Where has the mojo gone?

Man, I have really let this blog slide again… And with it, unfortunately a bit of my journey to fitness as well. I don’t even have an excuse (well, at least not a valid one) .

I stopped doing the BBG, then started again with Week 1 Legs with high hopes of continuing, because I really do have fun doing it, but it all went downhill again. In a different life, where excuses were still valid, I would be spending the next two paragraphs explaining how I’m now back to work after maternity leave and about to get busier than ever before, but deep down I know, that there are people out there who are much busier than me, who make the time to exercise and eat right.

Today I am feeling especially *bleh*. We are staying in a hotel outside Dublin, because my oldest is having a treatment in a hospital tomorrow and it’s too far a drive early in the morning. I had chosen this hotel especially because of the two in almost the same location at the same price, this one offered a gym.

In the car, only 20 minutes into our journey here, I realized that among other things, I had left my running shoes at home. Luckily we were planning on a quick stop in the city centre anyway, so I picked up a cheap pair, thinking that there was no way one run in them would turn out catastrophic.

Getting back to the hotel, I inquired at reception about the gym, only to be told that it is closed at the moment due to refurbishments in the whole hotel. With not enough space in the hotel room to swing a cat, and the hotel being located in a completely unknown area with very heavy traffic, that meant the end to my lofty ideas of working out today ( did you notice the excuses creeping in in that last paragraph??).

However, I should not pretend that it is all doom and gloom. I am still running at least once a week, and I even have 2 races re-caps that I still owe you all, which I will post over the next few days. Additionally (and that really is a big one with how my healthy eating has slipped), I have not put on any weight, and am holding at my 3,8kg loss since I started on January 25th.

I have realized, I need this blog to stay on track, and therefore I promise to make the time to update and to get back on track, after all, now that I am officially 29, the big 3-0 is only getting closer and closer and I don’t have anymore time to lose.

It’s been a DWD kind of day

What does DWD stand for? It’s “Diet? What Diet?”

Today in Ireland we are celebrating Pancake Tuesday, which is the last day before on Ash Wednesday the 40 days of Lent start. I had originally planned to make healthy pancakes for myself with Yoghurt and Apply Sauce, but when I started baking for the rest of the family, my resistance crumbled almost immediately.

NutellaPancakes
That I almost what my pancakes looked like, who can resist this?

At least, after I finished my stack of pancakes with Nutella (yum) I haven’t eaten anything else for the rest of the day, apart from a bowl of plan yoghurt and a green apple, because I have not felt hungry.

The one thing that I know is important now is that this is only a day and not a relapse into my old eating habits.

I had been doing pretty well the last two weeks, getting my BBG workouts in (still doing half the set and wouldn’t be able to do more right now) and eating well. The weight is starting to come down as well, so I am hoping that today will not set me back too much.

The weather has been shocking here, a storm called Imogen has flown over the west of Ireland and brought a lot of wind and rain and random hail showers. Unfortunately that gave me plenty of excuses not to go for runs, and I have been pretty bad.

Last week over all, I walked just short of 22 km and my weight went down another 1kg, so total weight loss so far is 1.8kg, way above my target, so I am very happy with that. I just really have to get out and run more (only managed 3.5 km), especially because I have my 10 Mile race coming up in the not too distant future.

Did anybody else over indulge today?

Start with Believe

That’s the slogan on a new workout T-Shirt that I bought this week, and the more I think of it, the better I like it.

startwithbetter
Penney’s finest

So, I am now officially 10 days into my journey to a new self. For this, I have cut out all unhealthy snacks, because I know that that is where my biggest weakness lies. This time around, I am not making dramatic changes to my diet all at once, because I am not looking for short term weight loss, but for sustainable health. When I feel like eating some cheese, I will still eat cheese and I am far from counting calories. I am listening to my body and when my body tells me it needs food, I go for healthy options. Once I have a bit more experience in terms of what snacks are my favorites, I will put together a little meal plan and post it here.

Over the last week (Monday to Sunday), I walked 8 times, with a total of 16.67km done, in 4h10. I know this is quite a slow pace, and the reason it that this is when I walk with my daughter to her pre-school. So on the way there, we walk together at her pace, and then I walk home at my own and bring our two dogs out. Of course I am also pushing a buggy at the same time, which gives me a bit more resistance.

In addition to that, I also went for 3 runs, including my 5k race day that I posted about. In total I ran 9.33km, and spent 1h13 doing it. Considering that the week before I had to cut my fast run short and was afraid I had injured my left calf, I think that was still pretty good progress. This week I will have to be out there for a good bit longer, because I have a long run coming up on Sunday in preparation for my 10 Mile in April.

Finally, and I think this is what is going to make the biggest difference going forward, I have started doing the BBG workouts, or at least so I thought. When reading through the guide, I missed the fact, that I was meant to do 2 repeats of each set, so I have basically been doing half of the required workout. The worst part about this is, even though it was only half, my muscles were still killing me for days (!) afterwards. This makes me really dread what it’s going to be like when I actually do the whole thing.

Now to the reward for all the work that I have been doing. From last Monday, to this Monday, my weight went down by 0.8kg, which is even over my target of 0.5kg per week. I am using an app called Happy Scale to track my weight, to remove the natural fluctuations and get a real trend picture. So from now on, every time I talk about my weight, this will be the 10-day average.

All in all, I’m very happy with how this whole thing started. Anybody out there also on the journey to losing weight? How are you getting on?

 

Race Recap – 5k Resolution Run

Yesterday was Race Day, for the 5k Resolution Run in Ennis, the first part of the RunClare 2016 series.

We got up as always when our two daughters decided it was time, which happened to be pretty much the same time as my alarm at 7:30. I had been pondering all week what exactly to eat for breakfast, because my stomach can sometimes be a bit temperamental, but I decided to go with tried and trusted. Between 8 and 9, I had 2 wholegrain bagels, one with creme cheese and cucumber and the other with honey and peanut butter.

We left home shortly after because we expected traffic to be a bit worse than it ended up being. On the drive, we had really bad weather, wind, rain and hail. Right then I was really dreading having to run 5km. We ended up getting to the Lee’s Road complex at 9:45, so over an hour before the whole thing was meant to kick off. Registration went entirely smoothly and me and Liana did a few little warm up exercises in between rain and hail showers.

Before the race on the top left and after on the top right. Love the green grass in the back.

 When it was time to go down to the starting line, the weather thankfully cleared up a little and during the whole run it one drizzled a little for about 4 minutes. The first 2 km of the course are on a country road and go up and down quite a bit. I realized very soon after the start that I had made a mistake with the first song in my race playlist, the bpm didn’t’ match up with my cadence at all. This meant I had a bit of a problem to settle into a good rhythm the first 3 or so minutes. I know I could have just changed the song, but I cut my playlist very short and then I would not have had a song for the last 500m.

The next stretch of the run was a steady incline for probably about 800m or so, after which the course evened out a bit. That part of the run really zapped my energy, but I managed to still keep my cadence up to the 155bpm that my songs were. At about km 3.5 I walked for about 10 seconds, because my head decided I had enough, but after a little mental butt kicking, I started running again. The last 500m towards the finish line was an incline (again) and I really tried to sprint, even just a little, but there wasn’t much left inside me anymore.

The whole run I was convinced I was much slower than my only other 5k race on the same course on Halloween last year, because I felt worse. I can’t quite explain it, but this race just didn’t quite click with me. It turns out though, that I actually ran a little faster than last time. I am not sure of the exact chip time yet, but the gun time so far is 38:33 (5 secs faster) and my app time is 38:10. Right now I am keeping my fingers crossed that I might potentially even come in under 38 mins. I’ll update here once I have the chip time.

There were two official pictures taken of me running towards the finish line and looking at them I have to admit that I absolutely hate the way I look. Since I saw them, I have debated whether or not to post the on this blog, but then I realized, this is exactly what this place is for, confronting the truth about what I look like and working hard to change myself.

Oh how I hate these pictures. But they will definitely be a good “before” picture in a years time.

On a more positive note, I was really impressed with myself, because Stephen went out on Saturday right after the race and got himself some McDonalds and even though he offered to get me some (more than once) I was very good and instead had some wholegrain pasta with a garlic cheese sauce at home. I know that isn’t the world’s healthiest meal either, but I felt like I deserved it after the run.

Looking forward to seeing tomorrow if the effort of this past week has shown any results already, even though I know that it will be slow going.

Anybody out there ever run a race that really didn’t feel right, and in the end the result was still alright? Anything I should do apart from going back out running on Tuesday?

 

Hello World

This is my first post on this, my brand new blog.

Who am I and what will I be writing about? Well, I’m glad you asked. My name is Sandra, and I am about to turn 29 at the end of next month. With that of course also comes that I will be turning 30 in just a little over a year. Since New Year’s, I have been pondering what I would like to accomplish by the time I turn 30, and the biggest thing is: I want to be fit! Basically, I want to leave my 20s in better shape than I entered them.

Right now, I wouldn’t say I am in terrible shape, especially considering I have had two children (November `11 and August `15) but I have been carrying some extra weight with me for as long as I can remember. When I stepped onto the scales for the first time this year, and it showed triple digits (in kg) it was a bit of a shock. Instead of it sending me to the cupboard to eat some more of the leftover Christmas chocolate to make me feel better, it instead led me to search for a commitment to change my life for the better.

Good thing that I had already signed up to the RunClare series, which is 4 races between January 30th and April 10th with increasing distances of 5k, 5 Mile, 10k and 10 Mile, all taking place in County Clare in the west in Ireland. So I knew right away that I would have no other choice but to run at least twice every week to build up my stamina. Really by now I am looking at the 10 Mile run on April 10th and have a plan to increase the distance of my long run every Sunday, until I am ready to go the whole distance.

I have no illusions that I will win or even rank highly in any of these runs, however my main goal is to continuously run the entire distance this time around. Maybe next year I will be a little more ambitious with my times.

In addition to the run training, I have last week been gifted the programme to the Bikini Body GuideBikini Body Guide (BBG) by Kayla Itsines, and from what I can see on Instagram, that programme seems to have some awesome results. Because of my running training, I will only do her strength and stretching exercises for the moment and take it as far as the 12 weeks bring me. Right now, I have done both the leg and the arm/abs workout of Week 1 (and have the sore muscles to prove it), but I will skip the optional workout, in favour of a rest day tomorrow ahead of my 5k race on Saturday.

To cut to the chase, with this blog I am committing to getting my BMI into the healthy zone (which should mean a loss of about 25kg), to improve my eating and to improve my fitness all latest by the time I turn 30. For accountability, I will share weekly updates on every aspect of my journey.