Sore City

Oh my goodness, you guys, I am SO SORE!

Like, for real.

In dutiful accordance with my GOTW, I wandered back into the weight room for the first time in almost two months on Wednesday. And now, 48 hours later, I am still hobbling around.

It's mostly my quads. I found a workout on a running blog I read and decided to try it. Almost every move involved some form of a squat. Don't get me wrong, I love a squat as much as the next girl, but there is something called too much of a good thing.

Now I'm walking stiff legged and have to be careful when lowering myself on to low chairs. Or, you know, the toilet.

While I'm sore now, I loved being back in the weight room. It makes me feel pretty powerful. Plus, I know it's good for me. I know lifting weight will pay dividends for me in the long run. (how's that for a financial metaphor on a Friday?)

I know from experience that being able to feel my muscles, especially my abs, boosts my self confidence a bunch. And hey, right now, at the beginning of this weight loss journey yet again, I could use any self confidence boost I can get.

I took this picture in the weight room today
because I noticed two curls were sticking
out of my head in a horizontal fashion.
I thought you would enjoy.  

So even though I'm barely moving today, I made my way (slowly) back to the weight room.  And you know what? It felt good.And I didn't take it easy on my sore quads one bit.

Happy Weekend!

Thankful Thursdays: December 8

Today I'm feeling slightly angry and a bit stubborn. My oven stopped working on Tuesday night, and I got it into my head that I could fix it, but I was met with obstacles with everything I tried to do.  So today I bit the bullet and called a service repairman.  I will have to pay a lot of money and will have to wait until Tuesday for it to be fixed, all of which rankles me a bit.  I would like to wallow in that, but it's Thankful Thursday, so I will let that rant be the end of it and move on to happier things.

Today I'm thankful for:

Work pants that are slightly looser.
Hallelujah! I can wear them and my legs still get some circulation! I'm not cut off at the waist any more.  What a difference two weeks can make.


Cherry Coke Zero, my new soda obsession

It's so good and it makes me feel like I can accomplish anything. Weird? Not to me. Seems perfectly logical.

Christmas decorations

I can neither confirm nor deny whether this was also on my list last week. But I love 'em. Also April had a contest for Christmas trees this week, and I got to look at a bunch of pretty pictures.

Christmas cookies
The best baker on campus,* Miss Linda, gave my office a batch of cookies that have big bits of Snickers inside them. They are AMAZING.  Picture melted caramel-y nougat. I would take a picture for you guys, but it wouldn't do them justice, and they're in a slightly public area (good for someone who doesn't want to look like a pig and keep going back for more) and I don't want my coworkers seeing me take pictures of cookies.

Being a youth leader

Working with youth has given me some great life-long friends like these girls: Amie, Taylor and Cara.  It's also giving me a free dinner at a great restaurant tonight for "Leader Appreciation" night. Both are very good things.


Wow, after writing this post I feel a lot better. I scrolled back up to the top to read through it before publishing and had already forgotten about the anger over the oven situation.  Being thankful is a great thing. So I think you should take a minute and remind yourself about what you're thankful for (and I'd love to see it in the comments section below.)
*This is an unofficial title. There has been no contest to declare her the best baker on campus.

What I'm Eating This Week

I'm eating two really easy and tasty meals this week, so I thought I'd share.

First, for lunches, I'm eating this:

Pita pockets, with sun-dried tomato hummus, a smattering of feta cheese and spinach.

It's yummy. I'm eating it with a side of Baked Doritos.

For dinners most night, I'm using a recent discovery, Steak-Umms.  It was part of the Bi-Lo Meal Deal a few weeks back. It's thinly sliced steaks that you find in the frozen section of the grocery store.  They cook in about a minute in a frying pan on the stove.  Each sheet of steak is only 100 calories. I cooked them up on Sunday and sauteed a batch of green peppers and onions too. Then each night I layer up a couple of the Steak-Umms, with onions, green peppers and just a bit of cheese on a nice Pepperidge Farm roll and toast the whole thing in the toaster oven. Served with mashed potatoes.

Toasted and delicious!

Goals of the Week: December 5

That's right, it's the start of another week, so it's time to set some new goals. But first, let's review last week's GOTW.

As a refresher, last week's goals were:

• Exercise five times, 45 minutes each.
• Run three times.
• Drink at least three liters of water a day.

And we could put a big ol' checkmark next to each of them.  I exercised five times, ran (or attempted, at least) three times and drank more than 3 liters of water each day.  This week, I aim to continue each of these.

However, I need to progress and set some new goals for this week.  So here's what I'm working toward this week:

1) Stick within my calorie budget, as determined by my Loseit.com profile, each day (including Friday and Saturday?!?).

I started faithfully logging calories last week, but went over my budget most days.  

2) Add in two strength training workouts this week. I have not done any resistance training since I completed the Mud Run in mid-October, and friends that is shameful.  I can feel myself going flabby all over.  I haven't yet decided what to do in the weight room, but it might be one of these options that I found on Pinterest last night.

This looks a little intense. So maybe I will start with something a little simpler like the squats, pushups, planks, lunges and rows below? Not sure yet, but do something, I will.

What are your goals this week?  They say the first step to accomplishing goals is to figure out what they are and then write them down.  What are you waiting for?

Beginning with Pinterest

So today I joined Pinterest instead of spending time writing a blog.  And, of course, I love it, and I'm addicted.

Pinterest is a social networking site where people can virtual pin pictures of anything they find on the internet to virtual bulletin boards. Then they can go and see what their friends have pinned and look at pretty pictures and inspirational quotes and stuff.  There is a lot of good inspirational things for those of the healthy lifestyle persuasion, so I thought I'd share a couple with you tonight.

Classic.

A great flow chart.

You have to be invited to join Pinterest, but let me know if you want an invitation.

A Girl on the Run at the Reindeer Romp 5k

Dear Reindeer Romp,
I could not be more in love with you.  Please expect to see Cindy and I back next year, pounding your pavement.
Sincerely,
Jill











Seriously, guys, this was one of my most favorite races to date.*   We took off from Main Street amidst falling snow flurries (machine made).  There were more than 1500 runners and A LOT of them were Girls on the Run** and their dads.

We turned off of Main Street after one block, turned past Saturday Bike and Run, which is where I take my bike for service, and headed up Oakland Ave.

Oakland Ave runs from downtown Rock Hill past the college where I have lived, studied, worked and worked out for the past 14 years.  This is my home.

We turned off of Oakland Avenue onto a side street that led us past the nice houses that surround the university.   It was about this time that I first said to Cindy, "I AM LOVING THIS!"

When my Nike + (this is an app on my iphone that measures your distance via GPS) alerted me that we had made it one mile, Cindy and I started talking about taking our first walk break.  That's right, we had run the whole first mile, and we were doing awesome. We walked a minute and then went right back to running.

We wound out of the neighborhood, coming out right in front of Tillman Hall, the building where I work.  This might have been the second time I screamed something about loving this race.   We headed down Oakland and turned into campus at our beautiful main entrance.  There was the water stop.  Cindy was a few steps ahead of me, and I yelled to her that I was not going to stop for water.

Just then I heard someone yelling my name and turned to see two of my favorite high school seniors, Jessi and Jenna, handing out water at the water station! I had no idea they were going to be there.  I was so excited to see them and pumped that I was running good when they saw me. (Jenna said later it looked like I was sprinting...that's just how I run, Jenna.  But really, it just looked like I was going fast because everyone else was slowing down to stop for water.)

We made the loop around our auditorium and that's when I started getting really excited.  I pointed out to Cindy some of the important-to-me buildings. I said, "THIS IS WHERE I LIVE!"  I was really getting into it.***  Also, campus police officers were stopping traffic so it was fun to see more people I know, even though I didn't get to speak to them.

Cindy and I color coordinated for the Christmas race.

We headed out past Tillman and back onto Oakland for the return trip downtown.  We walked several more times, but always in really short spurts. Cindy and I make really great running partners because neither of us lets the other give up. We have pretty similar running abilities, so we understand how the other runs.

We walked up one side of the bridge that leads downtown. We decided to run the downhill side and keep running to the finish. It was probably about a half mile left to go.  I wanted to give up, but I was keeping an eye on my time via my phone.  I had in the back of my mind that I wanted to be faster than my first 5k race in April 2010, so I kept moving and even pushed to go harder. I crossed the line amidst more snow flurries at 35:15, about 20 seconds faster than that first race.  I was so glad.

Bonnie did not appreciate
the antlers.

Post race, pro-antlers

Another reason this race was awesome was that every runner got reindeer antlers in their goody bag. Most people ran with them, but Cindy and I stuck with our Santa hats.  Good thing, because most people ended up taking them off and holding them the rest of the race.





Afterwards, I wandered through all of the amazing, county-fair like street food vendors. I started thinking that I deserved a treat and almost walked over to the ATM to get cash to buy some fried Oreos or Snickers (I've never had them, have you?), but I decided to just go home.  But I was famished so I made this homemade pizza with spinach and pepperoni. Yum. A good day.

*Despite the fact that they had no timing system or even mile markers??. C'mon Rock Hill, let'st step it up a notch and try and look like we know what we're doing.


**This made for an interesting addition to the race.  A lot of the girls ran with their dads.  One thing I learned, dads and small girls are almost never the same pace.  Either the dads were dragging and being left in the dust by their daughters and looking like they'd rather be at home watching football, or the girls were tired of running and the dads were jogging in front of them backwards doing everything they could to coax them to keep moving.


***I'm sure my enthusiasm doesn't make sense to you, I can't really explain it. It was part race day adrenaline and part knowing that I know the streets around campus so well, and I've run them a million times. It was kind of thrilling.

Reindeer Romp 5k

Surprise! I'm running a 5k tomorrow!  It's called the Reindeer Romp 5k, and it's through the streets of my hometown, with a jaunt past the college where I work.

I've had this race in the back of my mind for months.  In fact, when I first started training again, this was the race I had my eye on.

I don't feel as in running shape as I would like, since my past two runs have been not-so-great.* In fact, it's hard for me to even classify them as runs.

However, it's not often that my little town puts on a race (I only know of two a year), so I'm going to go out there and give it all I've got.  Hopefully the adrenaline will count for something.  And I might even wear a Santa hat for the occasion.  We'll see.  Stay tuned for a race report later tomorrow.

In other news, I lost 4.5 pounds this week. This is especially great as I was not sticking strictly to my calorie budget, but I am being very faithful with my water intake and even drank 4 liters instead of 3 yesterday!

I hope you've had a good week!

*The run before these two, however, was phenomenal. It helped that it took place in Effingham, aka the flattest place on earth.