Monthly Archives: August 2016

Upping My Game (or Getting Serious About Running)

Posted on August 3, 2016 | Comments Off on Upping My Game (or Getting Serious About Running)

I think you can all tell from my past few workout posts that I’m getting more serious about running. This is the first time that I’ve really had a workout challenge like this that I’m working on and I think I’m surprising myself that I’m liking it! But I’ve felt lately that I’ve gotten a bit stuck where my running is now and I need to work on things differently.

I love my Orangetheory workouts (I can’t imagine my life without them now), but they aren’t the best workouts for me to work on my running skills on. I’ve been lucky that several workouts lately have been ideal for me to work on getting faster and running longer, but those workouts aren’t every workout and I can’t rely on them alone. So I’ve decided that I need to try to do some running workouts on my own.

My big fear is that I’m going to overdo things. I know that I did that at Orangetheory recently when I ran for .25 miles. Yes, I did it, but I probably shouldn’t have. My body didn’t hurt right away with that challenge, but I know that it wasn’t the best thing I could have done. If I start running training on my own, I’m afraid that I will push myself more than I should and that it will cause issues for me. I know I can run longer than I do now, but I also know that I probably shouldn’t do it.

So I’ve been asking for a lot of running advice from a bunch of different people. Some are bloggers I met at BlogFest and I’ve also been asking my friend Kate (who is always willing to help me). My biggest questions have been how to build up endurance without getting burned out and how I can make sure that I continue to progress at a good pace (and not get stuck like I’m feeling now). And fortunately everyone has been very helpful and willing to give me any advice that they can!

A lot of the advice I got was different run/walk training plans. I had a bunch of those already, but when you aren’t on a treadmill they aren’t too easy to use. I’m not going to join another gym just to use a treadmill every so often and I’ve got a running path a few blocks from my house that opened recently, so I asked everyone again for advice on how to time intervals for run/walk work.

Again, I got a lot of advice with different ideas. Some people suggested various apps to time myself, but I’m not sure I’ll always be out with my headphones in my ears (not too safe to do that outside). I got some recommendations for interval devices, but I wasn’t sure I wanted something that just did 1 thing. And then I got the advice to look at running watches, and that’s exactly what I did.

There are dozens of different running watches out there and many of them are very expensive. I’m sure they are worth it and some runners need all the bells and whistles, but I’m not one of those runners. A running watch that could time intervals and had a GPS on it (so I knew my distance and pace) is all I wanted. And I finally found what I believe will be the perfect one for me.

Running Watch

I found the Garmin Forerunner 220 watch. This is one of the few running watches I found that has the features I want but doesn’t have a heart rate monitor (I don’t need that since I can use my Orangetheory one if I want to track heart rate). This one is not the most recent model (I believe it’s a year or two old), but it was recommended to me by so many people. And one of the features is setting your own intervals so I can set it to be 1 minute running/1 minute walking and then adjust it as I’m ready to do more. I think this will be perfect.

And since my birthday is a week away, I asked my parents if this would be something they would get me for my birthday. It was on sale for about 40% off on Amazon and my dad checked it out and said it seemed like the perfect gift for me! It was ordered earlier this week and because I didn’t want to pay for shipping (it’s not Prime eligible) I won’t have it for another week or two.

But I’m fine with waiting for the watch because this was the cheapest place I could find it! My parents didn’t have to get me a birthday present since they paid for me to go to the family reunion, so I’m just grateful for any gift. And this is a generous one and I’m excited to test it out soon!

I’m not sure how I’m going to work in extra running training outside of Orangetheory workouts. Maybe I’ll do them on the weeks I don’t have a 4th workout. Or maybe I will do them on my off days but keep the workout pretty short. I’m still working things out and I’ve got time to figure it out. All I know is that my next race is in a few months and while I’ve done a mile with a run/walk pattern, I want to be able to do that for a 5K and get a new PR!

If I knew even a few months ago that I would be running and looking for ways to run more and improve my skills, I would have said you were crazy and I’d never do that. Then again, if you told me 3 years ago that I’d be working out 3-4 times a week and lifting weight I wouldn’t have believed it either. I love that I’m transforming into an athlete and I can’t wait to see what will be next for me!

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Default ThumbnailTime To Push Myself Again (or Running Some Hills) Default ThumbnailExtra Running Time (or Figuring Out What I Can Do) Default ThumbnailTesting Myself (or Running More) Default ThumbnailBuilding Up My Running Skills (or Getting A New PR) Default ThumbnailFiguring Things Out (or Finding A Balance With Running) Default ThumbnailLots Of Running and Rowing (or Proof Of My Progress)

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Another Monthly Challenge Down (or July and August Challenges)

Posted on August 2, 2016 | 1 comment

With July being over already (it really just flew by!), it’s time to recap my July monthly challenge. This time, my challenge was to read 10 pages of an eating disorder recovery book every day. I set this as a challenge because I’ve been having trouble finishing any recovery books and I thought breaking it into smaller chunks would help.

I’ll admit, this challenge got off to a rocky start. Since I do almost all my reading on my Kindle, I was finding it tough to switch between the recovery book and whatever fun book I happen to be reading at the time. Fortunately I solved this problem pretty quickly. I have my fun book reading on my Kindle, and my recovery book is read every day on my iPhone on the Kindle app. I don’t love reading on my phone for too long, but this works for the 10 pages I read (which usually only takes a few minutes).

There were a couple of days where my 10 pages were done at almost midnight, but I did set an alarm on my phone right around when I go to bed to remind myself to read my pages. Most days, I ended up doing my reading right before of after dinner so I got them done pretty early. And even though I knew I could read more than 10 pages a day, I didn’t want to get myself burned out like I have in the past so I tried to keep myself to that limit (I went over a bit when I was close to the end of a section or chapter).

By reading my 10 pages a day, I got one book finished and I’m about halfway through another one. I have several recovery books that I’ve purchased over the years on my Kindle, so I’ve got a ton of options for future reading. And since it seems to take me about 3 weeks to read a book this way, I could also get Kindle books from the library (the e-book rental period is 3 weeks so it would be cutting it close). I’m not going to worry about my book choices until I read everything I already own, and that’s going to take me a while.

Just like all my previous monthly challenges, I plan on continuing this one. It’s a good habit to be in and I don’t see how I could have anything but positive results. And because of my reading, I was inspired for my August challenge.

This month, I challenge myself to start practicing mindful eating. This is something that I read about in one of the books I read and I know it will be a challenge for me. While many people who practice mindful eating pray or say grace before eating to get into a mindful mentality, since I’m not religious that’s not really going to work for me.

Instead, I’m going to use the self-meditation timer on the meditation app I’ve been using for my daily mediations (my June monthly challenge that I’ve kept up). I can set the self-meditation timer to be as short as 1 minute so I don’t have to worry about it being too long. Eventually I’d like to be at a point where I am practicing mindful eating before every meal, but I know I need to ease into this. So I’m setting a goal to practice mindful eating for at least 1 meal a day.

This isn’t going to be easy for me. For my first day, I struggled to even try to do this before most of my meals. I was able to do it before dinner, but I had to force myself and it felt like the least natural monthly challenge I’ve given myself. I know this will be a good thing and I need to be pushed to do this, but I hate feeling like this is tough. I don’t give up easily that often, but when I’m really struggling it can feel useless. I even debated changing the monthly challenge but that’s the moment I knew I needed to do this. If I wanted to give up, that meant it was a good challenge that was pushing me to a new place and that’s the entire point of this.

I’ve got a couple of ideas for the monthly challenges for the rest of the year, but I also have to see what inspires me along the way to do. I have a lot of things I want to accomplish this year and I feel like I’m making some great strides toward all my goals. I love how successful this year has been so far and I just keep reminding myself in my down days that overall I’ve been doing so much better than before.

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Default ThumbnailNot Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailFirst Monthly Challenge Of The Year (or Setting Up For The Year And Self-Improvement) Default ThumbnailThinking Of Changing Up My Monthly Challenge (or I Guess This Would Be A First) Default ThumbnailDecember Monthly Challenge (or Wrapping Up For The Year) Default ThumbnailAlmost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November) Default ThumbnailGoodbye To July (or Looking Forward To Having Steady Work In August)

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Figuring Things Out (or Finding A Balance With Running)

Posted on August 1, 2016 | 1 comment

This past week I did 4 workouts, and they were all pretty great. They were tough and at times during the workout I was wondering if I was overdoing things, but in the end I think each of my workouts really helped me get into a really good workout groove for the week.

I missed my usual Monday morning workout because I was flying back from my trip, so I had my first workout on Tuesday afternoon. I hadn’t been feeling jet lagged at all on Tuesday morning, but for some reason Tuesday around lunchtime I started to feel very off. I tried to get myself back on track, but I realized it was going to be an off day and just accepted that. But I wasn’t going to let my workout suffer too much because of it. The workout was an endurance run/row day, so I was grateful that I didn’t have to do a ton of treadmill work. The pattern of the run/row was a 1 mile (1600 meter) row, .25 mile run, .5 mile (800 meter) row, .5 mile run, .25 mile (400 meter) row, 1 mile run. And we were supposed to get as far down the pattern as we could.

The 1600 meter row took me a while to get through, but I was able to do it without taking any breaks which made me pretty happy. For the .25 mile run, even though I know I can run that I didn’t want to push myself too hard. So I did the power walking distance of .13 miles and did 1 minute of running and 1 minute of walking. I did that same plan for the .5 mile run (I did .25 miles with 1 minute intervals) and I made it to the 400 meter row before the time was up. I didn’t expect to make it to the mile run, so I wasn’t disappointed that I didn’t finish all of the things.

On Wednesday, I was feeling much more like myself and I was feeling pretty good going into the workout. It was a strength day and we didn’t switch between blocks. I didn’t run for any of the incline work because I’m really not ready for that. But I did try to push my inclines up a bit higher than normal to make up for not running. I was able to run all of the all outs that were on a flat road (which is a 1% incline) and I even did the all out that was at a 4% incline (which is the flat road for power walkers). I’m glad I had some all outs to run during because I really don’t want to skip on running at least a little bit during each workout.

For the floor work, we had sprint rows for 200 meters and I was able to keep my times on those pretty short. My legs still struggle with the power I should have for the rowing, but I know that it’s just something that I need to work on and it will get better. Besides the rowing, the floor work focused a lot of abs and arm work. For almost all of my arm stuff, I was using 25 pound weights. It was a little too heavy at times for me, but I was able to finish each set and I know that in time the weight won’t feel as heavy.

Friday’s workout was endurance, strength, and power and again we didn’t switch between blocks.  During the endurance block, I was able to run during the 90 and 60 second pushes as well as the all out. The 90 second run was feeling a bit long for me, but I’ve been working on building my endurance so I know I need to push myself to go a little longer. For the strength time, I power walked for all the hills but I was getting the hills to the inclines I was using before I tore my calf, which is significantly higher than I normally do. I did run the all out, but it was on a flat road. And for the power block, we had short push paces to all outs and I ran for all of those. It was more running than normal for me, but I was feeling pretty amazing after.

On the floor, we had 400 and 100 meter rows and again we did a lot of ab and arm work. A lot of the work that day was using the straps, so that was a nice change from using the weights. The strap work sometimes is harder for me to do because my arms get wobbly when I’m tired, but that’s part of what makes it a good workout system for me.

And to complete my workout week, I went to Saturday’s workout. Normally on a Saturday I go on the bike since I feel like I’ve done enough treadmill work for the week. And I debated doing that this time, but something was pulling me to go to the treadmill and to break my own rules. So I went for it.

It was an endurance day and for the 4th time that week there were no switches between the blocks. There were some really long pushes on the treadmill, and I didn’t want to overdo things. So for the 3 minute push, I power walked. But for all the other push paces which were between 1-2 minutes, I ran. I wasn’t always able to run for the entire thing, but I at least ran for a minute each time. The 90 second pushes were much tougher than the day before, but I was still trying and that’s what’s most important to me.

And for the floor work, we had 1 long block to work on the entire time. We had 500 meter rows (which felt long compared to the sprint rows from earlier in the week) and then we went over to the weights to work on the rest of the block. We had rows and chest presses on the straps, tricep and bicep work with weights, and ab work on the floor. And we kept repeating the block over and over again for the entire time. It was pretty great because I wasn’t feeling rushed at all to get things done and I was able to get through a couple of cycles of it.

Overall, this week made me pretty happy with my running so far. I got really down on myself because I was making such great progress last month and I thought I’d be able to continue to do so again this month. I honestly thought I’d be able to run for 5 minutes by now, and I’m still struggling at times to run for 2 minutes. I’m working on some new plans to get my running progressing at a good pace (thanks a bunch to my friend Kate who shared a ton of websites with me!) and I think that this week of workouts really got me onto a good path again.

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Default ThumbnailRunning And Walking (or Accepting My Limits) Default ThumbnailMaybe Not That Much Running (or Training For Thanksgiving) Default ThumbnailLots Of Running And Hills (or Back To A 4 Workout Week) Default ThumbnailExtra Running Time (or Figuring Out What I Can Do) Default ThumbnailSetbacks and Goals (or Still Figuring Out What’s Next) Default ThumbnailGetting Back To Better Food (or Finding My Own Balance)

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