Weigh in Update 1

I'm going to treat this weigh in like its the first because well, it's the first time I've updated in a long time! But just for reference, I started out this whole journey back on Halloween of 2009 at an all time high of 185.8 pounds (it still shocks me to see that number!)

After a year and a half or so of trying to lose weight last Friday I weighed in at 159.8, but unfortunately I think that was fluke and have been well above 160 since then. My first goal is to get to a healthy weight of 155 (highest in the BMI range for my height.) My next goal is to get into the 140s, and my dream goal is to be in the 130s, but that may or may not ever happen.

My plan is to get into the 140s before the end of the summer. I'm hoping that training for the half marathon and the full marathon along with having time off and a lot less stress in my life I can meet that goal. I'll weigh in here on Fridays to keep myself accountable and keep a better record of my journey. I wish I had done that like I said from the beginning, it would have been nice to be able to read back about my progress along the way.

Running with Mom Part 2

I was lucky enough to get to run with my mom twice while she was in town! I'm pretty lucky to have such an active mom - she is one of the biggest reasons I'm out there running, so it was fun to do together.

Saturday's are my long run days and the weather turned out to be really nice that day, which was a blessing because every other day of her visit was rain, rain and more rain. We did five miles in just about exactly an hour (don't have my garmin with me so I can't remember 100%) and I was pretty proud of that. I know, it sounds incredibly slow, but for me, right now, it's not.

Here are the stats from our run:

5 miles
1 hour
(HR, Calories - don't have at the moment)

It was my longest run in this training cycle. This week now cuts back a bit and the longest run is 2.5 or 3 miles. The training schedule I'm currently following pretty much follows the pattern of two weeks building mileage, one week tapering back. So this is my low mileage week which is good because unfortunately I can feel the twinges of my old injury coming back. Hopefully it's just my body adjusting to running again and NOT the injury coming back. But only time will tell. I'm doing my best to listen to my body and take it easy as needed.

Next up, a weight loss update...

Running with Mom Part 1...

So I graduated from NYU last week. I now officially have my MBA. (and a ton of loans, but I'll try and focus on the positive here!) In honor of my graduation my mom flew into town to watch me walk across the stage. I'd just like to say that I feel really lucky that I have a mom who's so proud of me that she's willing to take time off work, fly half way across the country to watch me have my 5 seconds of fame. Pretty cool.

My mom is actually one of the main reasons I started running again. She and my sister have both really inspired me to run. My mom has run 3 half marathons to date and my sister has run a few herself and one full marathon. I'd like to believe if they can do it, I can, but that has yet to be seen!

Since my mom and I are both currently injury free I thought it would be fun for us to run together while she was here, and it really was! I've never run with anyone before so it was a new experience for me. A few years ago if you'd ever told me I'd be running with my mom along the water with a view of Manhattan I would have laughed at you. My mom and I were NOT runners and living out east felt like a far out dream. Funny how life changes!

Our first run together was actually the day she flew in. I figured we might as well start the long weekend off right. So we did a 30 minute run at a fairly fast pace (for us anyway!)

31 minutes
2.75 miles
11:27 pace
calories/heart rate unknown because my garmin was on the fritz that day

It was honestly awesome. I loved knowing she was out there with me even if we weren't right next to each other. It was a lot of fun! It even poured down rain on us at one point, but even that was fun because it was refreshing, and quite frankly it kinda made me feel like a "real" runner because I was hardcore and running in the rain. Ha.

I'm hoping the two of us can get a few more runs in together when I'm in Indiana in a a few weeks!

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.