute run
legs/abs pilates
Sunday Nothing!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a fabulous New Year and made smart choices.

I am determined that 2009 will be the year that I get in shape. I have no idea about how many years I have said this, but this time I mean it! (I'm also not sure how many times I've said that.)

I have gained 10 pounds since I graduated college in 2006. I've always been skinny, and in theory still am, but all of that weight is pouring over the top of my jeans (in the stomach and love handle regions) in an unflattering way. I considered giving in to this. (I have started every sentence with in this blog with "I." Ick.) Recently (Something other than "I!") I tried on the next size up in pants and while they were quite nice around the waist were huge in the crotch. So I went back to my old size with the muffin top. Perhaps I should have just gone for a different jean.

But no, I'm not giving in! I've been running 3 days so far this week and even done my new Pilates video with this band thing for extra power or whatever. At lunch today I got the Fresca burrito at Taco Bell, which was not nearly as good as their regular burritos, but I'm trying.

So here's to a healthier 2009, sans muffin top.

In other miscellaneous news, I am happy to report that I was wrong about something. (Get excited! I may never say that again!) Rockband 2 is out for Wii! Lee had to go to Clarksville for it (which is apparently just over the bridge) but we have it and I suck horrible at it but my rocker, named London, has an awesome outfit!

Also, my friend gave birth this past Tuesday morning to a beautiful baby girl, Elliott Eileen, Ellie for short. I got to see her and hold her when she was about 5 hours old and hope to visit again soon because she is adorable and babies are awesome. Especially when you can hold them for a little bit and then leave them with someone else to deal with the feeding, crying, pooping, etc.