Saturday, February 23, 2013

11:08/Protein pancake experiment

Couple of things:

1) Ran my fastest mile yet: 11:08. I'm so excited - 3 months ago I could barely run for a minute.

2) Huge exam coming up next week. I hope I can still get to the gym every day...

3) BUT so far I have not gone crazy on the diet. In fact, I had a really good eating day today, which considering that I was out studying all day, is super impressive. Wish I had taken a picture of my salad at lunch (It was from a salad place kind of like Chop't). I also tried my hand at a protein pancake, a recipe I have seen in a few places. I tried this recipe from Sarahfit.com. It didn't turn out as well as I had hoped - but since I changed things willy-nilly to accommodate ingredients I had on hand I'm not surprised. I'm definitely making a blueberry variant tomorrow morning!

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Snowed in - hopped on the treadmill


Today was kind of a crazy day: 1) It snowed! for the first time in 20 years or something. 2) I ran a 10 minute interval at 5.5 mph on the treadmill. I bumped up my 5 min interval to 10, which is awesome! Granted, I only did one interval, but that's all I wanted to do today. Tomorrow (hopefully the snow is a freak thing and we'll be back to beautiful running weather) I'll try to do 30 minutes (so 3 intervals).

On the calorie side of things though... I tarnished an otherwise awesome day with a sugar cookie. Just one cookie, you ask? Nooo. Post-gym I met up with my boyfriend who was eating a breakfast burrito from Yumi's. Their breakfast burritos are sooo amazing - but probably also qualify as lard bombs. I had a bite and though I staved off the temptation to buy one, as soon as I got home I made my own lard bomb. The damage - 2 strips of turkey bacon (70 cals), 1 wheat thinwich (110 cals), with cheese (110 cals I'm guessing), 2 eggs (120 calories), and olive oil (?? I did go heavy on it by accident). Sooooo huge healthy eating sidetrack, but it was delicious. I'm hoping that since I indulged, I won't be having a similar craving for a while.

Fingers crossed for a good running day tomorrow.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Excited post!

I was driving home today in evening rush hour and I happened to notice my arms on the steering wheel.... there's the teensiest bit of definition! It made me so happy and excited and all motivated - I seriously wanted to be home so I could try some push ups. It's the little things I guess!

I haven't weighed myself in about a month - because I am trying to make sure that I don't get discouraged by the number, which has happened in the past. I am planning on waiting to step on the scale when I am truly excited and confident about some other aspect of my body or physical achievement so that no matter what the scale says I'll be ok. That time may be coming up soon if my arm excitement is anything to go by!

Update on the 5k - looks like I've convinced a total of 3 people to run it with me, so I'll have a little team on the 19th! This race is sounding more and more fun :)

I stopped by the grocery store on my way home and bought a few treats for after I run this week - 2 cliff bars (white chocolate macademia nut sooo good and chocolate brownie to try) and a single serving of coconut water (on sale, kind of an exotic post-run hydration thing?).

Woohoo! Baby muscles!


5k planned for 3/19!

I finally got a taker on the 5k! So I'll be running on March 19th for a charity that funds ALS research! My goal is just to run the whole thing (no walking intervals). This is pretty ambitious because I basically only have three weeks to go from 5 minute intervals to no breaks! The first 5k I participated in almost 3 months ago took me 42-ish minutes to complete (I was doing 1 minute jog/1 minute walk). I'm currently doing a 39-ish minute 5k (I know, not really much improvement, but I'm focusing on endurance first... I also think that the 42 minutes was probably faster than I was actually capable of and that the whole race environment motivated me to go faster? We'll see if I get a little race day bump this time too then!)

I'll have to come up with some sort of running schedule to make this happen. Coming soon!

Monday, February 18, 2013

Love letter to my gym/weird workout today

No run yesterday after all - was still feeling sniffle-y and just didn't want to go outside. I've read before that if your symptoms are all above the neck that you're ok to exercise, so technically I should have been fine for a run. But I'm ok with skipping yesterday. I went to the gym today to do an arms workout. Still wasn't feeling 100% so that was a bit distracting.

What was worse though, was when a trainer came over to give me some tips... He said my form for triceps needed monitoring and that one of the exercises I was doing was useless (I'm not sure what'd you call that exercise, but it's an exercise a trainer at another gym taught me!). It was kind of disheartening. I definitely do want to make sure I'm doing everything properly and feedback that helps me do that is a good thing, but it kind of bothered me that he had been watching me and evaluating me, if that makes sense. I ended up leaving a little early because I felt uncomfortable eep!

In general though, I am in love with my new gym. It is pretty small and half the times I'm there, there's less than 8 people total, which is AMAZING! When you swipe your keycard it tells you how many times you've been in so far this month, which actually is a little motivator for me to keep that count high :) A quirk about the place is that most of the folks who go there are older adults doing cardiac monitoring or rehab stuff. I am so comfortable at this gym because of that - I never feel silly for trying new things out and failing, or worry about how I look, or have to wait for equipment. I had a (mostly unused) membership at LA fitness before and the thought of working out in a sea of neon glitter tanks and grunting frat boys (it was near the university) would often keep me away!

I actually remembered to have a protein shake post-workout today! I almost never remember because I'm willing to chow down on anything after the gym. I also have a mango stashed away for later :)

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Week 8 of Run/Walk program

Today I ran 1.7-ish miles in 21:31. I didn't have a lot of time which is why my run was short, but I am really proud and pleasantly surprised that I managed to pull off a run, especially because I am currently out of town. My average speed comes out to 12:31/mi which is lower than my usual (though I bet that if I'd kept going I would have slowed waaay down to bring the average to around normal).

I've been run/walking pretty consistently for about 8 weeks now and I have come pretty darn far considering (Which really says a lot about where I started haha...) I was just thinking this morning how much I had to struggle to do 1 min intervals back in December! I am now running 5 minutes at a time with a 1 minute walking break. I actually did a 6 minute interval today so I could finish off the first mile. I'm planning on adding a minute to the run interval every week until I get to 10 minutes. Then I think I'm going to start working on my speed so I can finally achieve a 10 minute mile. But that's still five weeks away.

My long(er) term running goals -

1) Run 10 minute intervals comfortably. (soon!)
2) Run a 10 minute mile.
3) Run 3 miles in 30 minutes without a break.

After that, then I'll get to set some new goals!

I've actually been trying to convince some friends to join me in a 5K next month as extra motivation. It was actually participating in a 5K that got me interested in the idea of trying a run/walk program in the first place so it'd be fun to revisit that experience! So far, no luck. I have some very, very athletic friends (the kind that think nothing of biking 8 miles to a hot yoga studio in the morning and then doing Crossfit in the evening) and apparently some couch-potato-y friends (I guess I was in that category haha). Neither group wants to do a dinky (or way too hard) 5K...

I'm sneezing a little excessively right now so I am going to head to bed with a cup of tea to see if I can stave off these allergies (hopefully not a cold!). Tomorrow is my 3 mile run!


Sunday, February 10, 2013

Where have I been?

It's been a long time since I set this blog up... clearly I wasn't sticking to my blogging plan. I think I'm just going to start writing again without too much preamble and fill in the blanks as I go on.

Since my last post (and really the last time I cared about fitness) I graduated college, traveled around China, started grad school, got a personal trainer and lost a lot of weight, gained it all back and some, lived on the east coast, moved back home (and kept moving - 3 apartments in less than 2 years), and ended and started a serious relationship.

It doesn't sound like my life when I write it like that!

But it kinda makes sense that my initial enthusiasm for starting a healthy life might have fallen to the wayside. I'm here to get that back.