So, on Saturday I ran Race for a Noble Cause. This is a 5K race to benefit Noble Hospital in Westfield, MA. I can make a long story pretty short by just coming right out and saying that I missed my PR by one second.
On the one hand, this infuriates me. I feel certain I could have found that two seconds in that race somewhere. But I didn't. My first reaction was to be infuriated, and that lasted for about an hour before I came to the realization that I really didn't have any reason to expect that I would get anywhere near my PR that day. I was undertrained compared to my PR and I'm still convinced that course was short. It wasn't certified and the race was run by a bunch of clowns. It doesn't exist anymore. Also, that was four years ago. I was 33. Now I'm practically 37. So I should look at this as unmitigated good news.
Except there is some mitigation. My right knee feels slightly weird. I'm petrified my ITB is coming back. I did the stairmill last night and five miles this morning before work and its not killing me, but every once in a while I can feel it. I need to work some weights back into my routine and I need to find an alternate source of ice. I broke my awesome thingy that puts a plastic handle on your ice.
At any rate, I feel strong and I've been eating well aside from the blowout over the weekend. After my run this morning I weighed in at 144.8. So if I'm going to freak out and binge, now would be the time.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
Missing
Ha! Usually when I go missing in blogland its due to A Problem(tm). Not this time. I didn't post on Thursday because I had nothing to report. Friday, I had a work thing off site.
Thursday, I thought I was going to have to skip my run. I woke up still not feeling that great. Not a lot worse, but really tired, and I thought it best not to wear myself out with a 5K race coming up. When I woke up for a few seconds and made this descision, I thought I would go for a spin around the neighborhood after work. It wasn't until I got in the show I realized I had an appointment for a wax and a facial after work. RATS.
You know what though? Somehow, I came home after the appointment, around 6:30, changed, and went for the spin (2.24 miles) anyway. I felt completely terrible, but after thinking about it, I had been up for twelve hours and I had only consumed about 650 calories. I was pretty impressed with myself at the time. A wierd thing was that due to my extremely recent facial, sweat was just pouring out of me. It was crazy. Makes me think about how much sweat is normally just trapped in my pores. Blech. I think I should put this out of my mind.
Friday I had a professional development conference type thing. It was just for women, and I have to say it was more like being at a live 10 hour taping of Oprah than what I expected it to be. At any rate, I picked up a huge amount of swag and ate a few too many petit fours. Like four. Four fours. :) I didn't make myself sick or anything, but they totally weren't worth it.
Saturday morning was the 5K. I'll write a little bit more about that in the next post. I did it. Then, I came home and I ran another 2.24 miles around the neighborhood. Saturday is usually my long run. My legs were exhausted, but I did it and I'm glad. Then we drove to Boston and I ate a crate of fried appetizers (tater tots, onion rings, etc.) and then we went to dinner. Skirt steak, fries, chocolate torte, cerviche. That steak was sick. I cannot stop thinking about it. But, I did give away about a third of it and over half my fries. I did not make myself sick. Maybe that is my baby step. Stop eating before I am physically ill. We will see.
Yesterday, Sunday, I got back in the rythym of decent eating. I had a lot of homework and yardwork and my legs were exhausted, so no planned exercise. A lot of shoveling and hauling mulch. I'm sure that counts for something.
As a result, I weighed in at 146 this morning. No loss from last week, but no gain either. And no downward spiral. I can live with that.
Tonight, it is stairmill night. This week holds a lot of food related landmines, but I'm not going to freak out over them today. Today, no landmines. The dinner is planned, the lunch is packed and I'm O.K.
Thursday, I thought I was going to have to skip my run. I woke up still not feeling that great. Not a lot worse, but really tired, and I thought it best not to wear myself out with a 5K race coming up. When I woke up for a few seconds and made this descision, I thought I would go for a spin around the neighborhood after work. It wasn't until I got in the show I realized I had an appointment for a wax and a facial after work. RATS.
You know what though? Somehow, I came home after the appointment, around 6:30, changed, and went for the spin (2.24 miles) anyway. I felt completely terrible, but after thinking about it, I had been up for twelve hours and I had only consumed about 650 calories. I was pretty impressed with myself at the time. A wierd thing was that due to my extremely recent facial, sweat was just pouring out of me. It was crazy. Makes me think about how much sweat is normally just trapped in my pores. Blech. I think I should put this out of my mind.
Friday I had a professional development conference type thing. It was just for women, and I have to say it was more like being at a live 10 hour taping of Oprah than what I expected it to be. At any rate, I picked up a huge amount of swag and ate a few too many petit fours. Like four. Four fours. :) I didn't make myself sick or anything, but they totally weren't worth it.
Saturday morning was the 5K. I'll write a little bit more about that in the next post. I did it. Then, I came home and I ran another 2.24 miles around the neighborhood. Saturday is usually my long run. My legs were exhausted, but I did it and I'm glad. Then we drove to Boston and I ate a crate of fried appetizers (tater tots, onion rings, etc.) and then we went to dinner. Skirt steak, fries, chocolate torte, cerviche. That steak was sick. I cannot stop thinking about it. But, I did give away about a third of it and over half my fries. I did not make myself sick. Maybe that is my baby step. Stop eating before I am physically ill. We will see.
Yesterday, Sunday, I got back in the rythym of decent eating. I had a lot of homework and yardwork and my legs were exhausted, so no planned exercise. A lot of shoveling and hauling mulch. I'm sure that counts for something.
As a result, I weighed in at 146 this morning. No loss from last week, but no gain either. And no downward spiral. I can live with that.
Tonight, it is stairmill night. This week holds a lot of food related landmines, but I'm not going to freak out over them today. Today, no landmines. The dinner is planned, the lunch is packed and I'm O.K.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
sickening
I woke up at 3 ayem with a terrible stomachache. Earlier in the evening I had imbibed one of those Odwalla protein drinks, which was basically soy milk, oat milk and crushed almonds. I thought maybe it was having a bad effect on me, like it had gone past its sell by date or I have soy intolerance, which I've been wondering about lately. Anyway, I got up after about an hour of this, had a glass of water and then fell back asleep off and on until the alarm went off.
I got up to take a shower and I was feeling somewhat crappy and nauseous, but I thought it was a combo of whatever was causing the stomachache and extreme tiredness. When I got to work I found out that at least one of my co-workers is out sick and another one was out sick last week with a nasty stomach virus. It now occurs to me that I actually feel kind of generally crappy and I am probably in for a semi serious bout of something.
I seriously cannot deal with this right now. I've got a conference in two days that I have to attend upon pain of death (that is a whole other story). I'm registered to run in a 5K in three days and then drive to Cambridge (2+ hours) for a birthday party later that afternoon. So, for now, I'm going to remain in denial about the whole thing. I'm not scheduled to run until tomorrow, and I can do it after work so I can sleep as late as possible. So that is the plan. Go home, eat something, sleep it off. Feel perfectly fine tomorrow. Excellent.
In other words, I really like the subject matter of the class I started last night, but I hate almost everyone in the class. At this point it is almost a guarantee that I will end up in a group project group with someone I'd like to drive over in a car. Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood because I'm sick. Except I'm not sick!
Also, I got an "A" in Strategies for Fiscal Management. The 4.0 rolls on.
I got up to take a shower and I was feeling somewhat crappy and nauseous, but I thought it was a combo of whatever was causing the stomachache and extreme tiredness. When I got to work I found out that at least one of my co-workers is out sick and another one was out sick last week with a nasty stomach virus. It now occurs to me that I actually feel kind of generally crappy and I am probably in for a semi serious bout of something.
I seriously cannot deal with this right now. I've got a conference in two days that I have to attend upon pain of death (that is a whole other story). I'm registered to run in a 5K in three days and then drive to Cambridge (2+ hours) for a birthday party later that afternoon. So, for now, I'm going to remain in denial about the whole thing. I'm not scheduled to run until tomorrow, and I can do it after work so I can sleep as late as possible. So that is the plan. Go home, eat something, sleep it off. Feel perfectly fine tomorrow. Excellent.
In other words, I really like the subject matter of the class I started last night, but I hate almost everyone in the class. At this point it is almost a guarantee that I will end up in a group project group with someone I'd like to drive over in a car. Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood because I'm sick. Except I'm not sick!
Also, I got an "A" in Strategies for Fiscal Management. The 4.0 rolls on.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
A weird week
Why is it weird? I think I've mentioned I'm taking classes. I generally take one class for eight weeks. The class can be on Tuesdays from 6-10 or Thursdays from 6-10 or Saturday from 8-12 depending on which class it is. For the last two classes (16 weeks) I've been going on Thursday nights. For some reason, when I worked out my running schedule from February to October, I didn't take into account that this would obviously change occasionally. Ask me why I would even work out a plan that far in advance, I don't know. So, as of this week, I start a new class on Tuesday nights.
My old schedule:
Monday: Stairmill(after work)
Tuesday: Hills or speedwork(after work)
Wednesday: Weights or rest
Thursday: Training run(before work)
Friday: Weights or rest
Saturday: Long run
Sunday: Weights or rest
I don't really know what the new schedule is going to be yet. Yesterday afternoon I did my stairmill work, as scheduled and then did a four mile run this morning. It was pretty slow and I'm pretty tired now. I don't know if that is such a hot idea going forward. Especially since I should be ramping up my "training run" to six miles. There is no way I'm doing that less than 12 hours after tackling 200+ flights of stairs.
The other thing that makes this week weird is that I'm doing this 5K on Saturday. So I sort of want to taper a little, but not a lot, because seriously, its just a local 5K and I obviously haven't been training that hard. I don't expect to PR, due to this one time awesome race I had a few years ago. And if I'm not going to PR, there really isn't a lot of sense in ramping down my MPW by too much, especially when I'm just starting to get them where I want them.
So I think the plan for this week is to take tommorrow off (or lift some weights), run three miles Thursday morning and run one mile Friday afternoon. That is sort of a compromise taper. I don't know if such a thing actually exists, or if I just made it up and it will end up killing me. I guess we will find out.
In other news, my eating has been pretty good the last few days. I ate above maintenence on Sunday, when I had homework and didn't really exercise, but had a slight calorie deficit on Saturday and yesterday to make up for it. The scale is at 146.2 as of this morning. 145 is the weight I usually get to and then melt down and start pigging out for whatever reason. And I'm pretty much right on track for a downward spiral stemming from post-race entitlement and a fancy hipster birthday bash on Saturday afternoon. So, I guess I'm aware of it, now it just remains to be seen if I will do anything about it.
In still other news, I planted some bok choy and some chard about a month ago and I thought it was a no go due to the extremely crazy weather we have been having, but this morning I checked it after my run and something is coming up! A whole row of something! Unfortunately I cannot remember now if it is the chard row or the choy row. I hope choy. I love them both but its really difficult to find edible bok choy around without going to Whole Paycheck.
My old schedule:
Monday: Stairmill(after work)
Tuesday: Hills or speedwork(after work)
Wednesday: Weights or rest
Thursday: Training run(before work)
Friday: Weights or rest
Saturday: Long run
Sunday: Weights or rest
I don't really know what the new schedule is going to be yet. Yesterday afternoon I did my stairmill work, as scheduled and then did a four mile run this morning. It was pretty slow and I'm pretty tired now. I don't know if that is such a hot idea going forward. Especially since I should be ramping up my "training run" to six miles. There is no way I'm doing that less than 12 hours after tackling 200+ flights of stairs.
The other thing that makes this week weird is that I'm doing this 5K on Saturday. So I sort of want to taper a little, but not a lot, because seriously, its just a local 5K and I obviously haven't been training that hard. I don't expect to PR, due to this one time awesome race I had a few years ago. And if I'm not going to PR, there really isn't a lot of sense in ramping down my MPW by too much, especially when I'm just starting to get them where I want them.
So I think the plan for this week is to take tommorrow off (or lift some weights), run three miles Thursday morning and run one mile Friday afternoon. That is sort of a compromise taper. I don't know if such a thing actually exists, or if I just made it up and it will end up killing me. I guess we will find out.
In other news, my eating has been pretty good the last few days. I ate above maintenence on Sunday, when I had homework and didn't really exercise, but had a slight calorie deficit on Saturday and yesterday to make up for it. The scale is at 146.2 as of this morning. 145 is the weight I usually get to and then melt down and start pigging out for whatever reason. And I'm pretty much right on track for a downward spiral stemming from post-race entitlement and a fancy hipster birthday bash on Saturday afternoon. So, I guess I'm aware of it, now it just remains to be seen if I will do anything about it.
In still other news, I planted some bok choy and some chard about a month ago and I thought it was a no go due to the extremely crazy weather we have been having, but this morning I checked it after my run and something is coming up! A whole row of something! Unfortunately I cannot remember now if it is the chard row or the choy row. I hope choy. I love them both but its really difficult to find edible bok choy around without going to Whole Paycheck.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Blip
Ok, what happened there?
It's hard to say. I start out with good intentions. But when I don't meet my own expectations, I quit. I quit recording my food, I quit exercising, I quit blogging, I quit caring about myself. Mostly I go into denial. And I can't stay in denial if I'm blogging about how I ate a bag of cookies and then skipped my work out.
I'm sure I will go into more detail about all of this later, but the upshot is that since the last time I have blogged I have gone through a period of binge eating and not working out at all, a period of eating really well and training hard for the Holyoke St. Patrick's Day 10K, running and completing that extremely difficult road race, which I am very proud of, then eating crap and exercising sporadically for a few weeks and now basically back on track with the eating/logging food/running/working out. I think that I'm only in this phase now because I signed up for a 5K this weekend (April 28th) and I want to be at least not bloated and sick even if I can't be reasonably fit or PR. And, I still want to and plan to run the Long Beach Marathon. Yeah, its still out there, its still a dream. I know I can make it into a reality, but will I?
A couple of things are killing me here:
1) I am not injured. For the first time in years, I can run a reasonable amount and I don't feel fragile during or in pain after. In fact, I ran six 9:30 miles on Saturday, and I felt good enough to go on a 10 mile bike ride later that day.
So what is the problem? Well that is a good question. There were months, no, years, where I was injured in myriad ways, where I never thought I would get better or something else would come on, and I would greive running. Now I can do it, and I basically choose to blow it off for no really good reason. I've wasted so much time. I could have been getting stronger and faster over the past few months, but I'm exactly the same.
2) I cannot understand why I don't feel compelled to take better care of myself, when I know I am my husband's most important investment in life. I would be enraged if he was shooting heroin or something, because he is precious to me and I need him around. But the hypocrisy of my possibly getting diabetes and ruining our lives doesn't seem to occur to me. Or rather, it does occur to me and I eat a bag of snickerdoodles anyway.
3) Two times last week I ate so much candy I felt ill the next day.
So, as of today, right now, I am 148 pounds. I've been recording my food in myfooddiary.com for four days in a row. The last time I skipped a cardio workout was hill training last Tuesday. Is this sustainable? It is. Am I too weak and cracked out to follow through? Probably. I will probably get down to 145 pounds and then have a fancy dinner in Philadelphia and then binge for two weeks again.
Maybe this time I'll blog about it though.
It's hard to say. I start out with good intentions. But when I don't meet my own expectations, I quit. I quit recording my food, I quit exercising, I quit blogging, I quit caring about myself. Mostly I go into denial. And I can't stay in denial if I'm blogging about how I ate a bag of cookies and then skipped my work out.
I'm sure I will go into more detail about all of this later, but the upshot is that since the last time I have blogged I have gone through a period of binge eating and not working out at all, a period of eating really well and training hard for the Holyoke St. Patrick's Day 10K, running and completing that extremely difficult road race, which I am very proud of, then eating crap and exercising sporadically for a few weeks and now basically back on track with the eating/logging food/running/working out. I think that I'm only in this phase now because I signed up for a 5K this weekend (April 28th) and I want to be at least not bloated and sick even if I can't be reasonably fit or PR. And, I still want to and plan to run the Long Beach Marathon. Yeah, its still out there, its still a dream. I know I can make it into a reality, but will I?
A couple of things are killing me here:
1) I am not injured. For the first time in years, I can run a reasonable amount and I don't feel fragile during or in pain after. In fact, I ran six 9:30 miles on Saturday, and I felt good enough to go on a 10 mile bike ride later that day.
So what is the problem? Well that is a good question. There were months, no, years, where I was injured in myriad ways, where I never thought I would get better or something else would come on, and I would greive running. Now I can do it, and I basically choose to blow it off for no really good reason. I've wasted so much time. I could have been getting stronger and faster over the past few months, but I'm exactly the same.
2) I cannot understand why I don't feel compelled to take better care of myself, when I know I am my husband's most important investment in life. I would be enraged if he was shooting heroin or something, because he is precious to me and I need him around. But the hypocrisy of my possibly getting diabetes and ruining our lives doesn't seem to occur to me. Or rather, it does occur to me and I eat a bag of snickerdoodles anyway.
3) Two times last week I ate so much candy I felt ill the next day.
So, as of today, right now, I am 148 pounds. I've been recording my food in myfooddiary.com for four days in a row. The last time I skipped a cardio workout was hill training last Tuesday. Is this sustainable? It is. Am I too weak and cracked out to follow through? Probably. I will probably get down to 145 pounds and then have a fancy dinner in Philadelphia and then binge for two weeks again.
Maybe this time I'll blog about it though.
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