Diet/Training Recharged!

Ok, so after my HORRIBLE diet day yesterday..God, I don't even want to know how many calories I enhaled...I went home and promptly took Anna on another run. I was going to just walk and then Steve was going to ride his bike and meet us somewhere on the trails since he gets home a little bit after me, but I decided walking just wouldn't do. I ran about 3 miles or so until Steve and I met up, and decided to walk the rest of the way, which was another mile (so 4 miles total). It was funny because Steve decided to run, too. So while I was running back I kept thinking to myself, "man, he should have caught up to us by now on his bike!" and then sure enough, I see him running up a hill to meet us.

I still made brats and mac and cheese for dinner. And had some, too. I figured "why starve myself at dinner? It will just come back to bite me in the butt tomorrow". Which has served me well. This morning both Steve and I woke up exhausted. Why? I don't know. Maybe with this working out we should start getting to bed a little sooner and also staying consistant with our vitamins.

Todays food is the following:
For breakfast I had my usual yogurt with strawberries and blueberries. Unfortunately, I'm out of flaxseed granola...
I'll have a cup of coffee here in a minute and right now I'm sipping on some grapefruit juice.
Lunch is a Lean Cuisine. I think it's chicken enchilada suiza. I've got watermelon and grapes to go with it. And for an afternoon snack I'll probably have a yoplait light yogurt.
Dinner is tacos, guacamole, and beer! :) Don't judge! I promise, I'll only be having one beer.

We're also going to take Anna on a walk. Probably another 2 miler.

As far as this weekend is concerned, I'm not sure what our plans are. I know that we need a rest day for real. I'm not sure if we'll either do it Saturday or Sunday. Sunday is my oldest niece, Rachel's first communion and my youngest nice, Clara's baptism. So that's a pretty big deal. We'll go out to Denton to witness that. But I do know that at one of the days is our long run. I'm pretty positive we'll do 4 miles. Looking forward to the weekend! It's almost here!

Diet FAIL!

Oh geez. What do you get when a girl eats well for 5 days and it's 2 co-workers birthday tomorrow? A hungry girl! The office ordered pizza from Carmine's and then of course, there are some awesome petit fours from the Casa Linda Bakery this afternoon. Not to mention, someone brought in bagels for breakfast, so naturally I had one of those! :( Ugh.

Diet Fail:
Breakfast: Yoplait light yogurt with strawberries and blueberries. A banana and one whole wheat bagel with some cream cheese smear. Yeah....

Lunch: 4. Count them. 4 slices of pizza. With a small salad on the side. Will also be having a petit four as soon as those become available.

Dinner: I'm making brats with mac and cheese. I'm pretty positive I should forgo the brats and mac and cheese and have a salad for dinner. Gah...way to go, Mariah.

Rest Days and Running Days

Steve and I feel pretty much the same about our "rest" days. While trying to build up our endurance and trying to train, we also know that sitting out the day of "rest" makes us a little stir crazy.

Tuesday was our "rest day" so we decided to go for a 2 mile walk instead. We walked a pretty fast pace for most of it, when we weren't trying to train Anna not to pull on her leash.

Yesterday was our 3 mile run day. I don't know how fast it was or anything considering we haven't invested in a good watch yet...and then there's Anna...and then there's Steve who hasn't been running in ooohhh 4-5 months. It was a really good run though. I felt great, I paced myself, I feel like I could have gone even further.

I am frustrated with the dog though. When it's just me and her it's OK, but when Steve is with us and one of us is either trailing behind or up ahead, Anna wants to be with us both. So while I was ahead of Steve, she'd keep looking back and try to stop to see him. That was really frustrating. And after running for a while, I'm hot and tired and I just want to let go of the leash and run by myself. At one point, Steve took her and I got to run without her and it was so liberating! :) I love my dog, but sometimes I wish I didn't have to worry about taking her with me on the runs. Maybe when we get a house I won't have to take her as much.

Today we were going to get up and go for a 2 mile walk since it's another rest day, but when our alarm went off at 5:50 I heard thunder outside and sprinkles on our window. Not another 10 minutes later the rain was pouring down, pounding on our window and the thunder and lightening was crazy. Hopefully this will all clear out and I can still take Anna on a walk when I get home from work. We'll be going to the gym this evening to do weights as well. So a busy evening lies ahead.

Book Review: Sundays at Tiffany's by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet

I love easy reads. I love them because while it is an easy read, I still get the chance to lose myself in the characters and the story line and just get away from everything for a while.

This book was no exception. We start off with Jane and Michael. Jane is 8, in a few days she will be 9. She's sitting in the Astor Court of the St. Regis hotel in New York. Eating an ice cream and also ordering another ice cream for her "friend" Michael. Michael is imaginary. They hold conversations, he helps her fight loneliness. Jane's mother is highly involved in Broadway productions and therefore rarely has time to dote on her daughter. Michael, naturally, fills that void. Her father also doesn't seem to have a lot of time for his daughter and has a girlfriend (Jane's parents are divorced) that he is preoccupied with.

On every Sunday, Jane and her mother go to the Astor Court and then afterwards go to Tiffany's. We get an idea for the relationship between mother and daughter and wonder how on earth a child could grow up without major self esteem issues stemming from her mother's harping.

On Jane's 9th birthday, Michael tells her his time as her friend is up and that she will be fine. He tells her that after he leaves she won't remember him and that she'll grow up to be a great woman. She is heartbroken and swears to him she'll never forget.

Fast forward 20 years. Sure enough, Jane hasn't forgotten. She works for her mother and has written a musical about a little girl and her imaginary friend that is hugely popular. Michael is still an imaginary friend to many different children and is "in between" jobs when one day he notices a girl who looks alarmingly familiar. He begins to follow her when he realizes it's Jane.

Basically, you should be able to figure out the rest just from that. It's a pretty predictable book with a few curve balls thrown in. For instance, why can Jane see Michael again? What is he supposed to help her through? Is she dieing? Does she have some kind of brain tumor? No, he's really there and other people see him, too.

The characters are well written and the description is just enough that I don't feel like it's too verbose.

I would definitely recommend this book if you like love stories and books about "fate". I enjoyed it and thought it was a sweet book.

Half Marathon Training Guides

Here are a few training guides that I'll probably be basing my workouts on:


http://www.halhigdon.com/halfmarathon/index.htm

I really enjoy this one and Steve actually used this as his training in preparation for the White Rock Marathon's Relay last December.

http://www.jeffgalloway.com/training/half_marathon.html

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-244-258-6851-0,00.html

This one looks a little complicated. Lots of speed work and things that I'm not exactly interested in. I know it's going to take speed work to improve my time, but honestly, the only thing I'm really concerned about is finishing the 1/2 without having to walk and do it safely. Plus, I'm just not a fast runner. I have a feeling the fastest I'll ever get is about a 9.30 but even then I don't think I'd be running a 1/2 that fast.

I think the hardest thing for me is the "rest" days. I HATE resting. I feel like I need to work out in some way, shape, or form 5-6 days a week. So the in between days are probably going to be the hardest for me.

Today is my "rest" day. We kind of started on the wrong day for all of this training (a Sunday). Oh well, somehow I'll get on track.

Steve thinks we should do the intermediate 5k training to start out since we've both not been consistent with our runs. Though, I feel a little held back, it's probably best that we do take it slow in order to avoid burn out and injuries. We really should invest in a good watch to help us keep track of mileage/time/etc because of the drills. It's also going to be hard to do all this speed work when we don't know the distance. We may have to go to a school track to get that done.

Here's the 5k intermediate, as well as links to the beginners and advanced schedules:

http://www.halhigdon.com/5K%20Training/5-Kinter.htm

Honestly, I'm glad I'm taking a rest day. My legs were shot yesterday after running so much on Sunday and then busting major a$$ on the elliptical. I had every intention to take Anna on a walk, but since it rained most of the day it just didn't happen. I did do crunches, though (no push ups..I got lazy). I ended up taking a steamy hot bath around 8:30 to try to relieve my tight, achy legs. And also, my shoulders were so tense that Steve had to give me a massage. I have no idea why they were so tense, but it seriously hurts (even now, though not as much as yesterday) to lift my arms above my head.

Today Steve and I will take Anna on a 2 mile walk. It's our "rest" day, but we're still going to do that. Plus, we'll go to the gym and lift some weights. I'll probably just do our set of bicep curls and shoulder presses circuit that we got off of Men's Health. We were going to get up at 5:30 to do it, but the thought of getting up early 2 days in a row didn't appeal to me this morningh!

Another Log-Day 2

So I was supposed to get up this morning at 5:30 to go to the gym. Around 4:00 I heard a really yippee dog outside barking and every time I'd be *this close* to falling back asleep, he'd start up again. So when Steve's alarm went off at 5:30 I was NOT in the mood to get out of bed. He got up anyway and I finally felt guilty and dragged myself out of bed at 5:50. I threw on my workout clothes and my contacts and was on the eliptical machine by 5:59. I'm actually really proud of myself for just getting up and not being lazy this morning (when all I really wanted was to stay in bed under the covers). I did the eliptical for 30 minutes. I went about 3.5 miles and I'm not sure how many calories I burned.

For breakfast I had a piece of whole wheat, high fiber bread toasted with about 1 1/2 tablespoons of peanut butter and a yogurt with strawberries, blueberries and flaxseed granola.

Surprisingly (for a Monday), I'm in an awesome mood. Could it quite possibly be that I wasn't a lazy bum this morning and got the blood flowing?? Probably. We'll see what kind of mood I'm in by 5:30 when I'm battling rush hour traffic on Gaston and Garland Road...if I'm cool, calm, and collected I'll know that my mood is directly related to how active I am (or also how many crazy, stupid drivers are out on the roads). :)

Lunch is a smart ones. Some shrimp thing I threw in my lunch bag. It looks yummy...I also have watermelon and grapes and I'll probably have a yogurt to go with it at some point.

This evening if it's not too rainy and muddy, I'd like to take Anna on a 2 mile walk. I also need to do my pushups. I've been putting those off for about a week and a half and then some ab work. Luckily, Steve has agreed to train with me and run this 1/2 marathon with me. I don't think I'd be able to do it if I didn't have a partner to run with or someone to keep me motivated.

For dinner it's baked chicken, rice (or potatoes...I'm in the mood for starchy stuff), and probably broccoli with cheese (those Steamer bags are AWESOME). More watermelon and sugar free jello for dessert/snacks.

So that's it for today. Yay for a solid day 2. I know once I get passed the first week, it will be such a routine that it will be hard to talk myself out of it. The first week is always the hardest.

This Time I'm Serious!

Alright...so I was doing really well around April or so and running about 4-6 miles every other day and then I got lazy. So I've put my healthy cap back on and I'm going for it! In December, White Rock holds it's Marathon. I'm determined to be participating in the half marathon in 4 short months.

I'm going to be logging in and trying to update whenever I can to keep myself accountable.

So Sunday was my official start to training. On my first day back in the game, I ran 4.2 miles in a little over 43 minutes. This was done on the treadmill. Zero incline. Started walking at 3.5 for 2 minutes, then began running at a 5.7 (10 minute 30 second) pace. I did that for about 10 minutes. I was listening to old school Madonna, so with each new song, I'd go up a point. So I went from 5.7-6.0 and then back down to 5.7. My last minute of running I sped up to 6.5. I also did a 5 minute cool down.

I probably ran too far my first day back in the saddle...but I also wanted to test myself to make sure I hadn't lost too much of what I had built up.

I'm also trying to eat more healthy foods. Yesterday we cut up a watermelon and had that for snacks and dessert last night. I baked some talipia and had rice, green beans, and a small salad with a tiny amount of Italian dressing.