Janathon Day 10 update…and Day 11 start

What up Janathoners!  So long as you’re getting active for this first month in 2013…that’s the best thing.  🙂

Thursday, January 10th: 5-6pm Muscle & Flow

Push Up Challenge:  9 FU style!

Friday, January 11th: …nothing yet…

Push Up Challenge: 10 FU style and 20 Knees!

I’m making sure to do a little something every day.  This weekend I’m going to mentally prepare for those 2 little races noted on the right side of this post.  You see those?  Yeah, the NeverLand 5K and Tinkerbell Half are next weekend!  I will freely admit that I have not maintained my training plan.  Did not complete near the number of distance miles that I should have.  I have maintained levels of fitness by yoga’ing and circuit training – so I am hopeful that I will be carried by that and the excitement of running with thousands of others.  I will prepare myself not to be disappointed with my time…but plan on pushing myself to accomplish my goals.  No giving in here!

I enjoyed the green smoothie starter for every meal.  Certainly kept me filled up and hydrated at the same time.  I’ve been using water in the smoothies to keep them light.  Although yesterday I made a batch of date balls…must have had 25 finished balls….this morning I only had 2 balls left.  Whoops!  Guess they are a little too tasty.  🙂

See ya later

Cathy

 

So unmotivated…..UGH!

I’m hoping that as I do my Janathon Day 7 update it will motivate me to do my exercise for Janathon Day 8.  Still hoping……

Monday, January 7th: 5-6pm Vinyasa Flow class at XploreYoga

Push Up Challenge:  7 FU’s (full-on style, just so you know I’m not swearing at you acronym style) and 20 Knees.  My yoga instructor may have chaturanga’d my arms to fatigue in class because it took me a while to get my 7 FU’s in and then to maintain my baseline of 20 Knees.  Eeesh.

I watched the Biggest Loser Sunday night and Monday night.  While I love Jillian Michaels…she sure turned on the beast factor this season.  I mean I get the need to motivate people – but it became apparent that these folks were not responding to her “in your face/drill sergeant” style of motivation.  On Monday when they had their little pow-wow and she agreed to modify her approach to better suit the needs of her team I was quite surprised.  Although it didn’t help as she is now down to 2 in just 2 shows.  Super Yikes!

Sooooo… I haven’t gotten motivated yet for more exercise on Janathon Day 8.  The only thing I have done is a ton of squats while on a conference call (otherwise I’d feel like a total slug) and 8 FU pushups at around 430pm.

I really need to NOT hit the snooze bar in the morning and just get my butt into that freezing cold garage and run or circuit my way to a warm sweaty state.  I’m so lame.

Tomorrow…Day 9 I predict will be much more sweaty than Day 8.  Count on it!

See ya later

Cathy

Janathon – Day 6 (quick update)

Supposed to do 8…did 4.  BLEAH!

Sunday, January 6th: Treadmill 4 miles (SSSSLLLLLLOOOOOWWWW) and my PU (push up) challenge.  I did 7 FU (full on) PU’s and 20 knee PU’s!

Whoopie!  I did 2 more FU PU’s  than I completed Saturday so I am super jazzed about that.

I keep my arms close to the side of my body – similar to a yoga chaturanga (I posted a Lululemon link for reference).  I feel more confident in my form when I keep my arms close, it allows me to move slowly through the move and not just collapse down and then wobble my way back up.

How to Chaturanga

I do my FU push ups first because that allows me to go until fatigue – or my form gets all janky.  Plus this is what I want to improve so I’d rather have my full arm strength (what little I have) available to do these.

Once my FU form is lost I transition to my knees to do as many knee style push ups as I can (trying to maintain at least 20 since that was my baseline).

Once I get super strong…maybe I’ll do these…  Heck Yeah!

See ya later…with my Janathon Day 7 update.

Cathy

 

Race Bib Pickup – Brazen Rocky Ridge

LiLo and I are “running” the Brazen Rocky Ridge 5K this Saturday.  I say “running” because this is the hilliest place we have ever seen!  (We didn’t know what we were signing up for, that’s for sure.)

Being the two supersmart gals that we are, this morning we met at the race spot to get a ‘lay of the land’ only to find that they closed the trail we’ll actually be on to set up for Saturday.  To feel like we didn’t waste our time we hit the Elderberry trail instead.  OM-stinken-G!!!!  If this isn’t the most vertical race route ever created! (Apparently it’s not, I ‘oogled “most vertical race route” and it spat back at me Badwater Ultramarathon, which starts at 280′ and ends at 8500′; so I guess I should stop acting like a baby.)

Las Trampas Regional Wilderness Park

We were huffing & puffing AND trying to carry on a conversation – like all good gal pals should.  We did look around (to make sure we weren’t ambushed by a cougar or a crazy person (I did watch The Hills Have Eyes you know) and the views are absolutely GORGEOUS!  I’ll be sure to take photos while we are “running”.  Ha!

Here’s a video of 2010’s race so you can have an eyeball into what I’ll be doing on Saturday morning.

After our morning “hike”, we drove to downtown Danville’s Forward Motion Sports to pick up our race bibs and so I could check out a pair of Mizuno’s for my upcoming Half’s.  With our race entry we got 15% off any purchase at FM when we picked up our stuff so I figured I would try to take advantage of saving a little dough.  In addition to my sweet new kicks I also joined the cult of water belts.

MIzuno Wave Rider

Yes I drank the water…while I carry my own water… HA!

I know, I know…why’d I pick the most obnoxious looking one?  Well the others looked weirder AND didn’t sit right on my waistline.  But really, the real reason for buying into the water belt idea is an article I read recently (Runners World or Active.com or some other super smartsy place) where a tip to reduce your run time was NOT to stop at water stations.  DER!

I always have to slow down to drink my water/’ade otherwise I will literally drown myself while standing up right on dry ground. (I think that was a CSI episode).  I mean have you ever tried to guzzle a dixie cup full of liquid while jog/running?  Your nose holes will be clean as a whistle if you try.  So I can totally agree with the article’s opine that if you don’t stop your race time will decrease.  (insert head smack here).

I won’t be using the belt for this weekend, but I will be using it for the Tinkerbell Half in January and the Princess Half in February…in addition to practice runs with my meet up group.

Anyhoo…super cool swag again and really neat-o t-shirt.  Enjoy the pics…beam your “fast” thoughts my way around 830am pacific time.

That’s me!

There’s the Swag’ger baby!

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

 

 

Move it…it’s Monday

This post is really for me…telling myself to move it.  I’ve been MIA on the bloggedy front and really it’s because I’ve changed jobs and that turned my whole schedule completely on its head which meant I lost my head.

In addition to getting a whole new squad in a whole new area of the business that I do not know; I still have all of my previous work.  So needless to say I am running a little bit looney.

With the switch I am having to load balance prior work with new work so, like always, the easiest person to ask to “give a little” is yourself.  Which means I haven’t been to yoga in 3 weeks…failed on the last 2 weeks of my training plan…ate sorta OK and worked way too haphazardly.

I had to travel to Oklahoma, Monday through Thursday of last week to support a previously scheduled meeting.  Oklahoma was fine…that trip always requires a plane switch so I did the Denver route there and back.  Eating while in OKC was completely not healthy.  I had big old portions, not as many fruits and veggies as I should have, full size candy bars during the meeting and totally did not use MyFitnessPal to track my food/exercise.  BLEAH!  I did drink a TON of water…but we only had those mini bottles in the cooler so I felt like a hog grabbing one every 30 minutes.  Good thing everyone else supplemented their water intake with Dr. Pepper‘s, Cokes, Sprites, and all other bubbly drinks.

One of my dinners in OKC

 

Exercise went the way of my food choices – completely unmindful.  I had the best intentions because I’ve been doing a good job about waking up early and then hitting my body weight circuits.  I packed 3 exercise outfits for each of the days and figured out what I’d do if the hotel gym didn’t have enough treadmills for users.  How much exercise did I do while in OKC – ABSOLUTELY ZERO!  You could have found me sitting in my bed eating pilfered full size candy bars from the meeting or eating dried fruit (while somewhat healthy, not in the volume I was consuming) or eating the chocolate chip cookies provided in the hotel lobby.  SUPER BLEAH!!!

The weirdest part was I didn’t even have any emotions to this super fail and I think it’s because I’m the only one who is impacted by the fail.  No one else sees or feels the impact of my poor eating and exercising choices except me.  When I came home I just told HunBun this week sucked and I was getting back on my plan (which I did).  I didn’t even realize the “non-event” last week was until I wrote this down.  I guess in the past I have over emphasized things to the point where I have a ridiculous response to something like this.  I mean I am disappointed that I didn’t stick to my plan like I normally do when on work trips…but its almost like I realized that even with a 1 week fail I hadn’t ruined anything.  It can be fixed.  I can get back on my plan.  I can start by waking up early and getting my booty moving and feeding my body what I should be.

So that’s what I did.  After getting home at 845pm Thursday night I got myself out of bed at 5am Friday morning and hopped on the treadmill.  Then I focused on eating whole foods – no processed foods – with a focus on tons of veggies and protein.

Breakfast: Egg White Veggie Scramble

Big ol’ salad with smoked salmon

Veggie pocket with Chicken Salad

So not to say “problem solved”…more like “problem mitigated”.  I did really well Friday and Saturday…then ate some veggie chips on Sunday from Sunflower/Sprouts….followed by a small handful of chocolate covered almonds/cranberries with 2 slices of Supreme pizza from Safeway (what are you gonna do when you can get a family size pizza for $7.99!).  Hahahaha!

Sorry so wordy…with very little pictures.  But I just wanted you to know where I was….how I’ve been…and how I will be.  🙂

So if you ever feel like you failed, look at it without any filters and move on.  Life’s too short to waste on woulda-coulda-shoulda‘s.

See ya later

Cathy

**By the way, I should be back on track for posting on this bloggedy blog although I am making some changes.  Getting a little more focus going on..learning as I go Peeps, learning as I go.    🙂