Making a change.

I've decided to veer from the C25k program. My body isn't ready to run for that amount of time. Not carrying this much extra weight. I've been reading a book called Marathoning for Mortals and it has several training programs for walk/run combos. I think I'm going to work from that. Today I did this: Walk 5 min, run 6 min, walk 3 min, run 6 min, walk 3 min, run 5 minutes, walk 17 minutes. I covered 2.9 miles in 45 minutes. I think that my goal for now is to get that up to 3-6 minute runs and then eventually up to 8 minutes. OR I'll add another run segment and only walk 2 in between. Not sure yet, but I need to do this one for a few more times and get my heartrate lower while doing it. I'm going to spend the next month focusing on getting up to 4 miles in one hour.

A big week!

Today starts week 5. Today I did three five-minute runs while walking three minutes between each. I did 2.07 miles in 31 minutes. It felt really good. I got a good sweat going, I've never exercised indoors and sweat so much my shirt was wet.


I've decided that my first official run will be in April, rather then May. On April 7th in Tempe I'll be participating in Pat's Run . It's 4.2 miles to support the Pat Tillman Foundation. If you don't know who he is, follow the link at the top of the run page for the foundation. I was a graduate student at ASU when he played there. His decision to turn down a huge NFL contract for military service was huge news here and I respected him so much. It was his death that really brought the reality of the was in Iraq home for me. I felt like I lost somebody I knew and it was heartbreaking.

Yay!!!!

I'm down 10 pounds exactly today!!!!! WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!! I am very excited. It feels like it's taken forever but SO worth it. Again, I just keep reminding myself that a SLOW weightloss is more likely to stay off.

Another week done!

I finished week 4 today! I am feeling so good about myself!!! I missed my outside run this morning because my youngest was sick last night and woke me up several times. It was too late to get out and be back before my husband had to leave so I went to the Y. Today I did 2.09 miles in 31.5 minutes. I also wore one of those rubbery belts around my belly so I was hot! Next week is even scarier to look at then this week was, check it out.

Workout one:
Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:
Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)
Walk 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes)
Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)
Walk 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes)
Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)

Workout two:
Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:
Jog 3/4 mile (or 8 minutes)
Walk 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)
Jog 3/4 mile (or 8 minutes)

Workout three:
Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog two miles (or 20 minutes) with no walking.


Uh...... yikes! The idea of me running for 20 minutes straight is almost surreal! I know I can do it though!!!

Let's talk food!

I didn't train today, not even yoga like I had planned.

My dear friend Shelley has introduced me to the concept of keeping your food in check by making sure no matter what you eat, make sure that no more then 20% of calories come from fat. Shelley has a whole site dedicated to her success in running and weight loss where she gets much more technical and I highly suggest checking it out. http://www.weightlossmommy.com/

She has recipes on there that are darned incredible. Monday I made yummy, chewy chocolate thimbul cookies with raspberry jam! Totally cures that need for something sweet or chocolatey!

Tonight for dinner I made a recipe she'd gotten from another site http://www.low-fat-diet-recipes.com/low-fat-oven-baked-kfc-chicken-recipe.html This one is full of great low fat eating tips too! This chicken is really yummy! I little bit salty for my taste, but I've been cooking pretty low sodium since last summer with Anthony's high cholesteral and blood pressure. All in all, this was a great (and easy) dinner. I paired it with some Idahoan instant loaded mashed potatos. You make them w/ just water and they are totally low fat and so good! They taste like they have sour cream and bacon in there. Can't beat that.

So, does this lowfat stuff work? I mean, the theory is that you can eat as much as you want/need to in order to feel satisfied as long as you keep it below 20% fat.

Well, as of last Sunday I was down 7lbs since Jan. 2. As of this morning I'd lost another 1.4 (in just 3 days) doing this. On top of that, Tuesday was one of those hungry days. You know, the kind where you'll eat anything in sight. I did, or it felt that way, but I made smart choices.

My goal for losing weight is to make changes that I can live with, that don't feel like I'm sacraficing everything I love. I think this could be like that for me. I want to lose weight at a steady but slower pace then I have on previous diets, we all know how successful those have been for me. I want to be down at least 50lbs totaly by the walk in November.

Good workout!

Workout 2 of week 4 is done!!!! It went so well. My legs actually felt better running then when I slowed to my walking pace. I did 2.08 miles in my 31 min 30 seconds so my pace was up a teeny tiny bit. Oh, and my heartrate never got over 168, compared to 172 on Monday, so that is awesome! All in all a good training day.

I need to be thinking about how I'm going to cross train for the 3 day and the half marathon at the same time.

I guess I hadn't talked about my goals here, or at least I don't think so.

I want to run an 8k run in May, do the 3 Day in November and then run the 1/2 marathon in Las Vegas in December. I hope I can figure out how to do long walks and long runs. Should be interesting. I also really need to work in some yoga or something on my non-running day.

Woohooo!!

OMG, I went to the Y this morning and did workout 1 of week 4.

I DID it. In fact, I realized as I hit one minute running and wasn't even winded yet that it's amazing what 9 previous workouts over the course of 3 weeks can do! It did seem like 90 seconds wasn't quite enough walk time but I decided to just go for the whole thing. I got through the 5 minutes and was SOOOO excited! My heartrate ended up in the low 170's by the time I ran my last 5 minutes but really came down ok.

I did 5 minutes of cool down walking at the end so my total time was 31 min 31 seconds and I went 2.02 miles.