First, let me say congrats to everyone who ran the HMSA 25k this morning! I volunteered for that race last year when I was preggo and loved watching all the runners come in! I worked the relay area awhile and then removed chips from peoples shoes. I figured it was the least I could do after having so many people cut the chip off of my sweaty self. :-) Again, congrats to everyone who ran it and finished...you're almost done with the warm-up series and ready to for your big day! And, if you've never run the HMSA 25k, they have awesome finisher's shirts!!!

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The Saturday Woodland's Fit run was 8 miles. Thank God for good company because I was really not feeling it in the last mile. I don't know why, but I was so worried about the 10-miler last week and had no problems whatsoever. Then, I bonk at mile 7 this week. I think it's all mental, because after running 10, I think that 8 is no big deal and get myself thinking that it will be even easier than it really is. This run brought back memories of last year...I did about the same distance the day before I found out I was preggo. It's great to be back! Oh, and it was great to see Karen and Jon this morning too!

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Next weekend is the San Antonio Rock & Roll 1/2! We worked out all the logistics for the weekend - where to meet, what to wear, what to bring, what not to bring, etc. I am sooooo looking forward to this weekend with the girls! (Well, I will have part of the weekend with the girls - I'll take what I can get!) I found out the official race drink will be Cytomax, which I have never tried. After my experience with Accelerade, I think I'll play it safe and bring my fuel belt.

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As for the rest of the weekend, we had lots of family time together. Today we went to Discovery Green for the 1st time. While it's no Central Park (as if anything could be), it was pretty cool. The hubby, munchkin and I hung out on a big blanket while the kiddo played like crazy on the playground equipment. She also had a blast rolling down the "big hill". I have lots of pics, so I'll post a few later this week. I am about to spend the rest of the evening addressing birthday party invites for the kiddo. Disney Princess seems to be what it's all about this year...:-) Ugh, and don't even get me started on A&M's ass whooping this weekend....

Workout Stats

Saturday, Woodlands Fit LR - 8 miles, 1:28:50, 11:06 pace?

Sunday, P90X - Shoulders & Arms, 58 minutes -and- Ab Ripper X, 15 minutes

Weekly Update

This blog is turning into a 1x a week update of my workouts! I'll try to do better, but it just seems like by the time I get the kids into bed, get my workout done and get us all ready for the next day, it's time for the 10 pm news and bed! So, here are my updates...

Sunday, 11/2 - P90X - Chest and Back, 52 minutes
First, lemme say CONGRATS to everyone who ran NYC! I recorded the coverage, but have only had the chance to watch a little of the beginning. It's by far my favorite marathon and one I have vowed to do again before I hit the big 4-0....even if it means doing all those long runs in the Houston summer heat. Getting back to my workouts - I started using the hubby's bands on this workout, because they provide much more resistance than the ones I've been using. Wow, what a difference! I could barely do all the push ups by the time I made it to the 2nd round of exercises, because my arms felt like jello!

Saturday, 11/1 - WFit Long Run - 10 miles (actually 10.8),
I was extremely nervous about this run. I wanted to opt for the 7 miler, but I knew I needed to do this. This would be the longest distance since getting back into running after the baby and even though I've run this distance dozens of times before, I was scared. Scared because getting back into running again has been tough. Tougher than after having the kiddo. Much tougher than expected. I needed to do this just to get the confidence back. I needed to know I could do this again.

Things worked out better than I expected. First off, the weather was great. I did panic for a moment when I got all the way to The Woodlands and realized that I had forgotten to eat breakfast. Doh! But it didn't matter, because I felt fine. Well, I felt better than fine - I felt great! Of course that might be partially due to the fact that we were moving rather slow. But, I remember looking at my watch and seeing that we were at the 1/2 way point and feeling great. Before I knew it, we were heading back to Luke's and I still felt great. We finished and I didn't feel like I had run 10 miles! Oh and for the 1st time, I took the advice of a certain nutritionist and had chocolate milk afterwards - she was right, it made a world of difference. And it was also great to see fellow blogger, Viv!

Saturday night, the hubby and I went to a costume party. I was Audrey Hepburn (okay, a non-waifish version) and he was Neo from The Matrix movies. We had fun...the costumes were hilarious - Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, and the my personal favorite - the Mormon. (I know, I know - not very PC, but it was great!)

Friday, 10/31 - Rest day
Seriously, even if it wasn't my usual rest day, there's no way I would have gotten a workout in. With a 3 year old who is sooooo excited about Halloween she can hardly stand it? Nope. My sister-in-law brought over the younger nephew and the kids went trick or treating. They managed to get a TON of candy...which I have been eating since. Ugh! It was fun and the kiddo had an awesome time - and stayed up much too late. :-) I'll post pics when I can.

Thursday, 10/30 - Treadmill run, 40 minutes
I totally felt like slacking off here. After the kiddos were in bed, I laced up the running shoes, but then I sat and watched 40 minutes of ER. Seriously. I almost talked myself out of running at all, but then realized - HELLO - I could not train by only running 1x per week. So, I decided to only do 20 minutes rather than the scheduled 40. But, once I got going my conscience got the better of me and I finished the entire 40 minutes. It was incredibly slow during most of that run, but I sped up in the middle and towards the end and got it done. Woohoo!

Wednesday, 10/29 - P90X - Shoulders & Arms, 1 hour & Ab Ripper X, 15 minutes
Nothing eventful here either, except I have been increasing my weights by a few pounds on most of the exercises.

Tuesday, 10/28 - Treadmill run, 30 minutes
Nothing eventful here. I did manage to maintain an 11 minute pace and only took one walk break at the 1/2 way point, which for me lately is pretty damn good.

I voted!!! I'm such a dork, I get all giddy as I walk into the polls. I won't go into who I voted for, I'll just say I went with the candidate who seemed less shady to me and who aligned well with me on a majority of the issues. I'm still not completely happy with either candidate, but the more I learn about one, the better the other one looks to me.

Monday, 10/27 - Bike ride, 50 minutes, 13.5 mph
Awesome weather for a ride. I was pleased that we did better with our pace too, getting up to 15 mph at times.

Slacker

Okay, so it's obvious I've been a slacker. Sorry!

Here's the cliff notes version of the past week and a half:

Friday, October 4 - P90X in hotel room in College Station
Nothing exciting to report here, except that I was mindful about the folks on the floor underneath mine and tried not to jump around too loudly during the warm-up! :-)

Saturday, October 5 - 8 miler with Woodlands Fit
The run felt great despite the higher humidity. Our average pace was somewhere between 11:15 and 11:30, depending on the Garmin you looked at. Mine seemed to be off by a 1/2 mile. Strange!

Monday, October 6 - treadmill run, 2.44 miles
I was supposed to run longer, but had to take a phone call. Bill, just for you, I ran this run straight through with no walk breaks. :-p

Tuesday, October 7 - P90X - back and triceps
I had to go to Austin and didn't get home until about 7:30 pm. Plus, the sinus infection I'd been feeling come on since Friday was finally evolving into a full blown infection complete with sneezing, stuffy nose, sore throat, etc. This was a 1/2 ass workout if there ever was one.

Wednesday, October 8 - Rest day
There are usually no rest days between P90X and running, but I was feeling like complete crap and decided that getting to bed extra early would be the best thing I could do. Plus, I had to be at the airport at 6:15 am for my flight to Dallas, so I was dog tired.

Thursday, October 9 - 35 minute treadmill run
I decided to do 9/1s rather than 5/1s and it felt surprisingly good. There was no difference in my pace compared to when I do 5/1s though.

Friday, October 10 - rest day
Still feeling a bit crappy. Again, I let my body rest.

Saturday, October 11 - 9 miler with Woodlands Fit
Okay, so it was cool (not as cool as the previous mornings), but slightly humid. But damn, I felt beat by mile 7! I was really dragging at the end, which was disappointing after such a great run the week before. I ate the same way, used the same gu, so I'm not sure what happened. Maybe it was just me getting over being sick. Maybe it's the extra 15 lbs of baby weight I'm carrying around. Maybe I'm just getting old. I dunno. All I know is that for the rest of the day, I felt like I had been run over by a Mack truck and then it backed up and run over me again. I did manage to take enough Aleve to feel good enough to go the the Aeros game that night...a couple of 'ritas at the Toyota Center helped too! :-)

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, October 12-14
I am being a total slacker this week! Well sort of...our big community garage sale is this weekend, so for the past 3 nights I've been working on getting all our crap together for this as soon as the kiddos are in bed. I know I should be able to balance this and working out, but dang it's taking forever! I must run on the dreadmill tonight!!! In fact, I am going to have to miss our 10 miler this weekend due to the garage sale. My goal is to do at least 8 on my own on Sunday.

I am working on my nutrition again thanks to Viv's new challenge! Huge kudos to her for getting this awesome challenge going. The motivation for me? I have not lost a single pound since returning to work 2 months ago...in fact, I've gained a few pounds. To help motivate me to eat better even more, I went to a networking luncheon yesterday where nutritionist extraordinaire, Catherine Kruppa, was the guest speaker. She is awesome...and has more letters following her name than anyone else I have met! Since I haven't been motivated to follow WW lately, I am thinking about visiting her for some individualized advice about my weight, eating, etc.

Howdy!

Howdy from Aggieland! I'm here recruiting for work. Talk about exhausting - I was at work by 5:45 am to meet up with a co-worker for the drive to A&M, next we spoke to students non-stop until 1 pm, ate a quick lunch and then interviewed until about 5:30 pm. We headed out for a quick dinner and then I headed down to the hotel gym for a run....no crazy messages from the equipment like Cassie experienced though! Tomorrow is a day of back to back interviews...fun! I am about to hit the hay and take advantage of a good night's sleep, which has been rare lately thanks to a certain 3 year old.

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I am bummed that the 10 for Texas was postponed until November 15. That's the same day as the inagrual San Antonio Rock n Roll marathon, which I have been persuaded to run by the peeps at Woodlands Fit. Will I be ready for it? Not quite, but I am thinking of it as just another training run and not putting pressure on myself about my pace. This is my season of getting back into the game - no expectations, no pressure.

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Workout Stats

Wednesday - P90X - Arms and Shoulders - 1 hour

Thursday - 35 easy on hotel treadmill

Workouts

Saturday - Long Run - 7.4 miles

Definitely a harder run for me, but I think that can be attributed to the poor diet and lack of workouts. I think I've felt entitled to eat anything and not work out because I didn't have power. Well, the power's back on and it's time to get back on schedule!

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Sunday - Bike Ride - 1 hour

Well my group of friends doing the Bike Barn's Haak Winery ride on Sunday fizzled out. Rather than go it alone, I decided to save my gas and some time by riding around the 'hood. I checked out all the new streets in the undeveloped side of the hood, which made for some good, car-free riding!

Sunday night, I met up with some former co-workers for dinner and The Color Purple. Both the dinner and the show were awesome!

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Monday - P90X - Shoulders and Back / Ab Ripper X

I decided rather than start the program completely over after my 2-week hiatus that I'd pick up where I left off...it turns out the 1st week and 9th week schedules are exactly the same anyway! OMG, I thought I was going to die! What a difference 2 weeks make! I honestly felt like I did the 1st time I did this workout. My arms and abs felt like jello afterwards and today my shoulders and back are super sore. It's awesome!!!

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Is it just me, or for the past week has everyone else seen convoys of Centerpoint (and other company) trucks all over town? Those guys are working their asses off, so kudos to them. Hopefully, the remaining 100,000 people will have power soon!

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Looks like I should have gone ahead and bought my road bike with my bonus last year, rather than being sensible and putting the money in our house fund. My company paid bonuses early this year to offset some of the costs employees were facing due to Ike (which was nice)....but, somehow my bonus was half the size of last years! And, I didn't start working for the company last year until mid-April! Looks like the MS150 might be out this year unless I can convince myself to splurge and get a bike...although it won't be the one I really want. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Week 1 - Starting Over

Today was the 1st day of Woodland's Fit training. I've decided to stick to the 1/2 marathon. A few days ago, Sarah mentioned that internal struggle about whether to really train harder and work on getting faster...or to just take it easy and enjoy the workouts. I know that struggle all too well. Even this morning as I was waking up much earlier than I wanted to, I was debating in my head about whether or not I really wanted to do this training thing yet again.

Part of me just wants to workout how I want, when I want.
Part of me wants to seriously start training for a sprint tri.
Part of me misses the running.
Part of me doesn't give a rats ass about PRing.
Part of me enjoys competing against myself to do better and better.
Part of me needs that goal - the half marathon - to get my ass in gear each week and the support of the group to hold me accountable.

All of me wants to lose the rest of the baby weight (and then some)- that is my ultimate goal.

So, training for the 1/2 seems like a nice compromise - it's a good goal to shoot for (especially since I am really starting over) and the training is not so grueling that I can't find time to fit in some biking and swimming. While I'll miss the peeps in Houston Fit, it will be a good change of pace to run someplace new.

So how'd today go? You've seen my workout stats from the past two weeks. I've "run" 1/1 intervals, 2/1 intervals for 2 weeks now, but never for more than 20 minutes and always inside on the treadmill. I knew that today was going to be tough.

I wasn't sure how long it would take me to get to the Y, so I left ridiculously early. On the way over I just prayed that it wouldn't suck as badly as I thought it might. When I arrived, I immediately met some great people and I was instantly glad that pulled myself out of bed. I saw Coach Bill, who introduced me to running Goddess Kim Hagar. I also met someone who was starting over and doing 5/1 intervals...we stuck together all morning. I was thrilled to find out that the 1/2 marathoners were only doing 2 miles today - looks like someone was listening to those prayers this morning afterall. :-) I knew I could finish 2 miles.

We headed out and to my suprise, the 5/1's weren't too bad. It was great to have some new scenery to look at and my new found friend gave me the lowdown on the area schools, which is great when you have a kid starting school in another year. When we first started, I looked behind me and thought that yours truly was bringing up the rear. But, as we kept on we passed people here and there. Before I knew it, we were at the water stop that the coaches told us about - 1 mile down! Woohoo!

The 5's seemed a little longer on the 2nd mile, but before I knew it we were back at the Y. It has been a long time since I've run in warmer weather, so my head felt like it was going to explode and I was dripping with sweat...but I survived! Never in a million years would I have thought finishing 2 miles would be such a big accomplishment for me. :-)

This starting over thing sucks, but for now it's okay. Tomorrow, I am riding 10 miles on the bike...another thing I'm starting over. (Since I still can't get early morning access to the pool for my Sunday swim...thanks RealManage!) But, every day is a step in the right direction I suppose.

I wasn't going to post today's time, because to be honest, it's a bit embarrassing. But, I figure I'm not the only person in the world to start over. It's not easy, but it can be done.

Workout Stats
Woodland's Fit group run
2 miles
24:44:47