Highlights

• Indian buffet "cat's away" lunch
• New projects on the horizon at work
• Serious progress on my conference poster
• Finally, after almost a year working on it, hitting slightly below my goal weight this morning.
• No rain during my run
• Beautiful weather and two good walks
• Light out early and late
• Forgetting what -5 feels like
• Cooking my first fried egg

• And only breaking one yolk

• Tempo run this morning
• 7 more work days until vacation
• Big plans for the garden this weekend

No... more... cookies... please

There are a lot of deserts out there, but the two that really tempt me are ice cream and cookies. Fortunately ice cream has largely been out of the picture lately, but it seems like I can't go anywhere without delicious cookies in front of me. I can turn down a Chips Ahoy any day, but homemade cookies... oh man. And the problem isn't having a cookie. The problem is that once I start, I can never eat just one. Which was definitely the case at our HS ministry leader party last night.

Tonight we're going to a game night (love games + socializing) with drinks and treats (kind of scary after yesterday's eating), and I hope I can stay away from the sweets. Drinking too much alcohol isn't a temptation because in my hands it might as well be called Ambien, but one drink can soften my resolve to steer clear of the chocolate chip cookies.

I'm sure I'm making too big of a deal about this, but I'm so afraid of gaining back the weight I lost over the summer and fall because I have zero self control in some situations. Okay... deep breaths... I didn't know I was going to go on that long about this topic.

Now for something completely different...

I think the treadmill run on a different treadmill was successful. I put the speed where it was supposed to go, and it was hard but not really fast (which I guess is what a tempo run should feel like). We've really come to the point where (at least for me) doing speedwork of any kind outside is not going to work. Although the sidewalks and roads are much better, there are a lot of places where you have to be careful about footing, and it's hard to do that when you're trying to haul it. I do plan to do my 6 mile loop outside tomorrow.

Hope everyone has a happy Friday. Only 3 more days of work for me before Christmas vacation. Woohoo!

Good news right before the weekend

First I'll start with the running stuff. Thanks to all of you for your input/kind words. I did an easy run yesterday and an easy run today with some strides, so I'm feeling pumped up and ready for the race tomorrow. I left my watch at home so I wouldn't be temped to freak out about the pace. What I'm nominally freaking out over is the fact that it's supposed to snow tomorrow morning, but snow's better than rain. I seriously doubt it will be heavy, and it's way too warm to stick. So here are my race goals: sub-25: Happy, sub-24:30, Very Happy, sub-24:11 (making it a PR) Extremely Happy, sub-24: Ecstatic. I'm not sure how realistic it is to think I'll take those 11 seconds off tomorrow, but I've had some good runs in there. A 23:59 5k is a 7:43 min/mile pace and my current PR is a 7:47 min/mile pace. I do remember the "out" part of the course being really fast last year, but I ran the 10k rather than the 5k so I'm not sure how the "back" part will be. Wish me luck!!

Warning: Weight loss navel gazing ahead!!

Second, I had my final body comp testing done today for the online-weight loss program I've been doing. It's had it's ups and downs, but it was pretty cool to get a sense of the overall change between the beginning of June and now: down 8lbs (from 130lbs to 122 lbs at about 64 in) and 4% body fat (from 25%-21%). It's not a huge amount of weight or fat, but I definitely feel like I went from "too heavy" back in the summer to "normal me" now. Part of me wants to try to lose a bit more weight so I can feel like "lean me" again (which is in the 115-118lbs range) but most of me is happy where I am. Now I just need to keep it off as I move into winter hibernation mode.


End weight loss navel gazing.

I hope you all have an awesome Thanksgiving. I'll be back on tomorrow sometime for a race update.

Quickie Post

Hi all,

Thanks for the moral support about the frustrating day at work yesterday. Today has definitely been better. I've been able to buckle down and get some stuff done/figured out that will hopefully allow me to go forward with my project more quickly.

I had kind of a cruddy spinning workout this morning. The workout itself was good, but my body just wasn't into it. My legs did not want to go fast on the sprints, and I felt kind of blah. My average watts at the end of the workout was about normal, but that's more a testament to the fact that our Wednesday leader puts together some great workouts than anything I did. Doing a half-way job on one of her workouts will still kick your butt.

Part of the reason for the cruddy workout was probably just that it was a random cruddy workout (we all have 'em) and part is probably because I'm back on the weight loss bandwagon. I kind of backslid this last month. I thought I was happy with my weight and ready to move into maintenance land, but at the end of the month I decided that no, I wanted to keep working on it. When I decided to lose weight I made an A, B, and C goal (A is the lightest) and I'm 2 lbs over my C goal. Even though being in weight loss mode kind of stinks, it seems silly to stop now- especially because losing weight so far has helped me look/run/feel so so so so so much better.

Enough of that, but I know some of the other ladies who read this are trying to lose some weight, and I want you to know I feel your pain.

Woot!

I don't mean to make this into a weight loss blog, because it isn't, but I just had to share the results of my latest body composition test. In the past 10 weeks I've lost 4lbs and about 2.5% body fat!!! Let's celebrate with pizza and ice cream... just kidding. I'm very excited that what has sometimes been hard has paid off, and I really can lose weight healthfully. YAY!

Garden = Out of Control

We got all our chores done yesterday, and it's my rest day from working out, so I hope this will be a lazy, relaxing Sunday.

Fitness
I ran 21 miles last week and did 3 sessions of strength training. I'm feeling good about slowly increasing my mileage and I'm actually enjoying strength training for once in my life. This is the last week of the phase that I'm on, so I'm looking forward to doing something new and different starting next week. And bonus- yesterday was my weigh-in day, and I'd gone down a pound from last week. Hopefully this will motivate me to be more conscious of my eating rather than give me an excuse to slack this week.

The only exciting thing that happened was that I almost stepped on a bird while I was running yesterday. Not a dead bird. A live bird. It landed right in front of me, right where I was about to place my foot. I had to come to a screeching (meaning I actually screeched because it really startled me) halt so the stupid thing could get out of the way.

Food
We did some major work on the garden yesterday.

A lot of the mulch we'd put down for weed control had been blown or washed away so D went to work covering everything up with a fresh layer.



Here it is with a nice new layer of mulch.



We had a ton- and I mean a ton- of broccoli and lettuce that was ready to be harvested.



Our tomatoes aren't ripe yet, but the plants are out of control! Same with the carrots.





After MUCH washing and drying, we have more lettuce and broccoli than we know what to do with.

Two huge bowls of broccoli. Plus we froze a bunch.



And huge bags of lettuce. We had two of these guys to give away plus another huge bag we are keeping.



We are planning to give a lot of this to our church friends and maybe to the St. Vincent DuPaul society. They have a fresh vegetable collection on Monday morning, but I may or may not remember to get the stuff out there.

Fun
Not a lot else has been going on. We may or may not go out to the Dane County Fair this afternoon. It could be fun, but I don't think it's a very big deal. I'm sure the Wisconsin State Fair will be a much bigger event. I'm not sure where that is, though. Otherwise we'll just try to relax and enjoy having all our chores done and get ready for the week ahead.

Hope everyone has a great Sunday!

Stress- meh.

Hi all,

I've been meaning to update this thing for a few days, but work has been very busy. Ever have one of those "Murphy's Law" weeks where anything that can go wrong will? Well, it was like that for me. But it's Friday afternoon, I have an hour to go, and I was able to knock out 2 projects I've been struggling with this week, so I feel like I'm in a good place to spend some blog time.

Fitness
I've been having good runs and good lifting sessions lately. I've been a bit tired because I've had a hard time sleeping lately, mostly because I've been staying up too late or letting myself get too keyed up before bedtime, but it doesn't seem to be affecting my workouts.

It was thundering out this morning so I had my first treadmill run in awhile. After about 2.5 months of running on the treadmill exclusively, not much will deter me from going outside, but big crashes of thunder will. It was a big investment for us, and it takes up 1/2 our living room, but when I want it, I'm always grateful it's there.

Food
I hesitate to mention this because I don't want to talk about weight loss stuff on here, but I guess I'll share a bit about that because I feel like I've had a success this week.

I don't think I've mentioned it before, but I'm participating in an online lean eating program. There are a few components to it but as far as eating goes, every two weeks you get a new "habit" to follow. The habit two weeks ago was "startchy carbs only after a workout".

The first week I got through it with a bunch of slip ups. The second week I kind of rebelled against the whole thing. This week, I think I've got it together. The first few days were really really hard. Dinner without rice or pasta just wasn't the same. But either yesterday or today, something clicked and I feel satisfied without that stuff. So that's my success story I wanted to share.

Lest anyone get worried that I'm going to die without brown rice every night, I'm 1.Able to eat grains after my workouts, 2.Able to eat unlimited fruit, vegetables, and beans and 3.Running way way way less than I used to and than most of the people readin this run. So don't get worried.

Fun
Lots of good things coming up this weekend. I get my husband back after he spent 3-weeks working long days teaching a class. We have tickets to Antiques Roadshow on Saturday and will get them to look at an old ink well I have. We're planning to go to the Art Fair on the Square. And last, we're taking Monday off and doing something out of the ordinary just because both of us need a break.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

1/2 way through review

Wow, it's already 1/2 way through 2009. I can honestly say this year has not gone the way I'd expected it to fitness-wise. In some ways it's been disappointing, but it some ways it's a very good thing.

At the beginning of the year my goal was to build up my mileage, run a great marathon or half marathon in May and be ready to try to BQ in a marathon in the fall. But winter and an injury came along and changed those plans. I had to cut way back on running and give up all of those goals- at least for now- which was really hard.

BUT, these challenges have opened up new opportunities for me. I think the most important thing is that my injury has forced me to rethink my relationship between running and the rest of my life. Everything looked good on the outside, but I was ignoring some critical issues that were just waiting to jump up and bite me. My eating habits were pretty bad (I was running to eat and skimping on healthy foods so I could have a humongous ice cream sundae, etc.) and my strength was not where it should have been.

Backing way down on running has forced me to really look at what I'm eating and evaluate if it's in line with my athletic goals. It's also given me the time to do some serious strength training. Both of these things are critical to running a happy, healthy marathon.

Now that everything is feeling good and I'm feeling good about my eating/ exercise balance, I'd like to start increasing my miles again. Very slowly. The goal would be to increase from about 25 mpw (where I'm at now) to about 40mpw before winter starts, hold on to that level of fitness through the winter, and build to be ready to do a marathon training program for fall 2010. I think those are reasonable goals as long as I keep my focus.

In some ways it's frustrating to feel so out of shape compared to other runners out there, but I know that I'm laying the groundwork to be a better runner right now. I just have to stay positive and make the best out of every situation that comes my way.

Variation

It's been a long time since I've posted. I guess going on vacation and getting back to the real world after vacation will do that to you.

That isn't actually a picture we took of the arch, but I'm at work right now (and having a "distracted child" day), and it's a close enough approximation to the pictures D got while we were on our riverboat cruise.

But this is not about that...

Today's topic is a book report of sorts. I just finished W. Edwards Deming's book The New Economics. Deming became well known for helping develop Japanese industry after WWII, and although the book was "about" quality control in an industrial setting, his main points are easily applied to fitness and weight loss as well.

The New Economics was largely focused on what's wrong with American industry (and schools, and management in general) and what should be done to fix it. The main problem, according to Deming, is that managers (or in other words, all of us) fail to recognize the difference between common causes of variation and specific causes of variation.

I think it's easiest to understand what these types of variation are and how they differ from each other using an example. Say I run the same route every day, and I time myself. Some days I'll run faster than others- that's variation.

Common causes of variation in run times are things that just happen- things I can't control. Examples would be how well I slept the night before, the temperature outside, how difficult a workout I did the day before.

Special causes are things that are way out of the ordinary. I fell and twisted my ankle. My watched stopped for 5min in the middle of the run, and I didn't notice. I'm truly getting faster or I'm truly getting slower.

So let's say I'm evaluating my running progress. I wake up, run, and find that I ran the same route 5 minutes slower than I did yesterday. Should I be upset with this? Am I getting slower?

This is the second of Deming's important points: Don't attribute meaning, especially qualitative (as in "bad" or "good"), to common cause variation.

That 5 minute difference was probably not measuring a change in my ability. More likely it was measuring my quality of sleep or hydration level or something else that was entirely unrelated to my running speed.

I ruined a whole spring and summer of running back in 2007 mistaking common cause variation for specific causes. How? I ran myself into the ground. I'd go out and do a hard workout, and the next day I'd be slow because I was tired. Did I stop and think about the reason I was slow and tired? No. I just believed I was getting slower and vowed to push harder. And I got slower. Nothing improved.

The same is true when you step on the scale every day. My weight can be up for a whole host of reasons (common causes) other than true weight gain: how salty my dinner was and how hard my workout was the day before both come to mind.

Special causes might include the holidays or Girl Scout Cookie season.

A great example of a violation of Deming's rule #2 is Google 15. Google 15 is a neat tool that gives you a 15-day moving average of your weight. That would be great on its own, but Google 15 tells you every day if 1.You are moving toward your goal or 2.You are moving away from your goal. It's attributing a special cause (actually gaining or losing weight) to a daily fluctuation. Kind of demoralizing when you've finished a hard workout and you're up half a pound.

So what to do? First we have to lose our fear of data. You can't change what you don't understand. You can't evaluate if you're getting faster if you don't know how fast you are. You can't evaluate if you're losing weight if you don't know what weight you are. Keep track- without judgment (and that's the hard part)- of how you fluctuate from day to day.

Only then can you work on shifting the mean lower (lower on the scale and lower on the stop watch). I had a band director say once , "You know you're a good musician when your worst performance is still really really good." You'll drive yourself crazy trying to limit everyday ups and downs, but you can trend everything down.

So that's my goal: To not be afraid of data and o embrace it as a tool for learning about myself without judgment.

Making little changes

Part of my goal for writing down what I'm eating is to see where it would be easy to make lower calorie changes and substitutions. The first of these came to me this morning as I was leaving the gym.

A big part of the reason I don't usually have salads for lunch is because I like to eat something hot. But... and this is where the rocket surgery comes in... salads- at least parts of them- can be hot. So rather than having cooked veggies with rice, I can cook the veggies, nuke them at work, and have them hot with salad. I also like to have something bread-y with lunch, but even if I swapped the rice for salad and a pita with hummus, I'd be coming out like 150 calories ahead. And I'd be eating a larger volume of food.

So this will be my first major food change when I get back from our trip. The hard part will, of course, be not eating those 150 calories later in the day, but because I'm tracking everything, I can try to keep it in check.

Workout: 40min spin and full body weights today. Pilates after work. Tomorrow is my rest day, but I'm actually feeling pretty good- not dead like I have been the last few Thursdays.

Challenge: I'm 1 veggie down, 2 to go, but I plan to eat our dinner veggies on top of (gasp!) salad with a pita rather than with rice or pasta to get those last two in. No sweets. I had a slight craving for some chocolate after work, but nothing a piece of gum couldn't handle.

Beautiful but Cold

It's gorgeous out today... The sun is shining... Things are even starting to look a little green... Unfortunately it's actually 23 degrees out with a windchill of -5 or so. It's hard when it's deceptively pretty outside. You think, "Oh, I'm going to go for a nice walk." Ha! Only if you have somewhere warm to go that the bus won't take you.

Anyway, I think I'm recovering from all this respiratory stuff. My voice is mostly back, and my nose is running less. The cough is still off and on, but on the whole, I think I'm on the mend.

I was able to do my interval workout this morning, which was a relief. Monday I was so congested breathing was hard when I was running easy so doing a tempo run was out of the question. But today I set a goal for my intervals, and was able to stick it out.

I'm supposed to run the Shamrock Shuffle 10k here on Sunday. I don't have super high hopes for my performance because a)I'll probably still be congested then, b)It's supposed to rain, c)The course manages to go up and down the only big hill in Madison, and d)My training this winter has ranged from nonexistent to "not so great, actually". In any case, it's good for me to get the race experience.

Challenge is good: 2 veg so far today and one to go at dinner. I'm thinking I'll make stir fry. No sweets and luckily none have been around to tempt me. I've eaten a bit more today than I intended, but I'm sticking with my goal to track what I eat and go to bed a bit hungry each night.

Today's workout is/was: 6mi with 3x6min fast on the treadmill and 10x100m swim with warm up and cool down after work

Rain, rain, go away

As far as I can tell it has been raining all day today. I really need to do laundry this evening so I guess I'll find out if the basement has flooded.

My calorie tracking experiment yesterday was enlightening. By the end of the day I'd eaten about 2200 calories, which I think was perfect for my weight loss goal. I was kind of hungry when I went to bed, but never "really hungry" during the day. My body seemed like it was telling me it would have liked to have a few hundred more calories- not a lot more, maybe just a handfull or so of raisins- which is right where I want to be.

Today looks like I'm on track to hit about 2100. I had a hard spinning workout this morning, but I decided I'm going to do a free yoga download after work rather than lifting weights. My lifting partner wasn't there this morning, and I was pretty tired and unmotivated after spinning, so I decided to ditch it. I guess I could go back to the gym after work, but I'm afraid it is going to be crowded (only 3 more days until spring break). Plus the laundry thing.

My excuse muscle is in good shape as always, huh?

So it looks like the summary for today will be:

Workout: 60 min spinning, yoga

Challenge: 2 veg so far (spinach and carrots) plus veggies in pasta tonight, and no sweets. Our hosts at Bible study provided cheese and crackers for a snack, which was much easier for me to avoid than something chocolaty. And it was a good experience to see that no one will notice or be offended if I don't take a snack.

An eye opening experience

I decided to start measuring and trying to figure out the calorie breakdown of what I'm eating.

Actually, the first thing I decided to do was calculate my calorie needs. Then I added up what I thought was the calorie composition of what I was planning to eat. My history with counting calories has been based on a whole lot of guessing- both in measuring what I eat and in how many calories are in the foods I eat.

But today I decided I'd actually bust out the measuring cups and spoons and the nutrition guides on the internet to confirm what I was sure was true... I knew about how many calories I was eating.

Long story short, I was totally wrong. I thought my lunch was about 300 calories. Nope, more like 500. And dinner. I would have estimated it at 500 but it's more like 650-700. Adds up to more than 2000 really quick- even with no munching on junk. No wonder I've gained so much weight.

So rather than even start trying to calculate how many calories I should be eating in a day according to formulas, etc, I figured I'd better get a handle on how much I'm eating right now. That means looking up nutritional information and measuring what goes on my plate. All of it. No eyeballing.

Once I have an idea of how much I'm eating, I can start to make small cuts in portion size and changes in what I select to eat.

I'm still in shock, though. I really thought I was a health conscious person who "knew this stuff." Turns out I have a lot more learning to do.

Workout: 6mi on treadmill, 30 min swim
Challenge: 2 veg down, 1 to go at dinner. Tonight will be hard as far as resisting the sweet stuff at Bible study, but hopefully having to look my calorie counts in the face will help me say yes to socializing and no to junk food.

Sunday on film

Today has been all about movies, not so much about housework, which is what I should have been doing. Anyway, I saw two good ones this afternoon.

The first was Lars and the Real Girl. It was about a lonely man who falls in love with a life-sized doll. Hilarity ensures. The second was Sita Sings the Blues. You can learn more about this one and view it on the internet by clicking here.

In other news, I got out and ran this morning. 7 miles in a light drizzle. It felt wonderful to run outside. I'll try again tomorrow, but we snow again today so it will depend on what the roads look like. I still have no voice, and my lungs are kind of congested so I'm not running fast, but at least I'm running.

Challenge-related, I'm happy to report 3 servings of vegetables: stir fry vegetables at lunch at Noodles and Co. and then carrots dipped in hummus and salad with dinner. No sweets today, but I just plowed through some raisins that probably aren't doing me any favors Le sigh. Actually, I had planned to make cranberry orange bread this weekend, but I decided that wasn't in line with my goals so I refrained. Hopefully I ate fewer calories in raisins just now that I would have in cranberry orange bread.

Well, this daylight savings thing is weirding me out. It was bizarre to eat dinner while it was still light out. And I'm getting sleepy even though it's only 8pm, which was only 7pm yesterday.

Tomorrow will be my big challenge with the no sweets thing because it's life group meeting night, and the host always makes something tasty. But I'll have a good dinner and keep in mind that I'm there for reasons that have nothing to do with food.

All right, I'm checking out. Have a lovely Sunday evening, everyone.

I ate a carrot

I got in a "better than nothing" 6mi treadmill run this morning. The topics on CNN were 1.How to fix your resume to get a job before the apocalypse and 2.Chris Brown and Rhianna: What's up with that? It all seems to stupid now. Not that it didn't seem stupid then. Hoping for 6 or so tomorrow. Probably not outside because it's still supposed to be raining, but maybe I'll get lucky.

For the challenge, I'm checking my Saturday post off the list. No sweets so far, but this is ice cream night. I've had two servings of vegetables- one at lunch and some carrots with homemade hummus this afternoon.

I needed to do something this afternoon so I put together some hummus and more tikka masala for lunch next week. I'll portion it out and stick it in the freezer once it's cooled off. I guess I'll wait on making more yogurt because we might go to the bookstore tonight, and I won't be around to tend the crockpot.

Hope everyone is having a relaxing Saturday. Only one full week of work before we head to St. Louis. I'm really looking forward to that.

This counts for Friday!

So challenge day 1 didn't go quite as planned.... at least the posting part. This post doesn't really count for Friday, but it's going to be my Friday update, and I'll give a Saturday update later.

Here's the Friday summary:

Workout: None
Challenge: Failed

I felt pretty nasty yesterday so I didn't run.

Actually, I think making Friday my day off is the right way to go. Even though there are some convenient things about resting on Sunday, my body has been telling me week after week that it needs to rest on Friday. So that's going to be the plan going forward.

As for the challenge, I didn't have any sweets (unless you count the Clif bar, but I'm not, even though they are pretty sweet). I did not partake in the soft serve ice cream at the cafeteria, so we'll count that as a success.

I got in 2 servings of vegetables yesterday: the toppings of my sandwich and the innards of my sushi. Yes, lame, but they count. I wasn't super hungry yesterday.

And I didn't post. I spend most of my day at work fighting with SAS/GRAPH, and I went to bed at 7pm due to general fatigue. I couldn't even be bothered to go out and watch the new episode of What Not to Wear, so you know it was serious.

Not wanting to be a total Debbie Downer, I will share two highlights from yesterday: The temperature was in the 50s yesterday afternoon so I walked home from work to enjoy the sunshine, and D and I went out for Sushi, which is always a treat.

Okay... I'm digested. It's time to spend some quality time with the beast in the living room.

Crap Free Challange

In the spirit of all the challenges going around the internet right now- the Yoga Challenge, and the March Booty Buster Challenge -for example, I thought I'd like to try my own challenge.

At first I thought I had a creative idea, but I quickly realized there were plenty of people out there with the same goal (and their name is so much better than what I was going to call it): The Crap Free Challenge.

It's wonderfully simple in that you get to decide what crap needs to be removed from your diet (ahem, Girl Scout Cookies), and then you challenge yourself to actually remove said crap. I've read a few challenge lists, but most of them were pretty long and complicated. For mine, I'm going to stick with a No-S approach and pick my 3 biggest vices to start with. Honestly, my big 3 aren't so much about eliminating things as making it a goal to incorporate three new healthy habits.

So my BIG THREE are:

No sweets except ice cream on Saturday. I don't think this will be too hard except when we have our Bible study on Monday nights when there are always goodies. But luckily no one there is a pusher or will even notice if I don't take anything.

Eat three servings of three different kinds of vegetable every day. Even on the weekends. I have no problem getting in enough fruit. Veggies- and especially variety in veggies- not so much.

Blog every day about my workout and how the challenge is going. Sometimes I feel like I can't blog if I have nothing interesting to write about. But I shouldn't worry about that. (Did I just hear a collective sigh of boredom from all three people who actually read this thing?) Reinforcing the habit of posting is more important than what I actually post.

So why am I doing this??? I realized last night (as I was watching My Name is Earl, eating 1/2 a sleeve of Thin Mints) that I've developed an "I don't give a crap" (just going with the theme, people...) attitude this winter or maybe even as far back as the move. And I do care. And I do know I feel better when I eat more healthfully. And I know it takes mindfulness and practice.

With that in mind, here's the stats for today:

Workout: Upper body weights and 45 min spin class

Challenge:

No sweets so far.

I had a large serving of leftover Tikka Masala for lunch, which I'm counting as two servings of two different kinds of vegetables (there was cauliflower, zucchini, and carrots in the mix). That leaves one more serving for dinner- either a salad or veggies in pasta, depending on what I decide to make.

I don't feel super awesome right now. I have a bit of a cough and some fatigue that may or may not be related to 1.impending illness 2.the crazy weather 3.PMS (sorry, TMI) so I'm not supremely motivated to make an involved dinner (although I have made two really good dinners this week, I should get back to that...). But I refuse to go out tonight. I've made dinner every night since last Saturday, and I'm not breaking my streak until tomorrow, the designated night out.

Okay... enough blathering. Time to go home!

Whew

Things have been going well workout-wise this week, but actual work has kept me too busy to update more often.

I did 8mi with intervals Monday, spinning Tuesday, 6mi yesterday, 6mi today, tomorrow will be spinning, and hopefully 10mi(in relatively warm weather!) on Saturday. Add in two swim sessions and, as of this afternoon, 2 strength training sessions, and you'll have my week.

By the way, my swimming is going very well. I always think I hate swimming until about the 3rd interval, and then I enjoy it a lot. Especially because it relaxes my shoulders after a day in front of the computer. I've progressed to being able to swim in the medium lane (rather than the slow lane) without embarrassing myself, and I think I really will be able to swim 500 yards in a row without dying at the end of 12 weeks. Considering that I was dying at the end of 50 yards just a few weeks ago, that's a lot of progress.

However, I think next week is going to be a cut back week. I've been running so little, it seems like, "Cut back from what?". But the plan is to run 6, 6, 6, 8, take it easy on the spinning, and drop the weight training sessions. When things are going well, I want to ignore that overall tired feeling that starts to accumulate (just one more workout!), but I know it's important. Mentally it's tough because I'm trying to lose some of my "emotional eating due to moving and starting a new job and Babcock ice cream" weight, but I know that as long as I eat reasonably, I'll be okay.

So this leads me to a self-realization I had at D's rowing meet: I just don't like working really hard. I don't like easy. I enjoy moderately hard, but when something gets really hard, I just don't do it. I do intervals and tempo runs if they are kind of hard, but I won't push myself to the limit. I don't mind fatiguing at rep 12 when I'm doing weight training, but I'm not going to do 5 sets of 5 on the squat.

D on the other hand likes working really hard. He has to be conscious about not trying to kill himself during a workout.

It bothers me a little bit because you see lots of inspirational quotes about never settling for less than your best or working your absolute hardest in everything that you do. But if you know you're not a "pusher" isn't it better to workout (or do anything) at a lower level than to not workout at all?

So here's my question: Are you a pusher? Do you always want to push yourself to see your limits? Or do you enjoy exercising (or whatever) only if it doesn't exceed the "moderately tough" threshold? Have you ever really thought about it? Do you see any benefits/drawbacks to the way you do things?

Welcome to The Holidays

Thanksgiving is over, our long-awaited Chicago trip is over, and Christmas is only 24 shopping days away. Even I, the mean-old-lady-in-training who cringes at the sight of Frosty making an appearance before the day after Thanksgiving, am starting to get in the spirit.

I may not be crazy about all the craziness around the holidays, but one thing I do like is the food. And there's plenty of it. The difficulty I have is that, while Christmas and Thanksgiving are only two days of special occasion, they have a way of turning into two months worth of it. My desire to eat healthfully is always undermined by that little voice that says "Oh, but it's a special time of year. You won't get X until next year." Unfortunately, when that happens every day, treats become the norm rather than a special occasion.

Even though his message is about being frugal with money rather than with calories, The Simple Dollar has this post about how to keep treats special.

First, he asks readers to identify treat-become-habit and STOP. If Starbucks used to be a once-a-week special Saturday trip but is now firmly fixed in your morning routine, stop going to Starbucks. If eating a treat out of the break room used to be reserved for Friday afternoons and now, with the profusion of treats during the holidays, you find yourself there every afternoon, STOP.

That's the point where my inner 8-year-old starts to whine, "But you never let me have any fun. Why can't I eat a cookie at Christmas?? Everyone else is doing it. It's only this once?" And honestly, it's pretty easy to cave at that point (at least for me).

This is where The Simple Dollar's second suggestion comes in. Replace the treat-habit with something you like just as much but is more in line with your goals. Create an enjoyable morning habit that involves brewing your own coffee. Find an afternoon snack that satisfies your desire for junk in a more healthful way (maybe an apple with peanut butter).

One thing I've taken away from reading from/about people who have really good physiques is that they don't get where they are by treating diet as a form of punishment. When asked how she eats the way she does (one could call it Spartan) to keep her great figure MizFit says simply that she only eats stuff she really enjoys. She just chooses things she enjoys that fit with her goals. Clarence Bass has the same approach.

The only exception to this rule I've found is ChickenTuna who says she hates exercising and eating right but is content to do it because she wants to be hot (and she most definitely is).

Based on these ideas, my goal for this holiday season is to pick a few days to enjoy all the tasty Christmas foods but to commit to limiting myself to those few days. I think this will allow me to enjoy holiday treats even more because they will still seem special and hopefully spare me the Christmas 5.

Weekend workout roundup

Now that I've got new format for the blog, I'm planning to devote the weekend to an update on running and to anything interesting going on for us in general.

This week was a pretty strong training week for me. I had a good interval workout Tuesday and tempo run Thursday. I think this was the first week where I really felt like the FIRST plan was really working as it was supposed to. Meaning that I felt refreshed and ready to work hard on Tuesday and Thursday rather than feeling like all my workouts were a steady grind. Yesterday's long run was not the best, but I got out there and did it.

But there was an important lesson in this. I had a bad workout on Saturday (at least in part) because I deviated from my training schedule. I ran on Friday even though, according to my plan, I should have swam or taken a rest day. The problem was that I let my eating habits throw everything off. We went out for pizza for a coworker's birthday on Thursday, and there was chocolate sitting around in the kitchen in the afternoon. Needless to say I overate on Thursday, and the anxiety of overeating caused me to over-exercise on Friday, which caused me to have a crappy workout Saturday.

An important part of training is keeping good notes (hence this blog and my training log) to see trends and identify what works and doesn't work. I need to keep in mind that what I eat isn't just about what seems appealing at the time, but that it can have a profound affect on my training. I need to eat in a way that allows me to be able to take my easy and rest days as they were meant to be taken. If I don't, then I ruin my hard days. Rather than trying to make exercise drive my diet and my body composition and running myself into the ground, I need to put my focus on my diet and let my training and body composition flow from that. I need to remember that, in the regression equation of what I look like predicted by what I do, r-squared for diet is .8 and r-squared for exercise is only .2. And getting that under control will let me rest and train hard without guilt.

And so begins my primal diet experiment. From today through Wednesday I'm going to experiment with not eating any grains or dairy (except for milk in my coffee). Four days was enough time to feel a big difference when I went off Diet Coke, but Thanksgiving is this Thursday, and we'll be in Chicago over the weekend so I'm allowing the experiment to end before then so I'm not setting myself up for failure. I figure one of a few things will happen.

1. I'll really feel a difference, either in my digestive health or mentally about what I'm eating, and I'll have no problem sticking with it.

2. The review will be mixed, and I'll try picking it back up again after the weekend.

3. It'll really suck, and I'll have to decide if I want to try to commit to doing it for two weeks (this was how long it took Joel Friel to feel better when he switched to paleo) to see if I can make the switch.

So even though I don't want to go on and on about it, I may put a little diet blurb down with my workout blurb if I have something interesting observation about it.