The journey from fat to fit. Road trip, woo hoo!

BREAKFAST: JC muffin, JC vitamin bar, bottle of water

LUNCH: JC chicken sandwich, diet coke, handful of goldfish (the crackers, not the critters)

DINNER: JC lasagna, diet coke, JC cake

SNACK: JC lemon cake and a bottle of water

SUCCESS: stayed on plan all day, no snacking, no crap eating

EXERCISE: Ya’ll are going to L O V E this.  DD9 and I were riding our bikes to her violin lesson, which is 2.75 miles from home.  Got almost there, had ridden 2 miles, and realized we FORGOT THE VIOLIN.  Pedaled our booties home double time 2 more miles, grabbed the violin and drove back to the lesson, 10 minutes later, hee hee.  So we didn’t officially ride our bikes to violin, but we did get in a 4 mile ride.  Sad thing is, I would have made it all the way there without realizing we forgot her violin and music if she hadn’t remembered it.

UPDATE: Ran 4 miles, 50 minutes

 I still have hopes of getting a run in today, and, miracle of all miracles, it is 4 pm and I am still on plan with food.

Just ran another 2 miles because DH wanted to go to the gym now that it wasn’t the “crack of dawn” (ie 7:30 am).

Just thought it was noteworthy to mention that I ran TWICE today.  On vacation.  That means an extra cocktail for tonight.

Went to the hotel gym and got on the treadmill.  Could not “find my groove” so to speak and ended up doing a walk/jog/run combo.  But, hey, I worked out on vacation, so woo hoo!  End result of my walk/jog/run comb was 5k in 45 minutes and then another mile after that, mostly walking, for a total of 4.12 miles in 60 minutes.

A “real” runner came in when I was about 40 minutes into my run.  You could tell she was “real” with the outfit and runners body.  Very cute.  Very petite, about my height, so about 5′1″ or 5′2″.  She gets on her TM and cranks that mo fo up to 6.5 miles per hour and was still trucking at 6.5 mph when I left 20 minutes later.

WTF!?  I have been using my short stride as my excuse for not being able to go faster but, um, never mind.  I guess I’m just slow.  She was not only faster than me (and younger and cuter) but smarter as well, because after she had been there for about 10 minutes, in the oppressively hot workout room, she hopped off her treadmill and opened the windows.  DUH!  I said, jeez, I should have done that 20 minutes ago.  She said, Yeah, and you shouldn’t be in the sun either!  Another big DUH!  I took the TM by the window to enjoy the view, there was no sun coming in, but as the sun got higher in the sky my TM was in the sunlight while the rest were still shady. 

So not my best run, but I give myself a gold star for (1) working out on vacation (2) walking past delicious donuts on the way to and front the gym without having one and (3) staying on the effing TM for an hour when I was more than ready to quit at 30 minutes into it.

I’ve been posting some vacay photos and updates on my other blog with my cell phone.  It’s SoNotZen.com if you’re interested!  I forgot my camera and so I will only have cell photos for the whole trip, which sucks, but my phone takes pretty good pictures so at least I’ll have those!

Off to rinse my sweat off and hit the pool.  I’ve put the book club book on hold (but DH is reading it) and am about mid-way through “Breaking Dawn.”  I was walking down to the pool with it yesterday and stepped onto the elevator and three teenage girls started screaming, Oh my God you have the book!  Pretty funny.

Happy Monday, everyone.

Hello, August!

GOALS FOR THE MONTH:  Run five miles, in a row, without dying.  Be able to do it more than one fluke time.  Run a whole 5k at 5.0 miles per hour or better.

Breakfast: fat free lemon yogurt, JC banana nut muffin, bottle of water x 2

Lunch: JC chicken sandwich, JC cheese curls, can of diet coke

Dinner: 1 Mirror Pond beer, 1/2 an order of artichoke/spinache dip, one happy hour sized ceaser salad (served on a saucer, no joke), two goat cheese balls crusted in polenta, deep fried and drizzled with honey… oooh la la.  Came home and had a JC brownie

Snack: popcorn at movie and a diet coke

Exercise: Ran 4.7 miles… one full hour!  Rock on.

I’m up almost 2 pounds.  I can’t tell you exactly what the number is because I didn’t write it down and made a conscious effort not to let it even penetrate my brain.  I am sticking with last week’s weigh in as my “official” weight and moving forward from there.  It’s a blip on the screen, I’m moving on now.  But I will take away from this week a lesson: it is WAY TOO EASY to fall back into bad habits and the pounds come on WAY TOO FAST when you do.  One weekend of indulgence (and I didn’t even REALLY go hog-wild at that!) and over a pound and a half?  So not worth it.

Went to the gym after my weigh in for a treadmill run even though it’s gorgeous outside.  Not sure why??  Anyway, ran for 30 minutes and my foot was KILLING me.  I could feel a blister or something rubbing right between two toes.  I felt it immediately but figured I could soldier on thru to get in at least 3 miles on the treadmill.  But at half an hour it was really throbbing and I am imagining a bloody stump inside of my running shoe, so I stopped at 31 minutes 8 seconds and had run 2.5 miles at a sonic boom speed of 4.8 mph.  Got home, took off my shoe and there’s a little tiny slash on one toe rubbing against another toe.  I’m putting a band aid on and then I think I’ll do an exercise DVD while I’m already dressed for it and needing a shower.

How smug and runner-like do I feel whining because I ONLY got in 2.5 miles today?  Hee hee… when I started couch to 5k the idea of running one mile, consecutive, without stopping or walking or stroking out, was INCONCEIVABLE!  Today I celebrate how far I’ve come, not one little abberration in the weight graph.

I ate a handful of almond M&Ms.  And then I went to the gym.

I had my best 5k time ever!  I hit the 3.1 mile mark at 38 minutes 50 seconds!  My speed didn’t dip below 4.7 mph and, man, did that feel good!  Totally empowering. 

But wait, it gets better.  I kept going.  I ran for exactly 1 hour (that’s 60 minutes for the laymen) with a total distance of 4.72 miles.  My average speed was 4.7 mph.  So my best 5k time ever and my longest distance run ever.  My average pace was 12 minutes 47 seconds per mile.  I was even prepared to go another minute +/- to make it to the 4.75 mark, but the gym gal turned off the TVs and half the lights, and oops, it’s 10 pm and she’s looking at me like GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE YOU RUNNING FREAK YOU.

But that’s OK, because I am a running freak and proud of it and, whoomp, there it is.  As my running buddy Mr. Justin Timberlake says, “She’s freaky and she likes it.”  That’s right.

I’m closing in on my five mile goal.  I can feel it.  Five… you’re going down.

I need some one RIGHT NOW to motivate me to put down the laptop and go to the freaking gym because OMG I have no motivation to go and there is a bag full of almond M&Ms downstairs calling my name….

DD9 and I had this big plan.  We were going to ride our bikes to a farm 5 miles away that has u-pick and a nice market.  Friend of mine said, wow, that’s ambitious, it’s pretty hill.  So I decided maybe we should scope it out first, plus we needed to go to the store and it was near where we would be biking.  Loaded the bikes on the bike rack, thinking worse case scenario, we’ll go to the store, load our store goods in the car, then park at the trail head and bike to the farm.  That would still give us a 3+ mile bike ride and would eliminate the big hill from our house to the trail head.

Long story short, we drove past the farm and OMG it was very hilly, so we ended up driving to the farm with our bikes on the car, which is a form of biking is some warped logic, right?  I mean, we went there WITH our bikes, just not ON our bikes.  We bought rasberries, blackberries and sour cherries for canning, plus hit the grocery store and bought pectin and jars and lids.  Also bought some yummy local tomatos to have with dinner.

Then we parked at the trail head and decided we’d just ride the trails for a little while.  TALK ABOUT HILLY.  Our version of mountain biking went a little something like this: push the bikes up the hill then coast down.  Approach next hill, repeat.

WHY would anyone want to ride a bike uphill on purpose?  I do not get it at all.  And I’m talking little baby hills here, not mountain bike territory by any means.  DD9 was afraid to go too fast downhill.  I was loving it.  She said, “What am I going to do if you get hurt?”  I told her to take the cell phone out of my pocket and call 911.  Ha.  She didn’t like that at all.

Got home, googled how to make jam, and cooked up our berries.  We made freezer jam with all of the berries, but tomorrow I am going to try boiling water bath canning with the cherries.  We’ll see how that goes.

Then it was time to go to DD9’s violin lesson.  It’s 2.5+ miles each way.  We get about ten blocks and she is whining, doesn’t want to go up the hill.  So we would ride two blocks, stop and drink water.  Did this for about 10 blocks until we were no longer going uphill and were flat.  From there we made it to violin OK and even had a nice big hill to coast down at the end.  We all know what going down a nice big hill on your way TO your destination means, but apparently this isn’t so obvious when you are nine, so she was not freaking out, yet.

Had the lesson, everything is swell, and now it is time to bike home.  We get a couple of blocks and we’re at THE HILL.  DD9 starts in.  I can’t do it.  I can’t do it.  I am thinking NEITHER CAN I, BUT YOU DON’T HEAR ME WHINING ABOUT IT!  So I’m being the cheerleader, come on, we can do it, we’re so tough.  She’s not buying it and gets off to push her bike up the hill.  I decided to teach that kid a lesson, and I stood up on my pedals and hauled my still chubby ass up that bitch of a hill without stopping!  I thought I was going to die.  But I made it.

I turned around to glare at DD9 in triumph, and she is pushing her bike up the hill with her head resting on her arm on her handle bars, half asleep.  I said, HEY, LOOK AT ME, I MADE IT UP THE HILL.  She looks up and starts crying because she wants me to get off my bike and push.  UGH.  I said no way, I’m biking all the way home.  Eventually she got back on her bike and rode home, but JEEZ what an ordeal!

As part of the continued mother-daughter bonding fun that we were having, I made her pull the stems off of 3 lb of cherries while I pitted them.  I think our bond is now pretty much set for life.  What a job pitting 3 lb of cherries is.

Now she is in the car with dad going to the grocery store that is about a quarter of a mile away.  IN THE CAR!  Can you believe.  She now considers dad to be much more civilized than mom, what with his fanciful car driving to easily walkable and bikeable locations.  ((My new rule is if it’s within three miles, no freeway, we’re biking it.))

Whoever coined the phrase lazy days of summer obviously didn’t have shit to do, because I am going to need a vacation to recover from summer vacation if we keep at it at this pace!  I’m kind of glad I have to work tomorrow.

Went to the gym with DH at 9-freaking-pm, which is when I would much prefer to be in bed reading or IM’ing or whatnot, but Tuesday night is our “work out together” night, so whatevs.

Anyway, hit the tready, and I ran (wait for it) (wait for it) (wait for it)… 4.56 miles!!  Can you believe it?  Neither can I.

Stats: 4.56 miles, 56.00 minutes, 4.8 mph average speed.  My lowest speed was 4.5 mph.

Ran 30 minutes at 4.7 mph, a nice pace for me.  Then I did five-minute intervals of three minute sprints/two minute jogs.  (Sprint being a relative term, because sprint for me is anything over 5.0 mph.)  So my interval sets were five minutes long, and I did four sets of those.  That took me to 50 minutes on the TM.  At about 54 minutes on the TM I started to feel really tired, and gave myself a big ATTA GIRL for making it 4.5 miles and gave myself permission to quit even though I wanted to run for an hour and was oh so close to the hour mark.  (Notice that this conversation with myself took two whole minutes before I actually stopped running.  My propensity for internal dialouge is out of control.)

So that was my run.  I was and still am BEET RED and totally sweat drenched.  In fact, I was so hot I decided to walk home, which was 1/2 a mile.  Seemed like a good idea at the time because it was oh so cool outside, but it’s in the 50’s out and by the time I was halfway home I was shivering.

Funny story: DD9 went to the gym with us (lord only knows why) and sat on a couch reading a book out in the lobby.  When we came out she said “MOM, YOU LOOK HORRIBLE! WHAT WERE YOU DOING IN THERE!”  It was so funny.  And DH, who had been strolling on the treadmill at something like 3.5 mph for the entire time, watching TV and actually laughing out loud like a fool at something he was watching, had not even broken a sweat.  I told DD9, “This is what hard work looks like, girl,” she looks at dad and says, “THEN WHAT THE HECK WERE YOU DOING IN THERE?”  Too funny.

So Tuesday night is supposed to be “work out together” night for DH and I.  So I did not do any workout today other than a short bike ride, and now he’s home and it is 8:21 pm and guess what we’ve done to work out so far? A big fat nothing.  And now I’m debating whether I should go for a run, or should I really nag him into going to the gym, or should I eat cheetos and drink wine and watch today’s episode of General Hospital on tivo in bed with my cat and my laptop because, OMG, how good does that sound.

My two ab videos yesterday must have had some good impact, because I am feeling it (in a good way) in my abs.  But more in the upper and sides than the lower, and man oh man does my lower stomach need some work.  I’m going to continue include core workout every day… Remember when it used to be a stomach?  Before it became abs and then core?  The good ole days.  Anyhoo, I am also feeling yesterday’s return to the upper body routine in my arms and shoulders, which feels kind of good, like an accomplishment.

I am heading out to the deck to put my foot right up DH’s ass and get him out for a run, at the very least.