Friday, November 19, 2010

Mental health days

I've had a pretty stressful couple of weeks with work and school having had too many deadlines and exams, so I needed a day off. And a friend suggested we head up to the mountains for our first day of the season. I don't have class Tuesdays and Thursdays and ditching work is not that difficult, so we decided to head up on Thursday. Good timing because they got 22" of fresh powder between Tuesday night and Thursday morning.

I'd planned on getting a run in before we left in the morning because I'm way behind with C210K, but my bed was warm, it was still dark outside, the moon was the wrong color, whatever excuse you think of, I used. This was the second day in a row that we'd agreed to go on a 6 am run and then bailed. I learned that I don't mind morning runs as long as the sun has risen, which is not the case at 6 am this time of year. So 6:45 and later is our time-frame from now on.

But I digress. The mountains were beautiful and the day was absolutely perfect. There weren't too many people so we got a lot of runs in and the snow was just right. The wind picked up a bit in the afternoon, but once you started going down a run, the mountain blocked it, so no problemo.


After snowboarding all day yesterday and eating healthy all week I was so excited to weigh myself this morning. But instead of the anticipated loss and much to my surprise, I gained two pounds and am now up to 216.5. This may be because I have yet to recover from Wednesday's drinkfest (it usually takes me about three days for my weight to stabilize and day two (today) is usually the highest weight-wise of the three) or maybe my muscles are recovering from a full day of snowboarding (my calves are burning!). Or I'm just not logging my food correctly. I don't know. It's weird. I'm totally off my goal of losing a pound a week so I may have to amend that yet again.


I'm hoping that it will drop down again tomorrow, but I'm also going out to celebrate a friend's PhD defense with the soccer girls, so that's not gonna help with the plan to stay away from booze one more day. And it's not like sticking to only one beer will prevent the alcohol water weight, so I may as well go all out, right? Well, not entirely logical, but still. It's annoying.

2 comments:

  1. I am sorry but you might be a little disappointed, 1: DONT believe the hype, I did the first tough mudder in bear valley, It was 4 miles NOT 7 I Gps'd on my watch along with several others, there were huge line ups, 45 minutes because the obstacle could only hold 1 person at a time, the parking and generally everything about the day was hugely disorganized, I have done several other events like the warrior dash and the spartan race who I may say are hugely more organised and as tough. I later learned they have 2 lawsuits against them by the British Tough Guy Event as they took photos and claimed it was their event and generally stole the whole concept from them. BEWARE $180 for a 4 mile fun run with obstacles is WAY over priced.


    http://blogs.forbes.com/mikeozanian/2010/11/15/toughguy-competition-gets-praise-as-original-and-superior-to-tough-mudder/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the warning. It's nice to have a review from someone who's already done it.

    I had heard about the British Tough Guy Event much earlier than Tough Mudder came around so I'm not surprised TM is being sued by the Brits for copying their idea. In a perfect world, I would do the British Tough Guy race instead, but it's just too expensive to fly over there and torture myself, and I registered early enough for Tough Mudder that the price was comparable to Warrior Dash. But yes, $180 is way too much to pay for a 4-mile obstacle course.

    Seriously, though, thanks for the warning. And your saying it was only 4 miles REALLY eases my nerves because my training has me running a lot less than the 9 miles that the race is supposed to be. Same goes for the waits for the obstacles. I may have some time to catch my breath even though waiting 45 minutes for each of the 19 obstacles might be a little much. And a bit cold.

    Hopefully they've learned from their earlier mistakes and fixed things up a bit. At least that seems to be the case according to this race review website: Travelete. Here are two reviews for two different Tough Mudder events, spaced 6 months apart:

    http://travlete.com/2010/05/17/tough-mudder-bear-mountain-pa/

    and,
    http://travlete.com/2010/11/22/tough-mudder-tri-state-englishtown-nj-2/

    Their May event in Pennsylvania got a C+ while their New Jersey November event earned an A+, so I'm hopeful that it's actual improvement instead of propaganda/a favorable or lucky review. If all else fails, it's an excuse to visit my friend in Texas and experience something new.

    ReplyDelete