One of those days

You know how some days you just do NOT have it in you?

Yeah, today was one of those days in the pool.

I planned to swim a mile (1,800 yards or 72 lengths, for those who are not aware). My first quarter mile was already way off pace (i.e. slow), whereas generally my swims are about as well-paced as my runs... which is to say I go out too fast. I knew I was in trouble at that point but kept plugging along. Finally, after the third quarter mile I decided to stop the suffering and got out of the pool. 1,350 yards instead of 1,800, and probably my slowest time in two years.

Oh well. Saturday's swim will be better!

Um, where did spring go???

We went from winter to summer in a day this weekend. Seriously. Mother Nature really needs to stop PMSing. Somebody give the woman some Midol!

Yesterday was my first double-digit run in nearly 18 months. (I checked. The last time I ran double digits was the OBX Half Marathon in November 2009. Holy schmoley!) It was also the first time in weeks that I had to run long by myself. When I set out from home, the Weather Channel said it was 61 degrees and 100% humidity. Ummm... THAT's not going to be fun.

By the time I got home, it was 74 degrees... and 100% humidity. D asked me if I'd poured my water bottle over my head. No, that was sweat, my dear!

Speaking of D, can I please tell all of you how completely wonderful he is? (Especially you, Lisa, if you still stalk, I mean read this.) I was a bit slower than I've been the past several weeks due to the heat, plus I had to walk about half a mile AND I stopped for a pitstop. When I wasn't back at the expected time, D came out in his car to find me. He didn't see me on his first pass, so he looped back around. This time, he found me as I re-entered our neighborhood. I cursed about the humidity, and he said, "I figured that was what happened." I handed him my empty water bottle, just to get rid of it for the last quarter mile, and he handed me an ICE COLD water bottle in its place. You have no idea how excited I was to see cold water!

He's the best.

Totally unrelated but equally awesome...

Woo hoo!

I just did my longest swim ever - 2,800 glorious yards in the pool. (My prior longest was 2,700, so it's not like it was that big a deal... but still I'm pretty psyched about it.)

Lots of drills, some time with the fins (how much do I love those things? they're like a motor!), and some intervals: 8 x 25, 4 x 50, and 2 x 100. All in all a great swim, followed by a super easy 4-mile run in 33:10.

I'm back, baby.

I really need a Garmin

But they really need to make them smaller!

I am not, as you've seen in the pictures, a petite person; however, my wrists and ankles are roughly the size of a 3 year-old's. Seriously, I can wear children's watches and bracelets. You know the Livestrong and gazillion other rubber message bracelets that were all the rage? I had to buy the child's size.

Anyway, the reason I never bought a Garmin was because of its clunky size. It would take up half my forearm!
















My desperate need for some sort of pacing assistance was quite evident this weekend, however. I attempted my first workout of the week on Friday evening. My goal was to do a short, easy, slow run to see how my back held up, then do some really light weights. I knew I was running with faster friends Saturday and Sunday, so Friday needed to be easy. I set out on my short (3.4 mile) course from the Y, and within minutes I was panting. "Geez, didn't take me long to fall out of shape!" is what I thought to myself. It was much colder than I'd anticipated, I was underdressed, and it was W I N D Y as all hell. I struggled through, got back to the Y, and clicked my watch. 28:24, or an 8:22 pace. Ummm, not easy! (At least there was a valid reason for my heaving breathing!)

Saturday morning my running partner M and I set out from the Y together, and I told her of my escapades in pacing. Laughing, we both admitted we're awful at it. The run was again hard (we did the 4.1 mile loop), but again it was really windy, plus we were talking, which always make you use your oxygen differently, so I didn't think much of it. We got back to the Y in 33:32... 8:11 pace. Zoiks!

Sunday, thankfully, was slower. Much slower. 8 miles with my other training partner A at a 9:15 pace. Perfect for a longer, hilly run. (I try to do my long runs at about 9 to 9:30 pace.)

Meanwhile, though, I really need to learn how to pace myself better. If it's an easy run, I need to learn how to run easy. The time to find out I worked too hard is NOT when I'm done. It's a few minutes into the run so I can adjust accordingly.

The same holds true for race day. One of my biggest problems is always going out too fast. I simply do not know how fast I'm going, and more often than not I pay for it later in the race.

So much to learn... So much to improve on!

I registered today...

... for the Alexandria Running Festival Half Marathon on May 29. Woo hoo! Only $55, they donate to local charities, and I am confident I have enough time to train and do fairly well.

Bring it on.

You may have noticed a lack of reported workouts this week

That's because I managed to injure myself. Grrrr.

See where it says Weights under 4/11/2011? Yeah, apparently I thought it would be a brilliant idea to completely and totally overdo the chin-ups on Monday. I used the assisted dip/pull-up machine -- the one that has the pad you kneel on and then do either dips or pull-ups/chin-ups. You know which one I mean?


















It's the only machine in the gym with an inverse weight ratio -- the less weight you select, the harder it is. That's because the weight represents how much of your body weight you are subtracting (or asking the machine to do for you).

The last few times I've done dips on that machine, I've put the pin at 50 (so I'm dipping 100 pounds). I thought it would be a good idea to do 70 for some chin-ups... so 80 pounds for me to hoist up. The first set went pretty well; I cranked out 10 reps and slowed down toward the end, so that was perfect. The second set, I managed only 8. And they were a tough 8. So I told myself to just do 7 in the third set so I'd end up with a pretty number of 25 total reps. Well, I did one better than that and again did 8 reps, but they were brutal.

But not as brutal as the pain I have caused since.

Holy. Hell.

My lats are so sore that it hurts when my clothes touch them. I can't reach over my head or forward. Try getting dressed or even putting on a raincoat under those circumstances. Yeah, not easy. Taking a deep breath hurts, as does leaning back on anything (even pillows). I can't straighten my arms all the way, particularly my left arm. By the end of the day yesterday, my left arm was bent at 90 degrees. I looked like I was wearing an invisible sling. Today I can straighten it about 75% of the way. Progress! D and I think I may have strained a ligament on the inside of my elbow.

But my back. Oh my goodness, my back!

Needless to say, I haven't done anything remotely resembling exercise since Monday night. You cannot imagine how much that pisses me off.

In other news, the playoffs may have started last night, technically speaking... but the real excitement begins tonight. GO FLYERS!

Catching up

Earlier this year I vowed to use this blog to hold myself accountable for my weight loss efforts. For a few weeks, I was good about posting my successes (or lack thereof), but when the scale totally got stuck I stopped posting. No need to repeat the same post week after week, right?

Well, the scale is still pretty much stuck. Inexplicably, I gained four pounds one week (huh????) and have been steadily losing a pound a week ever since, bringing me back to my starting weight.

At nearly 5'10" and 150 pounds, I know I don't need to lose a great deal of weight. I'm lucky; I'm tall and muscular, and I can carry a few extra lbs without too much trouble. The thing is, I really want to lose weight. Three summers ago I was 137. Was that too thin? Probably. Do I want to weigh that little again? Sort of... but not really. I mean, I had NO butt or boobs when I weighed that little. Seriously. They disappeared.

What I'd like is to keep my curves and get down to the low- to mid-140s -- and stay there.

Getting there isn't the hard part. Staying there is.

Anyone else on this journey with me?

This is what happens after pretty much every bike ride

That is my right calf after yesterday's bike ride. What was funny was that I was wearing my awesome tattoo arm warmers, courtesy of SauconRunner. They make my arms look like I have full sleeve tattoos. For the record, I have none. Anyway, toward the end of the ride, my training partner M was behind me (a rarity, believe me! she's so strong) and said, "I like your tattoo!" Thinking she was making a joke about my arm warmers, I asked, "Which one?" She replied, "The one on your leg!" When I saw the chain imprint on my calf, I cracked up.

Seriously, though, how does this happen every time? I end up with grease all over my legs after a ride (not always in the awesome imprint of the bike chain, though... that was a first!). I'm guessing that I lean into my bike, or lean my bike into my leg, when I clip out at red lights or something? I always clip out with my right foot, and this is my right calf... and the chain is on the right.... Maybe I lean into the chain without realizing it?

Oh well, at least I know my chain is well lubricated! :)

How about that? A setback gave me the motivation I was lacking.

For a few weeks I've been toying with the idea of doing a half marathon on May 15. I haven't done one since November 2009, and I'm due for a new PR (in anything, frankly, but the half marathon is one I think I can accomplish with relative ease). Toward the end of last week I realized I was coming up on the deadline for reduced registration fee, so I went to the website to sign up.

The race is sold out.

A few days earlier, a friend from my outdoor boot camp class had told me that one of the women who comes to class sporadically (once it got cold we stopped seeing her, but I expect her to return any week now) wanted to sell her bib for the Broad Street Run. While the prospect of running with 30,000 of my closest friends didn't exactly thrill me, I thought the popular 10-miler would be a good second choice.

Until my mother informed me that we have a one-year memorial service the same morning for my aunt who passed away last year.

OK, onto Plan C! There's an adventure race (mud, obstacles, etc.) in late April that I'd thought about doing, but with the half marathon looming -- or so I thought -- I didn't want to risk injury and therefore didn't sign up. So I went to that website to sign up. $50 for 600 yards of running with 12 obstacles? 600 yards? I can do basically the same workout -- with A LOT more running -- in my own classes. That seemed a bit steep, so I didn't register.

Plan D -- an early season sprint triathlon! There's one nearby in a few weeks that is 450 meters in a heated outdoor pool, 10 mile bike, 5K run. Perfect. Until I filled out the registration form on Friday and saw that it was $91 when you add in processing fees and etc. $91 for a SPRINT tri? In a POOL? That will take me about 1:15 or less to complete? You've gotta be kidding me.

But here's the good news. (Yes, there is a point to this post.) Instead of being down about all of this and worrying about floundering without a schedule or goal, I had one of the best treadmill runs of my life Friday after work. And a kickass workout in my bike trainer class Saturday. And 9.5 hilly miles with two friends who are much faster than me on Sunday.

Those workouts were wonderful. Outstanding. Fantabulous. Just what I needed to kick my own butt. Just what I needed to remind myself that racing is not the end all, be all. Sometimes working out just for the sake of working out is what you need after all.

Cute pics from 3.31.11

Make sure you scroll down to see all of them... Trust me!

Before the game...

























At the game...

























The game!













And here's one from a different game last night (Kings/Canucks). I cannot stop laughing.