Yes, I haven't written in a very long time. Yes, you could say I've fallen off the wagon. No, I haven't gained weight!
After slacking for over two weeks, which doesn't include the week I spent at home because I kicked butt there, I weighed myself this morning with great trepidation. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see 213.0 on the scale. That's a 4-lb. loss from about three weeks ago when I last weighed myself. It's still not enough to keep up with my planned 5% loss by this week (I should be at 209.0), but I'll take it, considering I haven't been watching what I eat and have been sitting on the couch for two weeks.
About that sitting on the couch thing...I do have a somewhat legitimate excuse for the first week. But before I get into that, I would like to congratulate myself on my stupendous commitment to running while I was home for Thanksgiving. I made it out of the house four times, and all those runs were super hard: 3' jog 1' walk x 8 or 9, depending on the day. Prior to that I'd been doing 2' jog 2' walk x 6 or 3' jog 2' walk x 7, so nothing like the runs at home. And although it took a lot of self-pep-talking to get through each of my runs at home, the moral of the story is that I did it. And super fast! I'd gotten my pace down to a sub-10' mile for the entirety of the run, and about an 11' mile when you include the walking parts. It was pretty awesome. I'm sure coming down to sea level from 5000 feet made a huge difference, but whatever. It's still pretty cool.
And then I got back to Colorado and my laziness came back in full force. That, and my complete clumsiness in the kitchen and/or around fire derailed me from exercise for what should've only been about a week but has turned into two weeks and counting...
On Sunday night after Thanksgiving, I really wanted a pie. A pecan pie to be exact, and then I decided to make an apple pie as well. Bad decision. (We're foreign. We don't do Thanksgiving, and thus, no pies. Instead, I got lots of delicious Mom cooking, which I am very happy about, but alas, no pies.)
BEWARE!!! GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF BODILY INJURY FOLLOWS. SKIP TO NEXT CAPS IF YOU GET QUEASY EASILY.
The pecan pie was already in the oven when I started slicing the apples using a mandolin. You know, the horizontal thing that you slide whatever you want sliced across and a super sharp blade makes it all go effortlessly and quickly. Well, that handy super sharp blade also slices human tissue pretty effortlessly, as I found out that night.
Only three slices of apples in, I had cut off the tip of my finger. And by that I mean, a third of my pinkie nail, along with a large chunk of the skin was gone. If not for the extreme pain shooting up my arm and the large pool of blood on the floor (it looked like someone had died in our kitchen), I wouldn't have known anything was amiss and kept right on slicing, it was that easy.
A trip to Urgent Care followed and I was bandaged and doped up on a whole bunch of meds about 2 hours later. In case you're wondering, they don't reattach pinkies. I even brought my finger with me hoping they would. They don't.
END GROSSNESS.
So yes, I cut off the tip of my finger and a chunk of my nail on an apple slicer and it hurt a whole bunch for many days even with strong medication. To add insult to injury, we had to leave for Urgent Care before the pecan pie was done and we never finished that apple pie. Huge bummer. But I digress.
By the end of the week I probably would've been OK getting my blood going without serious pain but once I start sitting, I can't get my butt off the couch.
What bums me out the most is that I've lost most of the run fitness I'd worked so hard to build up. Apparently taking up to a week off is fine, but with more rest than that, you have to start slower and slower until about two weeks out when you're essentially at zero. And that's me right now.
The bright part is that my super speedy military friend is no longer doing the 10-mile race so I don't feel nearly as guilty being slow. I'm kind of unhappy about him not being there, but at least there's a silver lining. So now I'm going to focus on getting up to a 10k instead of 10 miles and go from there. I was getting a bit overwhelmed with that ginormous task earlier, but now I'm content.
I also think part of the problem is I'm bored with running up and down our block. We have plenty of bike paths around here, but they're all concrete, which is way too hard of a surface for me. I was getting shin splints from running on the sidewalks already so I don't want to risk that anymore. I may hit up some running trails around here instead, which aren't nearly as convenient as going out my front door to run, but they're more pleasant.
That's the plan, at least. I've also made a bike date for Thursday morning with my neighbor (not a real date at all, bummer) and am signing up for the swim team after the New Year. I'd been planning on starting swimming this month but then the finger thing happened and I haven't been able to put my scabby hand in the water for any extended period of time. So that's something to look forward to next month!
Oh, and another silver lining is this sitting around has cured all the ankle and shin problems I'd been ignoring and pushing through. So maybe cutting off my finger wasn't too bad...
And lastly, that photo is of me indoor skydiving. Gotta say, best birthday present EVER. I would never jump out of a plane, but put me in a wind tunnel and I'm happy as a clam.
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