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Today for the first time I felt that running was a little easier because I had lost over 20lbs. The pounding didn’t seem so hard. And I wasn’t as tired and worn down at the end.
Another nice thing about today’s run was that I wasn’t psyched out by the distance. The idea of doing a 10k wasn’t as scary. Today I went a little beyond 6.2 miles. I think doing 7 is quite doable. The idea of more than 8 freaks me out a little though.
I am going to try to follow a RunnersWorld.com Smart Coach plan for training for a half marathon. I don’t have a race in mind; I just want to get to that distance.
I’m feeling sad today. I’m pretty sure all my crazy feelings today are hormone-related. I’m right in the middle of the ol’ cycle. This probably also explains why blood sugar was 100. Usually it has been in the 110s.
I went to Ikea today and just felt so sad while I was walking around. Felt like I was wearing a cloak of despair. Normally when I go to Ikea I want to eat at the restaurant. Not today. First off, I wasn’t feeling too hungry. Secondly, nothing sounded appealing.
I’m hungry now though. I am going to eat some yummy butternut squash chickpea salad I made yesterday. The recipe is from smittenkitchen.com. I had to really restrain myself from eating all four servings. I think it’s a pretty healthy dish but it is kind of heavy on carbs for me.
Sometimes I wish I had never had children. In college I always said I never wanted children. I knew I was not the maternal type.
And now I have two. And every single damn day I feel trapped. I feel like I’m stuck in a job I am so so wrong for. I find no satisfaction or joy from being a mother. I feel like a square peg in a round hole.
I’m so frustrated by the constant squabbling. The messes I can’t keep up with. The house that will never be clean. The need to think about and prepare meal after meal.
When I imagined my adult life, I pictured living alone in a condo. I pictured being single. I pictured having no yard to contend with. I pictured being a workaholic, toiling away in an office. Doing what I don’t know. But I enjoyed having to work long days. I do remember that. I suppose that sounds like a sad, pathetic existence. But to me it seems quiet and peaceful.
I crave peace now. Maybe that is why I like to run.
When I look at my children and think about them growing up, my heart hurts and is afraid. Will they be teased in school. Will they feel so desperately sad that everyday they will imagine killing themselves as I used to do? Will they be hurt by other people? What if something awful happens to them? I don’t believe that I’m raising them with the strength to endure.
You can love your children and still be a terrible parent.
I’m not sure if I have the mental strength to endure parenthood.
Sometimes I wish I could go completely crazy. Really insane. Lose all sense of reality.
Sometimes I tell myself — get a grip, htfu. I could be a better mother if I worked on it. But I don’t feel much motivation. I feel so mentally worn down by the constant demands. My fantasy is to be left alone. My head needs quiet.
These days DH is away a lot. I don’t know how military wives and single mothers do it.
Maybe it was a huge mistake for me to be a stay at home mother. But I’m not sure I would have dealt very well with the stress of being a working mother either.
I’m just weak and pathetic.
Had a really fabulous run this morning. I think I may have even gotten a bit of the runner’s high. My run was several hours ago and I’m still feeling great from it. A lot of the wonderfulness comes from the perfect running weather. It was high 40s, cloudy, slightly breezy. Felt great. Initially, I kind of wished I had worn gloves but eventually I warmed up and was fine in a long sleeve shirt and capris.
During the run, I started to think about why I don’t set real goals and why I don’t push myself very much. I seem to be content with slogging along. And I realize it comes down to fear. But during the run I couldn’t figure out what I’m afraid of. Well, there are the obvious things. I’m afraid of physically injuring myself. I’m afraid of pushing my heart too much. I’m afraid of failing, not meeting a goal. But these fears aren’t totally responsible for me holding myself back.
I started to think about how I lack confidence in myself. Which made me think of my father. In my mind I guess I feel he is why I lack confidence but I can’t remember why exactly. Did he tell me I couldn’t do stuff? I don’t remember him doing that exactly. I know he yelled a lot. I know he was unhappy that I was a fat kid. But I also remember him being proud of me doing well in school. I know I was afraid of him and his temper. He’s been dead for 25 years so I don’t remember him that well anymore.
I often think about how hard other people push themselves. I think about the contestants on The Biggest Loser doing those crazy intense workouts. I don’t think I could survive. I don’t think I have anything in me that I could draw on, no inner strength, no belief, no will.
So all morning, I kept wondering what what what is my fear? And then it hit me. I think I’m afraid that if I push myself and succeed then I will have no excuse for the pathetic way I’ve been living. Not accomplishing anything, just drifting along day by day. Thinking this is it. But it doesn’t have to be. And the idea of really going after something scares me. Trying to really accomplish something.
But I’m not there yet. I’m not ready to push myself. I suppose that to be ready I just have to decide I am. But I can feel myself balking. In the meantime, I’ll just keep running.
I’ve recovered from the vacation gluttony and am back to my normal eating and running. Well, almost normal running. Got to get the ol’ mileage back up. I’m shooting for 20 miles per week.
Happy to report that I have hit the 20 lbs lost milestone. Wow, I almost can’t believe that I have lost 20 lbs! I’m almost feeling like a normal person. My goal is to get down to a single digit clothes size. I’m wearing size 10 jeans right now so I think I should be able to get to size 8.
The eating is going better now. Went to Costco last week and bought spinach, red peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, strawberries, grapes. Speaking of strawberries, I made strawberries with balsamic vinegar a few days ago with some strawberries that were nearing their end. Basically you combine some balsamic vinegar with some sugar and mix with fresh strawberries. Let rest for awhile. Before eating sprinkle with pepper. It sounds a tad strange but, WOW, delish. And the pepper is so weirdly perfect. But no one else in my family liked this. More for me, ha! The asparagus I roasted with some olive oil and Herbes de Provence (Allrecipes.com recipe), very tasty. For some reason I bought a big jar of Herbes de Provence so I was happy to be able to use some.
In the past, I would let produce go bad too quickly but now I am motivated to eat it all first.
Generally, as you get closer to your goal weight, it gets harder to lose weight. And I can see my calorie budget going down in Lose It. So it’s eat less and burn more. I’m thinking some muscle will really help me. But I am so not interested in strength training. Today I tried to do some girly push ups. I managed to do five. Saaaaaaaad. Maybe I should try the 100 push ups challenge. Push ups are supposed to be a good thing to do, right?
Over the weekend we took a long road trip to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. Shared a cabin with another family. The weather was a bit rainy and cool but the kids enjoyed it (except for the drive to and fro). The drive takes around 9 hours but we took 2 days to get there and on our way back we also took 2 days. For some reason, being trapped in the car just made me want to eat and eat. I ate tons of Kirkland trail mix. Beef jerky. And then we’d stop for fast food. Ugh. Same thing on the way back. I think our last meal on the road was at Arby’s. By then all of us, kids included, were so sick of fast food. We all decided to avoid fast food from now on. Except for Subway. In the future, I am going to pack a cooler and bring our own food. On the way there, I did pack apples but only one got eaten (by hubby).
And even though I packed a jump rope, I didn’t use it. Didn’t do any exercise whatsoever. Unless you count the 10 minutes of Wii Just Dance and the less than 1/2 mile walk in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We would have walked longer but it started to rain and we were not dressed appropriately.
It was good to get away for a bit though.
So this is Day 1 of No Fast Food (except for Subway). Not that I plan on eating much Subway either. I’m getting back on track with the running too. Ran 3 miles yesterday and will run tomorrow morning. Easing myself back in.
Well, I’ve given up on the Maffetone low heart rate training for now. Not running was starting to wear on my psyche. I was losing motivation to eat healthier. And it was frustrating trying to burn more calories by walking. And boring.
So this morning I got up early and went for my first morning run of the year! Only 2 miles and slow ones at that but, boy, did it feel good to be outside and running. And I now feel like it will be easier to stick to healthier eating. The last few days I stopped tracking my food and calories and was pretty much letting myself eat whatever I wanted. Which was too much junk. One day I ended up eating cookie after cookie after cookie. I’m talking 2 Chips Ahoy cookies followed by 4 or 5 (maybe 6??) Girl Scout Do Si Dos. Time to move on!
I’m thinking I should start scrapping again. I don’t know. It’s time consuming but a good creative outlet. In honor of my morning run I shall post a layout I did about morning running. I can’t remember if I posted this already.
This Maffetone low heart rate is proving to be quite the challenge already. I see people running outside and feel a little sad and wistful. But I must think LONG-TERM. I just read a case study of a woman who used the Maffetone method. It took her almost a year to get to the point where she could jog. This is kind of depressing. But but but. I’m thinking long term. And as things stand now, I just don’t feel like continuing on the same path is going to get me the results I want — which is to run longer and run faster.
I was almost going to skip my walk today. I just got The Time Traveler’s Wife DVD from Netflix so I was thinking about watching it while daughter was in kindergarten. But the nice weather beckoned and I realized that tomorrow I might be eating way more than I should so it was important to get in some sort of workout.
I’m really curious to see how my walk times are going to be a month from now.
Well, last week I hit 20 miles running for the week, which was a goal of mine. And I had a 2 hour run, another goal. I guess the idea of doing more isn’t doing it for me. So I’ve decided to try Maffetone training or low heart rate training. When I run easy, my heart rate can easily go in the 160s, which seems too high to me. And I feel like that I’m not going to get any faster because I fear pushing my heart too much. So I’m hoping that if I can stick with this Maffetone training I can build up a good aerobic base at a lower heart rate. He gives a formula for determining your training heart rate. Looks like mine is probably 125-129. I initially thought it was higher but someone pointed out to me that because I’m taking medication, I should subtract 5-10 beats.
So at a heart rate of 125-129, I can only walk. Any running will cause my heart rate to immediately shoot up. The idea is that if I consistently walk at this heart rate, I will eventually find that I have to walk faster to maintain the same heart rate. Eventually I will be able to run at this heart rate. Well, that is the plan anyway.
I’ve been reading about Maffetone training (mostly at RunningAhead.com’s low heart rate training group) and am learning that this kind of training requires much patience and ability to not care about speed since you will most likely have to go super slowly before you can go faster. I worry about losing whatever running fitness I have but for now I want to trust this plan. I am actually building aerobic fitness this way (well I hope so).
In other news — I think my weight loss is slowing as I’m getting sloppy about my eating. I find myself snacking more and not eating enough healthy foods. Cooking is such a bore!
During the week I had been thinking that this weekend I would run 8 miles. But when I woke up this morning I discover that it is rainy. And windy. I gave myself permission to not do 8 miles. Told myself I could do it next weekend. But as I puttered about, got breakfast for kids, got ready to run, I realized that I cannot let weather sway me so easily.
I know I am slow and that the run would take me 2 hours. So I decided that today would be a good day to try out a gel. I’ve always avoided them because I wasn’t sure of the logistics of using them. Thought I’d get into a sticky mess. Awhile back I had gotten a Hammer espresso gel. Nik from 4Feet Running raves about the espresso flavor.
I decided to consult the Runner’s World What Should I Wear tool to see how I should dress for the weather — 45 degrees, possible rain, winds around 14mph, gusting at 20 mph. I’m glad I followed their suggestion to wear a jacket. I was going to go out in just a long sleeve shirt with a short sleeve shirt layered over it. But I took off the short sleeve shirt and put on a lightweight jacket. That jacket was very helpful when it came to dealing with the wind. I think if I hadn’t worn it, I would have felt a bit miserable. Because of the wet conditions I wore my SmartWool socks.
Around noon, I finally got myself out the door. I’m feeling pretty sluggish and slow, very unmotivated. Not really enjoying the run at all. Kept thinking of the gel. Around mile 4 I decide to eat the gel. Mmmmm, oh my, that espresso flavor is tasty! I managed to time things so that I came to a trash can shortly after I finished the gel so I was able to throw away the wrapper and not have to carry it around. I did bring along a ziploc baggie for the wrapper though just in case, which someone suggested to me.
I guess the caffeine and energy kick from the gel really helped me because shortly after I started feeling so much better and was able to run better. I even started to enjoy the gray, dreary weather. I had to slog through some wet wet grass while I tried to avoid deeper puddles. My feet got soaked anyway. But the SmartWool socks are great. My feet felt fine and weren’t cold. I even appreciated the wind. Toward the end of the run it started to rain a bit, which helped me to decide not to go for 9. Yes, at some point I started to entertain notions of going for 9 miles. I ran the last 4 miles faster than the first 4, which was a good feeling. I decided to go for 2 hours straight so finished with 8.2 miles. And I finished feeling confident that I could do 9 miles some day.
Overall, I was pretty proud of myself that I got my 8 miles done today. Yay, me!
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