I really should work out right now

It's a little past ten, kids are in bed, dog's in her crate. I should be doing one of the P90X strength training workouts, especially with all the crap I've been eating (hello three days in a row of spaghetti and meat balls and giant bag of candy I bought from Winco this evening).

I don't think I've strength-trained once this week. Alright, I guess this is enough of my lolly-gagging. I better get a move on. Tony Horton, here I come.

March Goal Met

My mileage goal for March was 75 miles. Today's run made 81.1 miles total for March. Yay me!

When I got back from the gym this morning, I took Katie for a walk. I soooooo wanted to see how she would do running up the hill. But I didn't. I didn't want to bust her stitches. I'm such a good dog owner. Hehe.

I am freakin starving right now. I'm a horrible planner and right before I had to leave for work, I figured I should grab some food. After digging through the cupboards, all I was able to forage was a couple of packs of instant brown sugar maple oatmeal and a rice krispies treat. Man, carb overload. Carbs are great at giving me energy, but they do not keep this girl full. I am craving some serious protein. 15 more minutes before I'm off. Sigh.

Speedy

I finally got my runs to upload. Sunday's 6 mile run? About a 10:30/mile pace! And a 3 mile run on Monday? About a 10:00/mile pace! I was sitting at my computer cheesing big time when I saw those numbers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, slow to a lot of folks. But for me? Awesome! Especially considering my hilly neighborhoods. I'm so damn proud of myself.

In other news, I freakin' love our new dog, Katie. She is such a sweetheart! She doesn't bark at other dogs, she walks well on her leash, and although this breed is supposed to have tons of energy, so far it looks like she's a big ol bag o lazy bones. She just laid out in the sun all day today.

The kids and I took her on a walk in our neighborhood this morning. Please note that the children dressed themselves and I had no hand in their outfits.

If this keeps up, she's going to fit in so well with our family.

She doesn't even care if Aaron plays vet with her while she naps.

This pic was actually taken yesterday. Me and my twin. Hehe. Please excuse my lack of make-up. On Sunday I somehow managed to scratch my eyeball with my fingernail while getting dressed to run. It hurt momentarily and when I looked in the mirror I didn't notice anything. When I got back from my run I had a giant blood splotch on it. Martin said I look like our dog.(It's hard to tell in this pic, but photobucket hates me and crashes whenever I go to edit it.)

So here's a better shot of my eye.

 

She is a great dog. The only thing is that she smells! You know that yucky wet dog smell? Yeah, take that and multiply it by 100. It's pretty damn offensive. If I weren't so in love with her already I'd send her back for the smell alone. Gross. It's hard being in the same room as her. We can't bathe her for seven days because she was just spayed. I'm really crossing my fingers that a good bath will do the trick. However, I did read on one site that treeing walker coonhounds do have a "houndy" smell.

I'm trying to see how my schedule is going to work taking Katie on runs with me. Usually I just hit the gym right after I drop off my daughter at school or when I get off from work. Now, I'm not sure what I'll do. I suppose I can get up early every morning to take her on a run. That already sounds exhausting.

I am becoming one of "those people"

Those people being those crazy annoying folks who talk constantly of their dog. Well, okay, I don't really talk about her seeing as I have no friends to talk about her with, but my day has consisted mostly of doing research on her breed and taking care of dogs in general.

For my your viewing pleasure, here are some pics of my girl.

Isn't this the sweetest face you've ever seen!

Look at those long legs. She's going to make a great running companion!

Beautiful colors! Hopefully when we get her settled and adjusted her tail will be happy and pointed up.

 

We pick her up tomorrow! I'm so excited!

In running news, I did 6 miles this morning. I had planned on doing 10, but being gone 2 hours just seemed a bit luxuriant this morning. My Garmin refuses to upload the run though. :( My time was 1:05 (6.3 miles), so I averaged about a sub 11:00 pace, which I'm pretty happy with. I tried running on the grass when I saw a giant puddle on the sidewalk. And that's when I stepped in an even deeper puddle hidden in the grass. Nice. However, I'm happy to report that my Brooks Ghosts drained pretty quickly and within a few minutes I had forgotten all about my cold wet foot.

Test, test, test, 1, 2, 1, 2

So I'm writing this post from my brand new fancy schmancy iPad. Typing on a touchscreen takes some getting used to.

I did a new hill interval workout on the treadmill this morning. I'll have to write about it another time because it's too much work toggling back and forth between the letter keyboard and the number keyboard on this thing.

Martin and I went out to Sacramento today and adopted a dog! She's such a sweetie. She's a one year old treeing walker coonhound. She only has one eye (the lady who helped us said when she was only about 3 or 4 months a cat scratched her eye), but she is absolutely beautiful. They still need to spay her, so we can pick her up on Monday. I wanted to name her Sam, but I know my daughter wanted to name a dog if we ever got one. So I showed her a picture and asked her what she thought. She thought for a minute and said, "Kate, or we can call her Katie." I actually like that. She looks more like a Katie then a Sam.

I asked the lady if Katie would make a good runner partner, and she said absolutely. Katie is actually one of her dog's spawn. She said this breed of dog can keep on going long after I'm done. She said we're a perfect match.

I'm excited and can't wait to bring her home.

Why do I want to run faster again?

I was soooooooooooooo sore today from Sunday's strength-training work-out. They say that it's the second day when you hurt the most. And boy, is that true! My hip flexors were killing me! Killing me, I tell ya! I was gimping around all day. I felt like one of those whorey girls who walks around with her ass sticking out. Only I had to walk that way because it was too painful for me to walk with a straight posture.

I was supposed to do hill intervals on the treadmill today, but said screw that since I could barely walk. I figured an easy 5 mile run would probably be better for my lower half.

I set the treadmill to my good ol 5.7 speed (10:32/mile), covered up the display and trodded along. I had soooo much on my mind.

Finally after about 3 miles, I found "the zone." My mind calmed, my body felt strong, and I just glided along. I felt so good, I wanted to do 6 miles. And 6 miles I did.

There were times during the run when I felt so good I wanted to go faster. But my aim here was to do an easy run. I kept telling myself both in my head and out loud, "Easy."

I got that runner's high when I was done with this run. I felt good, I felt strong, I felt accomplished. I didn't feel like keeling over, as I do sometimes when I do shorter fast runs.

So why would I want to run faster?

Well, at least it's something

I've been pretty aimless lately, so I figured I would concentrate on working towards that 9:30/mile goal of mine. It's not a huge goal, but it's something to gear my focus towards.

Met Steph at the gym again today, but this time I just kind of hung out and chatted while she did her weights. I was still sore from yesterday, and like giving my body a day to rest from weights after strength-training.

After catching up on girl talk, I hit the treadmills. I like using the treadmills that are directly under a fan. I also like keeping a one treadmill space cushion between me and the other treadmill folk. There was a free treadmill that met both of my criteria. Unfortunately there was a cute guy right behind it on the stairmaster. I know, it's stupid, but I get super self-conscious directly in front of cute guys. So I skipped that treadmill and jumped on one a few treadmills down that wasn't under a fan. Poo.

I did the first mile at my usual 5.7. Then I did most of the second mile at 6.3, which is about a 9:31/mile pace. I had to stop and take a break .90 into this mile. Then back to 6.3 for the last mile, which I actually ran at 7.0 for the last tenth just to push myself. 3 miles in about 30:05. I will count my goal complete once I'm able to run 3 miles at this 6.3 pace. Soon, my pretty. Soon.

A glimpse into my closet

My closet has been a danger zone for the past few weeks with clothes strewn all about. I finally got to tackling the mess yesterday and figured now was as good as time as any to go through all the clothes and donate what I don't wear anymore.

I have a lot of crap! I am trying my best not to think of how much money I wasted on clothes and shoes I only wore a few times if at all.

Less five garbage bags of clothes and seven pairs of shoes later (That mess of clothes on top of the garbage bag? My husband's. I guess he decided to add to the pile, too. Although instead of making it all neat and putting it inside a bag, he just threw his on top. >:o), I wound up with this:

 

Funny how it's still crazy full of clothes after all I'm getting rid of. At least they're not all jam packed in anymore. I like how the reflective stuff on my running gear glows. Makes me feel safer.

If you look in the first closet picture at the shelf on top, there are a ton of jeans that don't fit me. I have no issues getting rid of a $100 jacket or a $150 pair of boots, but for some reason I can't bear to part with $25 jeans.

I was going to do P90X Arms and Shoulders and start up Insanity again today, but my friend, Steph texted me that she was going to the gym. So I met her there and did an hour of weights. Then I was going to only do 2 miles on the treadmill after, but for some reason I got tired/bored/wussed out and stopped after 1.5.

I just told Martin that we're going to be doing Insanity again, so hopefully we get to the Fit Test some time tonight. There are times when neither of us are good motivators and our lazy asses will just while the hours away on our behinds playing Word Fued (it's like Scrabble) against each other on our phones.

And just because I think she is the cutest thing ever with her new haircut, here is my daughter, Kaia. She wanted bangs like me. Love.

The repurcussions of a dead Garmin

Last night as I was brushing my teeth before bed, I realized that I didn't have to be out the house by 6 am. I was off by an hour! I could leave at 7! Hooray! That was much more feasible than 6!

Still, I didn't set my alarm and told myself if I woke up, I woke up. I've been sleeping really crappy lately and figured if my body needed sleep than so be it. Well, I woke up at 5:30 am on my own. I hunkered down under the covers willing myself to fall back asleep. No go. I dragged my ass out of be at 6:30 to look out the window to see how hard it was raining. What?! No rain?! I checked the weather on my phone to see how cold it was outside. 44. That's not so bad.

Long pants, long sleeve shirt, jacket, gloves, and a headband to keep me warm. Since my jacket had pockets I threw my gels in one and my iPod in the other. Nice, since my armband was super stinky. Unfortunately when I tried turning on my Garmin, it said "Low Battery" and then died.

I checked the time on the microwave in the kitchen before I left. 6:56. I didn't realize until about a mile into my run that I could have taken my phone with me and tracked my time that way. Nor did I realize until about the last mile of my run that my iPod THAT WAS ALREADY ON MY PERSON had a clock on it. Sometimes my stupidity surprises even me.

Anyway, it was a great run. It was rather liberating running without my Garmin. The first three miles felt great. I was a bit bummed that I had to slow to take a gel, but I knew I would need it.

I wanted to know my time so instead of walking around my cul-de-sac a few times to cool down, I immediately ran inside to the kitchen to check the time. 8:52. Woo-hoo! After subtracting a minute for the time it took me to get outside, lock the door, walk down the driveway, walk back up and unlock the door, I figured the total run took 1:55. Woo-hoo!

My best time for this route was 1:52:57 (11:03/mile) back in August. And that was a tad bit shorter, too, (10.21 miles) since I skip one of the trails now and run the sidewalks for safety reasons (10.3 miles). Using this site to calculate today's pace gave me 11:10/mile. Yay!

My mind felt so much better after today's run.

Haha. And that appointment that was for 10? Well, the guy called me and had to reschedule for next week. And it's been raining since after my run.

We went to the animal shelter later. There was an adorable Australian Cattle Dog there named Eliza that was soooo sweet. However, I read on the internet and the lady at the shelter, too, told me that this breed might nip my kids on their heels to herd them. Funny to me, but might be a tad scary for the kiddos. So we're still dogless.

It's supposed to rain all weekend

I'm supposed to do my 10 miles tomorrow morning. It's supposed to rain. I've got a meeting at 10 am with the school psychologist for Aaron, so I need to get out the house by 6 in order to fit in the run. Is it even light at 6 am?

I've got all these things working against me. But I need to do it. I need to run.

We're going to the local pound later in the day tomorrow. I want a dog. Not only will it be good for Aaron (dogs are good for autistic children), but it will be good for me. Having a dog will force me to get out there every day.

Man, I am sounding glu-um. But I'm really not. More contemplative.

Is it fun?

I was talking with my coworker, David, yesterday about running. He said that no one runs for fun. The only time running is fun is when you're playing tag, because then you don't even think about it. I argued with him, saying that I run because it's fun.

Then when I hit the treadmills after work yesterday, I realized I was a liar, because I was not having fun. I was busy thinking about my new gait, keeping my arms low and my foot turn-over fast. It was a chore. It was not fun.

So after 1.5 miles I stopped. The original plan was to do an easy 6 miles. I figured I would have fun. I would run at different speeds depending on what song was playing and its tempo. So I ran anywhere from 5.7 (10:31/mile) to 7.0 (8:35?/mile) and walked for about a minute between each song. I varied my strides and arm swings and just had fun. Much better.

I had trouble stretching afterward. My ass was still sore from doing P90X's Legs and Back the day before. I am out of shape!

Running beer wench

My friend Steph and I along with our respective spouses are running Bay to Breakers in May. Her husband won't wear a costume. Martin might be up for it.

I started shooting her some ideas and we were orignally going to be bees. Last night she posted this costume on my facebook.



So it looks like we're going to be a couple of running beer wenches. I hope the lace doesn't chafe. I wonder if Martin is up for wearing lederhosen.

So smooth I'm undetectable

I was supposed to do my 10 mile run yesterday morning, but I lagged too long in the morning and didn't get out in time. I had my clothes and gear on and was ready to go, but I had to be back by 8 am and it was already 6:30. So I threw my clothes off and just jumped back in bed.

I set my alarm for 5:30 this morning so I could be out the door by 6. However, with the time change, it was still super dark out and I've become a wuss. I fell back asleep and again, was up too late to fit in the 10 miles.

I was a huge grumpy butt because of the missed run, so this evening I headed to the gym to at least get some miles in. My stupid gym closes at 8 on the weekends. I got there at 6:30, so I knew 10 miles was out of the question. But I figured I would run what I could.

I was also conducting an experiment. I wanted to see if peanut butter m&m's (my favorite!) would work as fuel as opposed to the GU's and Clif shots I normally use. I had measured out a quarter cup, which was one serving at 220 calories, and broke that up into two (14 m&m's each), each being 110 calories, and wrapped each half in foil. I figured that would be a quick way to eat it on the run, when I had planned on running outside.

So I felt a bit foolish as I opened the foil packet and put it on the treadmill for easy access. Hehe, here I was surrounded by folks trying to lose weight and I put m&m's in front of me to eat as I run.

I had read an article on Shalane Flanagan in Runner's World the other day. It mentioned how she "glides" when she runs, not expending energy on unnecessary movements. So I thought of her and the Kenyans and I ran. Instead of my usual lumbering, huge arm-swinging gait, I kept my arms low and concentrated on a faster foot turnover rate.

It worked! I barely broke a sweat! And I guess I was channeling the Kenyans too well, because all of a sudden at 2.3 miles, the treadmill stopped! A message read, "(Person?) not detected on the treadmill - press enter to resume workout." I must have been floating! Hehe.

Unfortunately it happened again at 4.6 miles and again a few more times after I had reset it after 5 miles.

And I finally got my rate to hit 22 steps per 15 seconds! I felt like a super power speedwalker, but I did it!

I ate 7 m&m's after 3 miles and the rest after about 6 miles. I was going to try and squeeze in 8 miles total, but my stomach started feeling funky and I stopped at 7.3 miles. My stomach calmed down and I finished off with my stretching.

All in all, it was a wonderful run. I felt pretty great. I don't remember the total time. 5 miles at 52:30. But I don't remember the time for the rest of the 2.3 miles. I did the first 5 miles at 5.7 to conserve energy. The last few miles ranged from 5.7 to 6.0 because I was just feeling good.

While the peanut butter m&m's did give me energy, I'm not sure I'll be using them as fuel for my runs in the future. It made me want to go potty.

But I am a much happier person now that I've got some miles in.

03/10/10 Weigh-in: 117.2, 23.8%

It's been a while since I've done a weigh-in. It was probably because I realized the scale that I've been using, my work scale, is all screwy. So my measurements in the title are from my home scale.

I lost a few pounds, but I put all that weight loss on me being sick the past week.

And, for good measure, I of course, weighed myself on the work scale. Three times.

118.4, 19.4%
118.4, 19.5%
118.4, 19.6%

So, while I'd like to believe that my body fat percentage still falls in the Athelete range like my work scale says, I guess I better live in the real world, and come to grips with that fact that I do not have the body fat percentage of an athelete. Well, at least my body fat percentage is in the Fitness range. For today at least.

I went to the gym this morning, thought about doing weights, but said screw it. I can always do P90X at home later. So I just ran with an intention of doing about 5 miles.

Well, I did 5 miles. But trust me - It was not pretty. The first mile, easy as always at 5.7. Then I upped it to 6.0 and got tired when the treadmill read 1.4 miles. Yeah, that was only running at that speed for .4 miles. :( So I walked for a tenth of mile and tried to pysche myself up again. I ran for another .4 miles again and got tired. Walked a tenth of a mile. Ran .4 mile. And repeat. I tried different speeds - 6.0, 6.1, 6.5. Yeah, I couldn't run for more than a half mile at any of those speeds.

After 4 miles, I made myself run the last mile at my easy 5.7. At least I was able to do that. I'm going to attribute these tired runs to my body still being tired from a week of the flu.

As I was walking out of the gym, they had a sign up that said something like, "Did you know cardio can increase your body fat percentage?" I didn't read the rest. That's tricky. It can increase your body fat percentage. I know sometimes when my weight goes down, my body fat percentage goes up. However, it made it sound like cardio was a bad thing. I think the sign was trying to trick people into signing up with a personal trainer to strength train. I know I need to strength train more. But I think that sign is just misleading.

You want size?

I met my friend, Steph at the gym again this morning to do some weights. I've been super sick with the flu and was finally feeling better today. I was just going to do an easy 3 miles, but figured weights wouldn't kill me.

Ugh! We did legs today. Her friend/boot-camp instructor has her doing exercises requiring a weight heavy enough where you can only do 6 to 10 reps. That's all fine and dandy and all. But I can't get Tony Horton and all three of my old personal trainers out of my head. "You want size? 6 to 8 reps." Hell, no I don't want size! My legs are big enough as it is. I want lean! And according to Tony, and the rest of my trainers, "You want lean? 12 to15."

So when we switched off machines, I lowered the weights from Steph's 40 to 10 for me. Yeah, so what if I felt like the biggest pansy.

When we were done I headed to the treadmills. I did the first mile at 5.7 (10:32/mile). And then I felt tired. I knew I should take it easy, so I walked.

Then I did speed intervals for the next mile. Oops.

But I was done after 2 miles total. That's been my shortest run in a long time.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

My past three runs

Funny how you can have such different feelings about individual runs.

My last post was about having a great 4 mile hill interval run on Monday.

On Tuesday I was just aiming for a semi-easy 3 mile run. First mile at 5.7 (10:32/mile), next two miles at 6.0 (10:00/mile). I got freakin tired and had to stop after 1.5 miles! And I don't even think I upped the speed to 6.0 at that point because I just felt so tired. So I psyched myself up to finish the next 1.5 miles doing speed intervals. .25 mile at 7.5 (8:00/mile) followed by a .15 mile recovery walk at 4.0 (15:00/mile). I did it!  I finished the 3 miles in about 32 minutes.

This morning I met my friend Steph at the gym to do some weights. She had the workouts her friend/bootcamp instructor gave her. Jesus. The plan called for lifting HEAVY (to me) weights. Heavy meaning you can only do 10 reps at most! I felt like one of those annoying muscle-heads as I grunted out the last few bicep curls using 15 pound dumb bells.

After I was done with weights I headed to the treadmills intent on doing yesterday's planned run. I did the first warm-up mile at 5.7 (10:32/mile). During the second mile at 6.0 (10:00/mile) I was feeling pretty darn good. So at the start of Mile 3, I upped it to 6.2. Still feeling good so at the 2.5 mile mark, I upped it again to 6.5. Come 2.75, I still had a little bit of energy left and wanted to see what I could do. So I set it to 7.0. Hard! Hard! Hard! Especially after pushing myself for the last three-quarters of a mile. I wanted to give up! My thoughts were like this:


Mile 2.80 - You remember that disappointment feeling you get when you can't complete a run? Yeah, you don't want that, do you?
Mile 2.85 - Okay, just go a little more. You can quit after a little more.
Mile 2.90 - Look, you made it this far! Might as well go the distance!
Mile 2.95 - PUSH! PUSH! PUSH! PUSH!

And hooray! I did it!

Sometimes I feel great during a run. And sometimes, even when I go at an easy speed, I feel tired.