In the pool

I decided that I needed to get back into tri training so I hit up the pool for the workout scheduled for this week. Luckily, we're in a recovery week (as if the past 7 weeks of sitting on my butt haven't been recovery enough...) so the swim was fairly easy, relatively speaking of course. I got in all my intervals and all that and finally figured out one of the drills that my mentor has been talking about. Eureka! The only hard part about it was that I had to consciously think about what I'm supposed to be doing instead of swimming mindlessly. I guess that's what drills are for, though, so at least my improving.

My 100 yard times weren't too bad. In fact, they're getting better except I can't keep up that intensity for more than one 100-yd interval. And even so, I'm sloooooooow. And I know this because I stalked the results of 2008 and made an Excel spreadsheet and everything! No wonder Maggie makes fun of me. Haha.

But yeah, as I stated in my previous post, I'm terrified of the Olympic-distance triathlon. I honestly don't think I can run that far. I mean, I can probably walk to the finish and all, but I don't want to be the absolute last person crossing the finish line. I don't care if my time puts me last or whatever. I just don't want the race organizers to be waiting on me to finish in order to clean up the course/hand out awards. That would just be too much for my confidence and I don't think I would ever do a tri again. The end.

Tri training

This triathlon is approaching very quickly and I am so totally not ready for it. I think I've managed to go running twice and swimming about three times in the 8 weeks of training I'm supposed to be doing. Yeah, right. And my first tri is about 5 weeks away. Ay ay ay. I'm so not ready for this. In fact, I don't think I could run three miles, let alone six in June. Time to ramp it up and get my butt into shape!

It's just so hard to find the motivation to workout EVERY SINGLE DAY! When I get a nice workout in one day, I feel like I'm set for at least a day of rest. But nope. That's not the case at all with these tris. I can't turn back time so I guess all I can really do is start today and get some runs and swims in.

So off to the pool I go. Maybe.

There we go

New template is up. I like how it's so clean and blue and refreshing. Yay!

I say this every time

Obviously I haven't been around much on here posting and all that. In fact, you can safely say I fell off the wagon hard-core. I haven't been tracking my food, I've been drinking too much beer, and I go out to eat WAY too much. Most importantly, I've done NOTHING for my triathlon training. So screwed...

I did buy a road bike a couple weeks ago and have been taking it out every day that it's not raining. In that respect, there's exercise happening. But, there's no breakfast ever, and rarely do I cook something nutritious. It seems like this weight-loss business is an all-or-nothing kind of thing for me. I either log my food religiously, plan out every meal, and stay away from snacks. OR I go back to my previous lifestyle. And this usually happens after I've lost a few pounds. I can never get past the 10-lb lost mark. Hmf.

So I begin anew. Maybe a new blog template will help :)

Welcome back, to me!

Obviously it's been a while since I last posted, but I haven't completely fallen off the wagon. Well, last week I did, but I'm getting there. I've been eating a lot less junk than usual, but still eating too much, so that has to change. A big part of that is drunken munchies so I'm hoping to cut down on the drinking and kill two birds with one stone.

Triathlon training is back in full swing. Again, last week was a slacker week so I'm a week behind (again), but I'm hoping to get my butt off the couch more often and do something about it!

That's that for now. Just checking in after a long silence.

Craving exercise

I think it's because I've been getting up so late that I feel so unaccomplished unless I get out of the house. Or maybe I just spend too much time at home and need to leave once in a while. Regardless of the reasons, the last couple days I've been craving exercise. I really wanted to do something today, but wasn't feeling the run. I think I still have an aversion to running form all the years of it being used as punishment in soccer. But now, I'm just bored when I run. So instead of sitting on my butt, like I would normally do, I went to rugby practice because I NEEDED to run around a bit.

So it looks like times they are a-changin' when it comes to my laziness. Yay :)

Spinning

I've been feeling pretty low lately, not wanting to get out of bed or anything, so today I decided to do something about it. I generally work from home which usually means I don't leave the house for days at a time (sad, I know). The main reason for that is because I don't particularly like my office (it's kind of a concrete dungeon with a loud freight elevator next door), I don't see anyone when I'm there (I share said dungeon with a guy who has a 16-year-old daughter, so we don't really have anything in common), and the BIGGIE is that there's a brutal hill to bike up to get there with no good parking anywhere nearby. That last one is the most discouraging and since there is no real reason to go into work, besides being way more productive there, I just stay home. But I digress.

So being at home so much has really been getting to me lately and I needed to get out of the house. I was going to go for a run, but it's cold and snowy outside (I know, excuses excuses) so I decided to try out a spin class at the local rec center. My roommate Maggie didn't get back to me about coming with me, so I was going to pout and sit on the couch in front of the TV and brood, but instead, I decided that I can't keep giving myself a pity party about being fat and out of shape, so I finally got dressed and booked it over there to make it somewhat on time.

Boy, was it crazy hard. I got there 5-minutes late because of an accident on one of the roads (of all times, really?) so I didn't set up properly like I should've, especially since it was my first spin class and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I winged it and got going with the rest of the ladies and gents. I managed to fall off twice because my foot slipped out of my pedal, so people started staring, but other than that, it was amazing. I'm definitely going back!

I started a bit too fast and was dying. I looked at the clock a minute or so into our first hill of three for the day, and we were only 10 minutes into class! Wow, I was screwed. I toned it down a bit so I could make it through the next 50 minutes, and all was well. I think there was something wrong with my bike at the end of it, cuz adding resistance didn't make spinning any harder, so I'm going to come in early next time and ask the instructor how everything works. I may even bring my brand new tri shoes (once I buy clips for them) to see how that works. But that may be too advanced for me right now...

I was so tired at the end of the thing that I was wobbly on my knees and didn't really have control over my mind either. I was leaning down to get my stuff with my water bottle in my mouth and smashed my face into the mirror on the wall, giving myself a bloody lip and almost knocking out a tooth. Then on my way out of the rec center, I walked into the sliding glass doors and took them off their hinges. No joke! It was only my shoulder that hit, but apparently I was walking fast enough to do some damage to the doors. I also walked into the next set of doors four feet away, but apparently I'd lost some momentum with the first impact because those stayed put and I just bounced off. The little girl walking next to me gave me a very confused and scared look and ran away to her parents. Go me for scaring off children!

Moral of the story is that I got in a great workout, I want to do it again, and I feel so much better :) Yay for exercise!

Getting back into the swing of things

Again, I've been gone for a while, but that doesn't mean that I've fallen off the wagon, as was the case last time. Instead, I just haven't been posting much lately. I mean, I haven't been very careful with what I eat, often buying take-out instead of cooking at home, but I'm still food-logging for the most part and trying to cut down on junk food, as much as I can.

I think I'm going to restart the SparkPeople program from the beginning and really do what they suggest, focusing on the little things instead of trying to do everything at once. I'm an all or nothing kinda girl, but obviously that's not working too well for me lately. So yeah, that's that.

Triathlon training starts pretty soon and I'm not really looking forward to it. Oh well. I said I'd do it, I wanna do it, so I'm GONNA do it.

Epic fail

Super Bowl Sunday is never a good day to begin losing weight and eating well, so it's no surprise that I epically failed in eating well today. I drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of food, and did absolutely no exercise. So yeah, epic fail.

BUT, we did go to the grocery store and bought lots of veggies to munch on instead of chips, so I think we did pretty well there. Now we have a ton of leftovers of celery, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, and radishes, so all should be good. If only I'd stayed away from the brownies at the very end...

Starting over

I kinda sorta fell off the wagon for about a week or so. But I'm BACK! My GWF "broke" last week so I had to send it back and get a new one. It was still managing calories burned, but the beeper on it was very muffled and often non-existent so I figured it's just a matter of time before the thing crapped out. So I was without my GWF for a week, which for some reason made me stop logging food and exercising. I mean, I still ate relatively well without much junk food and got my broomball and indoor soccer in, but I didn't do the C210K plan like I'd wanted and there's a few days where I don't know exactly what I ate and I'm pretty sure I went over my budget. In short, the GWF was the best purchase I've ever made for weight-loss. And now that I've kinda sorta got my sleep schedule back to normal (I either wasn't sleeping at all or sleeping all day...horrible), I should be a real person again.