Running Toward Health in Seattle... One Step at a Time.
Sarah of Fat Little Legs!
Y’all came, read, commented, entered, and ran for National Running Day. Thank you for being a part of this great giveaway! Sarah, shoot me an e-mail (seattlerunnergirl at gmail dot com) with your mailing address and *gasp* real name and your prizes will be on their way.
More to come tomorrow, but I didn’t want to leave you all hanging on the giveaway! Check out Tara’s giveaway winner post here!
Or should that be imperfectly perfect run?! Not sure…
Yep, it’s that time again – time for a running update! But first, don’t forget that tomorrow is National Running Day! Tara and I are each hosting a giveaway to celebrate NRD. Enter mine here, and enter Tara’s here. Well, what are you still doing here?!?
Now, on to the running update. Mondays are my long run day, because Sundays are just too hard with family things and all the other “stuff” that gets crammed into the I-only-have-two-days-to-live-it-up-and-oh-yeah-do-laundry weekends. You might remember this training schedule I put together for May – looks like I need to fill one out for June now, too!
45 minutes had been my longest “long” run in May, but yesterday I knew I wanted to take it up a notch. I decided my goal would be to run for 60 minutes or so, depending on how my body felt. I’d start with a warmup walk of about 8 minutes and do 5/1 run/walk intervals since it was a longer run than I’d done in a while. Since I was starting with a walking warmup, I intended to turn around somewhere around the 35 minute mark, thinking that’d put me back at my starting point at 60 minutes.
Backing up a bit, last week I tweaked my left calf and I’m not sure how. Thursday I got to the gym 30 minutes before my Zumba class and took the opportunity to run my fastest mile yet (11:40-ish – I stopped the treadmill at 11:41 but the distance had just clicked over to 1.01, so I think this is a fair estimate) and jog/walk a bit more before Zumba. It was great, and then I went on to my class. I knew my calves would be talking to me since they do when I run and they do when I Zumba, and I was combining the two back-to-back. So I took some time to stretch out my calves between the two.
I don’t know how and I’m not sure when, but my left calf did, indeed, start chattering at me at some point during Zumba. By the end of the class, it was done talking and had graduated to yelling at me – it felt like I had a HUGE knot in my leg! You know the feeling you have AFTER a really bad charlie horse? Well that’s how it felt, and that’s part of what precipitated my massage on Friday evening (after a kick-ass strength training session during which my calf did a little more talking to me, including some choice words I won’t repeat here…).
My massage therapist told me that my body has many of the “classic” signs of a runner (I know this is not a good thing, she’s talking about tight muscles and poor stretching habits, but can I just say that I was excited about this for a sec?!?), including very tight calves. She worked out the knot which felt good horrible amazing excruciating healthy in a “hurt so good” kind of way. I took Saturday as a rest day to give my body a chance to heal, and by Sunday the soreness was gone and I was feeling good.
Fast-forward to Monday’s run, and the minute I went from warmup walk to jog, my calf started to tighten up and get sore again. I did plenty of stretching before and even during my run, and decided that I would run as long as I was only feeling soreness; if I felt any pain, I would walk back to the car and try again another day. I didn’t want to give up my run, but I also don’t want to do any longer-term damage, you know? Anyhow, I started off, and even including an 8-minute walking warmup, I finished 4 miles in 60 minutes! I ended up going a total of 4.25 miles including warmup and cooldown. I was/am super excited, because I ran 2/3 of the distance of my upcoming 10K in about 2/3 of the time I will have for that event! With 3 more months to train and LOSE SOME FREAKING WEIGHT, I should be on track to finish the 10K in 90 minutes without too much trouble.
So, the perfectly imperfectly perfect part? I did it! I ran the longest distance I’ve run in about 2 years. I powered through some really tough thoughts as I got tired, I worked around a sore muscle, I adjusted my socks when I got a blister, and I maintained my slow 5K pace for 4.25 miles. Good, bad, and ugly, and I did it anyways. I really wanted to run, to me that feeling is a miracle every single time.
Making it through this run at nearly 250 pounds is another miracle. The infrastructure of my body isn’t meant to carry this much weight, and yet it does, and I’m so grateful to my body – my legs, my feet, my heart, my lungs, all of it – for soldiering on and enabling me to run. I also know that the best gift I could give my body in return is to really get serious about taking some of this weight off so that it is easier to run and do the things I want to do. So as I shared yesterday, I am reaffirming my commitment out loud in black in white here.
This blog is about running but it’s also about losing weight and getting healthy. These things all go hand-in-hand, and I will not continue “coasting” and maintaining in one area while trying to excel and progress in the others. ‘Nuf said.
Morning friends! This week is absolutely flying by for me. I intended to write this post last night, but I was craving munchies, so I polished my nails to keep myself out of the kitchen. Note to self: it’s hard to type with freshly polished nails! lol
I can’t believe it’s already been 21 days! How’d y’all do with your chosen habits? To recap, our participants were:
How I Did
I’ll be honest and say this was NOT a successful challenge for me! For the first 8 or 9 days it went perfectly. Then I got sick and slipped up, and instead of making it NO CHOICE and getting right back into it, I…well, I didn’t.
I mentioned the other day that I have had some insights into why. I’m not sure how helpful this is right now, but hopefully in the long run it will add to the process of figuring myself out.
I have a hard time when I set specific goals for myself. Every time I do it, whether it has to do with losing a particular amount of weight by a certain date or just a behavior I want to commit to for a period of time, it’s almost like I go out of my way to screw myself over and make sure I can’t reach that goal. Self-sabotage at its finest.
I have a theory in general about life, that every behavior is motivated at its core by either fear or love.
Clearly this pattern of standing in my own way does not come from love; it comes from fear. I think on some level I am afraid to really try because I’m afraid of failing. Which is, you know, kind of idiotic since sabotaging myself guarantees that I will fail! But there’s a twisted part of my head that thinks, “If I don’t really try; if I make it impossible to succeed; well, then it’s not really failure because it’s not like I really tried.” (If you can follow that logic, well, I have some oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you that’ll knock your socks off!)
AKA, giving up is not failure. Real failure is trying really hard and falling short. I need to retrain my brain to realize that it’s BETTER to try and fail magnificently than to take myself out of the game by not even trying to begin with. AND I need to remind myself that I really can do anything I set my mind to, especially if the initial commitment is only to 21 days.
How’d YOU Do?
Now it’s your turn, friends – how’d you do? Smashing success? Dismal failure? Somewhere in between?
I want to hear it all, and everyone who participated in the challenge AND who comments here today will be entered into a drawing to win a prize. I know at least one of us is out of town for the week so this post will stay open for comments/entries until Sunday, April 25. Monday April 26 I’ll announce the winner of the drawing AND the prize…yep, that’s right, it’s a secret until then! But I thought of something really good. 
What’s Next?
With a lot less fanfare, I am going to do this challenge again. I’m going to recommit to getting up early (6am weekdays, 8am weekends) for 21 days. Nothing fancy; no other commitments, just the getting up early. If you want to join me, let me know!
…for 21 days.
I’ve been reading a lot lately about habits – good ones, bad ones, building new ones, breaking old ones. There’s a lot of research out there, and the gist of it* seems to be that it takes about 21 days to build a good habit. Or replace a bad one with an incompatible behavior (thank you Dr. Phil).
So I was thinking, what if we all picked a habit we want to work on and committed to, well, JUST DOING IT for 21 days? Wouldn’t it be great to have support from some other amazing peeps fighting the same battle of the bulge? So I decided to quit thinking about it and just do it. I mean, JUST DO IT. That’s been a mantra for me lately. Along with bad things happen when you eat too much fiber suddenly without easing your body into it and I just crossed the TMI line by leaps and bounds, didn’t I?
Sorry, back to the topic at hand. I am throwing down the gauntlet and challenging you all to join me in a 21-day effort to build a good habit. Just one teeny, tiny habit. Or it can be an enormous life-changing one, too. No pressure.
Here’s your tool for this:
Click to make it bigger and then print it out. Write down what your habit is and circle each day from April 1 through April 21. Then, as each day passes where you successfully engage in your healthy habit, cross off the days until you get to Day 21. I’m choosing the following habit(s):
I have no desire to get up at 6am on the weekends, but I do know that building the habit of being an early riser is difficult if your sleep schedule varies wildly. I think having a 2 hour variation will be okay; Monday mornings might be difficult, but I can live with that in exchange for a bit more sleep over the weekend! Hand-in-hand with this goal is the idea that I have to be in bed at a reasonable hour to make it happen. Which, for two days, I’ve done well. My official cutoff time is 11pm, but I’ve been in bed with the lights out by 10:20 p.m. both nights since I started this butt-crack-of-dawn-shiznit early rising business.
What is your goal? What healthy habit are you willing to commit to for 21 days?
To sweeten the deal, everyone who participates and completes the 21 Day Challenge and who comments about their experience here on April 22, 2010 will be entered to win a prize! I’d love your suggestions for good prizes here, so leave me a comment and let me know (1) what your healthy habit is and (2) what you think the prize should be. Keep it at/under $20, please!
I hope y’all will join me – if enough of you are interested, this might become my “official” Friday posting topic for a few weeks. And if we all just love it to pieces when we’re done, maybe Round 2?
*I am not an expert or a scientist, so this is just my personal opinion and not advice blahdeeblahdeeblah disclaimer legal mumbo-jumbo nuf-said.I won’t make you wait on pins and needles for the winner of the giveaway! We wrote each entry on a slip of paper and Mr. O (aka hottie husband) drew the winner’s name from a hat. The winner is:
Salina Lyn from Becoming a Thinner, Sexier Me
Salina, to claim your prize shoot me an e-mail with your mailing address and I’ll ship your book off this week! Thanks to all who entered and keep your eyes peeled for future giveaways – I like this!
Sunday Musings
It’s becoming a tradition for me to be kind of thoughtful on Sundays. I think it’s because I do my weekly report on Saturdays so I’m already thinking about this weight loss stuff. Add to that the fact that Sundays are usually my one day a week to have some down time, and *poof* – deep thoughts.
This week’s deep thoughts came courtesy of my run yesterday. We had 60 degree, sunny weather in Seattle so I went for a run along the Alki Beach waterfront. One of our few sandy beaches, Alki is a strip of waterfront in West Seattle that faces downtown Seattle and looks out into Puget Sound. It was crazy crowded there yesterday, as it always is when the weather is nice. Alki is flat and is the first place I took my running outdoors. I was so intimidated and thought that people would be wondering why fatty was trying to jog. I was about 30 pounds heavier than I am now when I first started running in 2006.
This is what Alki Beach looks like – photos were taken on my iPhone so forgive the less-than-stellar quality.
Anyhow, I couldn’t resist a run in the beautiful weather yesterday so I suited up and headed back to my old ‘hood for a 30 minute run. I banged it out, ran about 2.5 miles or so, and it was perfect. Towards the end of my run, I had to speed up a bit to weave around all the walkers, strollers, rollerbladers, and bikers that were out there. I kicked it up to about 6 MPH for the last 2 minutes or so of my run. I was huffing and puffing by the end, and it felt great.
I also realized that for the entire other 28 minutes of my run (of which I walked about 2 minutes), I wasn’t huffing and puffing. I worked up a good sweat and was definitely working hard, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as it used to be. There wasn’t a question in mind whether I could finish the run strong. In fact, I didn’t even think about the work, the run, the effort, etc. – at all.
Let me repeat that: I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t even think about the fact that I WAS RUNNING, people. Me. Running. And do you know why? I just felt right. It felt natural. It felt like…well, just something I do.
And that? That felt amazing. It felt weird and cool and it made me proud of myself. I don’t run fast and I don’t run far, but I run. I am a runner. I am an athlete.
You can’t put a price on that feeling.
I am a thirty-something Seattle woman loving life, and losing weight along the way. I hope sharing my journey helps someone out there, and helps me too!
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