Update and Longest Run of this Training

So, what has been causing my anxiety of late? Giving my notice at work. I'm not going to go into too many details yet, but I am indeed quitting my job and taking a few months off. I have never ever in my life not been working (since I was 16 years old, so 13 years!), not a summer off, or even a winter break off, I have always worked. And of those 13 years, 9 of them were spent going to school and working full time. It goes without saying that this break has been a long time coming.

Enough about that for now...more to come later...

Onto my long run this weekend!

My training schedule called for 4 miles this past weekend and 4 miles is what I did. My last mile was my fastest mile I ever remember "running" at 10:49 minutes. I was (am!) pretty psyched about that. Here are my stats from the run:

4 miles
11:29/mile
161 bpm
449 calories

Honestly, after this run I felt great. I even got kind of cocky in my head and thought hey, maybe this time I just won't have to worry about injury at all, maybe losing weight means all of my old problems are gone! Can we just say wishful thinking? Because that's what it was.

I went to see my massage therapist on Saturday afternoon and we determined that while I am not injured yet, I am pretty much walking down the same road I did before and am begging for an injury if I don't fix some of my weaknesses. The session was both frustrating and enlightening. While I'm frustrated about having to constantly battle injury, I am glad to have a plan to try and help me NOT get truly injured this time. My current plan is the following:

• Stretch and foam roll every single day
• Stability exercises for my hips/glutes
• Strength exercises for my Tibialis anterior (which is the muscle in front of your shin)
• Get back into practicing yoga which will help with stability and flexibility
• Transition into barefoot running extremely slowly
• TAKE IS SLOW

Just one of those days

Today is one of those days where anxiety is ruling the day. I HATE days like today. Hate them. I have of course tried my normal methods of dealing with anxious days by doing things like eating too much and avoiding everything, but neither one is really helping. In fact, both are making the situation much much worse.

Without going into too much detail (yet) there are certain things in my life that have just reached their breaking point. And yes, I know that no one actually reads this blog and that I could probably write about what is going on here and no one would ever know before it's ok for them to know, but it just feels risky to put it out on the world wide web. So suffice to say for now, I've apparently hit my breaking point a few weeks before it's acceptable for me to do so.

UGH.

On a different subject, I feel surprisingly not sore from my foray into barefoot running yesterday. Granted, I'm still going to trade off between regular shoes and barefoot shoes for a while to (hopefully) avoid injury, but I'm glad that I seem no worse for the wear after day 1!

Am hoping to get a run in tomorrow morning if the weather stays this gorgeous, but a lot is dependent on how my toe feels. Have been working on taking care of a lot of medical stuff this month, and getting my toes fixed was on that list. Short term pain for long term no pain (again, hopefully!)

Here's to tomorrow's post being a whole lot more inspiring than today's was.

GULP

I signed up for the NYC marathon. For as long as I can remember I've wanted to run a marathon (and more recently the NYC marathon in particular) for a charity relating to cancer. Every year I chicken out. Every single year. But this year, since the turning thirty deadline is looming over me, I decided to put on my big girl pants and sign up. So I did. I'm officially going to run the NYC Marathon for Memorial Kettering Sloan Cancer Research. In honor of my late grandparents, my step mother, my uncle and many other dear friends who have fought or are currently fighting cancer.

Did I mention I have to raise money? Because I do. But I'll leave that for another post as I'm currently a little overwhelmed!

In other news, I got up and ran before work again this morning. It's a freaking miracle I tell you. I did a thirty minute run per my Jeff Galloway half marathon training plan. Stats are below:

30:29
2.5 miles
300 calories burned

Oh and I ran in my new "barefoot" Merrell shoes! I'm hoping that transitioning to barefoot running will help me overcome the injuries that have plagued me in the past. So I'll be trading off between these shoes and my normal running shoes for a few weeks until I completely transition over to the barefoot shoes (hopefully!)

Ok, back to freaking out about the commitment I just made...

Third Run - Week "0" of Half Marathon Training Complete

Ok, so I made up the whole Week 0 thing. The training plan I am using starts on week 1, but I wanted an extra week at 3 miles as my longest so I'm calling it week 0. This week starts week 1 - EEK. I'm pretty nervous, but am hoping that my new "don't get hurt" strategy will allow me to do just that - not get hurt!

Sundays run was gorgeous. Simply beautiful. The weather was amazing and it seemed everywhere I turned I saw people walking around with flowers, undoubtedly for mothers day. So sweet.

Here are the stats from my run:

3 miles
36.30 minutes
12:10 average pace
326 calories burned
158 average heart rate

Ok so I'm as slow as a turtle. But I'm ok with it (for now.) This training go around is all about not getting hurt and training for distance not speed. So what if some walkers past me? Right?

Also, I tried out my new foam roller for the first time yesterday. And today I am not nearly as sore as I normally am after I run. Coincidence? Who knows. But even if its the placebo effect I'll take it!

In other news, I received my (very generous) graduation gift from my parents this weekend. It's a watch and it's simply beautiful. As soon as I get it sized and figure out how to upload pictures on here (or rather remember how to) I'll post a pic. Am completely in love with it!

On tap for tonight - training with my trainer (last six sessions, sad!) and a little elliptical action if I have time.

Weight Update...

So when I started this blog back in January of 2010 I'd been on the weight loss journey for about three months and was in the low 180s (my highest ever weight was 185.8 in October of 2009.) Since then I've lost close to 30 pounds with my lowest weight being 156.6 a few weeks ago. I still feel like I have a long ways to go a lot of the time, but I try to remind myself how far I've come!

Fridays are my weigh in day and yesterday I weighed in at 158. My goal was to be back in the mid 140s when I graduated (which will be two weeks from now) and obviously that isn't going to happen. But I'm taking it in stride. Just because I didn't meet my goal doesn't mean I didn't accomplish a lot! Right now I'm hoping just to be a bit down from where I am now when I walk across that stage. In my fantasy land I'd hit 155.8 so I could say I'm truly down 30 pounds, but I know that even if I don't make that, I still have a lot to be proud of.

This summer I plan to lose the rest of the weight. Without revealing too much (YET) I can say that I should have plenty of time this summer to focus on weight loss and fitness, so I believe that getting to a happy weight is something I can attain this summer.

Must run tomorrow, was supposed to be today but well, it just didn't happen.

Morning Running

Oh yes, that's right, I got up this morning and ran BEFORE WORK. Seeing as how I hate to get up in the morning any early than is absolutely necessary this is a huge accomplishment for me. Huge! Granted, I didn't exactly go very far because I didn't get up early enough to do so, but I figure just getting out of bed and being out there running in the am before work is a victory all in itself. Here are the stats from this morning:

2.15 miles (+.20 miles before my garmin decided to pick up a satellite signal)
27:53 minutes
12:29 minutes/mile
153 average heart rate
225 calories burned

Ok, so I'm not breaking any speed records here, but I'm ok with it. My goal at this point is to just get back into the habit of running and to NOT GET HURT. Did you hear me universe? I don't want to get hurt this time! So slow and steady wins the race here.

Also, I ordered a foam roller because supposedly those help with tight muscles which I believe to be the single biggest problem I have and the main cause for my chronic injuries. So hopefully foam rolling will help.

Later this week I'll check in on the weight loss front...

It's been a while...

So I guess I didn't do so well with the blog my India trip thing eh? And I won't even mention that I've gone to Italy and Texas since then because lets face it, I'm not going to blog about it either. Oh well, lets move on shall we??

Lots has happened since I was posting even semi regularly. I'm still on a quest to lose the weight I gained in grad school (ahem, FORTY pounds) and even did a moderately crazy doctor supervised diet for three weeks in an attempt to lose the last pounds because that's just how desperate I am. Sadly, as per usual, the diet didn't give me the standard results and I'm still fighting the last 10-15 pounds depending on the day. Frustrating.

But I'm not going to give up. And even if I don't meet my goal of losing all of the weight before I graduate (on May 18th!) I'm going to keep at it until I get there. Because eventually I will. No matter how long it takes.

In other news I went on my first run in a very long time yesterday. It felt great at first! I was all chipper and proud of myself for being 20 pounds less than last summer when I was training for the half marathon. About a mile in all of that chipper-ness died and I was just tired. But still, I'm proud of myself for getting back out there and psyched to start training again. I'm hoping that being lighter and training slower will keep me from getting injured this time but only time will tell. I'm all signed up to run the Wildwood half marathon on August 28th, and I'm hoping I can convince myself to blog about it along the way. It's one of those things you want to remember (like uh, trips to India and Italy)

The details of my first run back:

3 Miles
39:41 Minutes
13:13 avg per mile
145 avg heart rate
340 calories burned


It can only go up from here!

I have lots more news coming up, but for now I'll leave it at this and plan to write more soon.

Ciao!