Day 30

I made it to the end of Tuesday - my longest day of the week. Overall my mood today has been pretty down, so I will spare you the depression and stick to the happiest things of my day.

My 5 mile run this morning was awesome. For once it was actually chilly when Andy and I went outside. We started with a general idea of where we'd go, but had a great surprise mid-run to find that an old railroad bridge had been converted to a pedestrian bridge. This new 5-mile loop is now my absolute favorite of all the places we've been so far during this training. My time was great too. Every mile was under a 10:00 pace, and even more amazing... I got faster with each mile. My last mile was a 9:15 pace!! I felt like I was pushing myself, but I certainly didn't feel like I was dogging it. Today's run was one of those runs where you go... hey... I'm getting better. That was a good feeling for sure. Four weeks ago my first long run was 5 miles. This was a walk in the park compared to that one! Progress!

The other highlight of my day happened while working job number two - in walked a surprise visitor!

Patti came in with Alliya. I was so glad I finally got to meet her - she's pretty precious (and had on very cute ruffle pants). Patti looks amazing. She is always so positive and calm... I wish I could put her in my pocket and take her with me everywhere I go. Alliya is a lucky girl to have such a wonderful mommy! 

Total Miles Run: 77.96
Total Weight Change: -3.3

Day 29

Wow I'm behind the ball. Let me catch you up on Day 29 - Monday. I'll keep it short since I'll be posting about today (Tuesday) in a bit.

After an awesome weekend I went back to work. There is no one in the office this week. No one. It was incredibly boring - I wish I could have taken a nap (I stayed up too late watching the Olympics once again). After work I ran home to turn off the crockpot. I made a big batch of pulled chicken - like pulled pork, but with chicken breasts. I wish pulling out/cleaning/putting away the crock pot wasn't such a process because cooking meat this way is seriously going to be my new "thing."

Andy and I spent the evening at Anna and Bipul's new apartment for Jonathan, Min Na, and Yena's goodbye party... they move to China on Wednesday. :( It was nice to hang out one last time - we are definitely sad to see them leave.

Bye bye Min Na, Yena, and Jonathan!

To celebrate their second to last night in America, we ate American food favorites - like pizza and chocolate chip cookies - and played Dance Central.

Homies

Gangstas

We're blurry because we're bustin' a move

Besides a few Dance Central songs, I did not exercise today. I did well with food until the desserts came out at the party - I could not resist the PBJ bars. Even though I did well with food for the majority of my day, I got home feeling super upset and disappointed with myself and went to bed with a stomach ache feeling very beaten down.

Day 28

Super fun/relaxing Sunday. I slept in, then caught the end of the women's marathon on TV (why couldn't I have been from Kenya?). Once the race was over it was time for my own run. What better way to end week four of marathon training than with a running party!?! Sarah, Katie, and I headed out for a 3 miler - I've been so lucky to have such good running company while Andy's away. I actually realized I haven't done a single run of my training program alone - well, I might end up running by myself on some of them, but they've all at least started with a friendly face! I wish I could bring all of my running peeps to the marathon. :)  Thanks to everyone for their support - it will still be needed for 12 more weeks!

Running Party!

After our run, I stuck around for Sarah's zumba class. Sarah - I'm glad you are back! And equally mad that you are leaving again so soon. ;) Then I headed home for a quick shower because I had to work at a stupid summer festival for job number one (standing at a booth talking to people = boring). But wait...wait... wait.... THUNDERSTORM!!! The festival got canceled and I didn't have to go!!

With my new found freedom I threw on sweats, plopped on the couch, and was sucked into the "Toddlers and Tiaras" vortex. I. could. not. stop. watching. But I did manage to fold some laundry and even make some protein bread, so I wasn't entirely unproductive. Somehow I managed to pull myself away from the world of glitz and headed off for zumba part 2 of my day. There was a special class led by a ZES (zumba educational specialist). It was a lot of fun and I definitely got sweaty enough that shower part 2 was necessary. 

Before I sign off for the night, I feel like I should provide a quick overview of my feelings on my first quarter of training. I'm very proud of myself for running all of the training runs - I did skip one, but it was only one mile long... you are supposed to do it every four weeks just to find out how fast you can go and monitor improvements. But I seriously don't think that one mile is going to make or break my marathon experience - Andy and I both felt it was so inconsequential that we didn't even schedule it in our week. I'm definitely feeling comfortable on 3-4 mile runs now. The long runs have been challenging, although the short breaks help. I'm getting nervous that I will want to take too many breaks as the long runs get longer. As far as food goes, I started out great, and then took a terrible turn for the worse... but now I am back on track and feel like I am going about it in a smarter way. I might not lose weight as quickly, but that is ok. Thankfully at the end of 4 weeks, the number is moving back in the right direction!

With these 4 weeks over, it's about to get intense.... My first double digit run is less than a week away.

Total Miles Run: 72.9
Total Weight Change: -3.7 

Day 27

Today was a strange day in that, besides working job number two, I had NOTHING to do. But I did not waste the day! I got up early and met Anna at the club for a short elliptical workout and then some weights - gotta get those arms looking better for Nichi's wedding! After my front desk shift was over I caught the last half hour of the farmer's market. Man - you get some serious deals when they are ready to pack up and leave.

All of this for $8.25!

I spent the majority of the afternoon chopping and freezing - there's no way I can eat all of this before it goes bad...now I have a freezer full of fruits and veggies that are ready to go. While I was doing all of this, I lucked out and caught the Olympic Men's 10,000m race on TV. I don't know why I get so emotionally involved watching these things, but I was yelling at the screen (in a room by myself... it's sort of a sad image, really) trying to get Mo Farah to run faster. He must have heard me because he won. It was such a cool race. :)  I cannot comprehend how those people run so fast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go Mo

I guess the good thing about not being able to run super fast means I will never make a ridiculous face while running. At least not because of speed! Tomorrow morning the Women's Marathon is being televised. I am going to get up and start my day watching that, and then I'll head out for my own run. I'm guessing I'll feel pretty motivated after watching those ladies.

Day 26

I started a new approach towards food today - one I've attempted to do before, but I never really mapped it out all the way, so of course I never followed through. This is a challenging change because it goes against everything I feel like I should be doing. I am going to eat more food.

Typically when I am "being healthy" I limit myself to 1250 calories per day. I always get nervous I will "run out" of calories, so I don't eat many of them during the day and honestly usually end up short of my goal...somewhere around the 1100 range (of course that makes me secretly excited). Well as you all know, Andy has been doing all of this running with me and after Urban Fit he basically said (in a very nice way), "No wonder you lose control of your food - you need to eat more if you're going to do all of this exercise." I know he is right. So starting today... I'm going to aim for 1600 calories a day. Hopefully by eating more (and I intend for those extra calories to still be nutritious calories) I will not feel as inclined to go off the deep end since I will be more satisfied on the whole. Does that make sense?

This is how I used to distribute calories:
Breakfast - 250
Lunch - 300
Snack - 200
Dinner - 350
Snack - 150

Here's the new plan:
Breakfast - 250
Snack - 200
Lunch - 350
Snack - 200
Dinner - 350
Snack - 200

The new plan only comes to 1550, so I have wiggle room. I made it today, but I have to tell you... it was kind of hard to eat that much and feel calm about it. I'm sure it will get easier. Anyway, onto the rest of my day...

After a pins and needles day at work (still in negotiations - I don't want to back down and accept their insulting offer without giving it a good fight), I met Anna for a happy hour 7 miler. It was so nice to take it easy (although it was so hot it didn't exactly feel easy) and just talk. Running with friends is the best. :) It's like therapy sometimes. Anna - I think I owe you $75 for our session, haha. Now my ankles and knees are both mad at me. I've had ankle pain before, but never knee pain, so this new experience is quite annoying. Running at the end of the day is definitely harder than tackling it in the morning, but it is a great feeling to know I've gotten it out of the way and can enjoy the weekend with it already accomplished.

5 + 2 = seven miles baby

Total Miles Run: 69.89
Total Weight Change: -1.8 (shocked - and thankful - it was still a negative)

Day 25

Bad day. To understand how I feel, check out the sneaky hate spiral. Food has gone so far off track, there is no track anymore. Motivation to accomplish work is nonexistent. If Andy weren't running with me, I wouldn't want to do that either. Why all the doom and gloom? They came back to me with my raise offer today. It was 50% of what I was hoping for, and I was hoping conservatively. That is not enough to quit my second job. Sneaky. Hate. Spiral. I did, of course, attempt to negotiate, so we will see what happens, but let's just say I certainly don't feel valued at job number one anymore. Not sure I ever have really...

Andy and I ran after work today - he had rehearsal early in the morning and it would have just cut things too tight to try to squeeze in a run beforehand (this happened last week too) so it got bumped to later in the day. I thought it would be good to run after such a depressing day at work, but it didn't turn out to be the stress reliever I was hoping for. Why? Because we ran through ten thousand clouds of bugs. I am pretty sure I ate two of them while running and then... I freaked out when we got back home and I saw this in the mirror.

Dead bugs on my neck...

That's one of the grossest things I've ever experienced during a run. Big thank you to Andy for picking off the dead bugs and not finding me repulsive. :)

After a very thorough shower (it felt like there were bugs crawling all over me, which of course there weren't), I rushed out the door for a date I've been looking forward to for weeks. Brinner with Alyssa and Elizabeth!!! Brinner = breakfast for dinner, one of my favorites. The food was great and catching up with A and E was best of all.

 

 

 

Brinner of Champions!

Time for bed. Hopefully tomorrow is better. I have a new plan for food that I'm going to implement tomorrow - I'll tell you more about it then. I'm crossing my fingers it will help me turn things around. Also running my long run tomorrow night, which will be interesting. Happy hour long run!

Total Miles Run: 62.79
Total Weight Change: -1.5 (I think tomorrow it's going to be a positive number, not a negative... definitely going in the wrong direction)

Day 24

I didn't get a chance to update my blog yesterday, so once again, we'll pretend like I wrote this last night...

"Today" I was scheduled to have meetings for four hours straight. I hate meetings. I especially hate four hours in a row of meetings. This girl needs a snack! Anyway, once work was over I headed home to change into my kickball duds and was surprised to find a package waiting for me. Here was the note included in the package...

Written by my father

That's right friends... the package contained.... clothes from the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU MOM AND DAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As many of you know, adjusting from the Best Coast, er I mean the West Coast, was not all that easy, and I still have not gotten over the fact that the nearest Nordstrom is a 4 hour drive away. That is a travesty. Andy was not forgotten in the package either - they included a bag of Tim's Cascade chips for him. If you have not had the privilege of trying Tim's Cascade chips and you would like to, let me know and I will bring some back for you in September. I'd say come over and try the ones that we just got in the mail, but I'm pretty sure those have a very short life expectancy.

After the surprise package and a quicky, yet delicious, dinner out at Anna and Bipul's new apartment (thanks guys!) I was headed to kickball. I pitched the entire game and scored a run! We won 9-4, knocking the other team out of their chance to go to playoffs. Haha! It was a very exciting game. Before heading to the post-game celebration, I stopped at Lisa's as I am "Mitten-sitting" while she is away. 

Mitten - aka Miss Mae

No worries Lisa - Mitten lives! We had a nice brushing session too. And I also enjoyed your People magazine. :) The night ended at Jeremiah's - Andy met up after his concert. All in all, a long day with equal parts fun and frustration.