2018 Rite Aid Cleveland 10K - Race Report

Day 49/55

Oh how I love writing race reports! They might be boring for you to read, but it means that I'm healthy enough to be out there running and that never gets old.

Last year the Hot Chocolate 15K was the first "big" race my mom ever participated in. Although she doesn't think she'll ever do that distance again, she was willing to try her hand at a 10K. I have done the Cleveland HALF Marathon 3 times ('11, '12, '17), and since I'm back to running I'd like to keep participating in the event in some capacity. I decided that rather than pushing myself back to the half marathon distance I would do the 10K this year. I remember deciding in 2012 that I really liked the 10K distance. It's long enough to still challenge yourself without being so long you feel like you're going to die at the end. Don't get me wrong though, there will be more half's and hopefully at least one more full in my lifetime!

Getting cold and wet waiting for the start. 

My mom and I decided it would be best to go to the race together so she wouldn't have to navigate downtown on race morning by herself. Not that she couldn't do it or anything, but I know she tends to get stressed about that stuff. 😉I went to her house on Saturday evening to spend the night so we could go to the race together on Sunday morning. It was nice spending a child-less evening with my parents. We stayed up entirely too late watching the majority of the Cavs game.

This morning came quickly and before I knew it I was back downtown to start another race. As we were driving into the city it started misting, which turned into convincing raindrops by the time we parked the car. So much for partly cloudy and no rain! We thought we were going to be able to stay dry until the start of the race because last year they let us into the Q arena prior to the race. That did not appear to be the case this year and we were already quite wet from walking to the start from our parking spot anyway. So we just stood in the rain for the next 15+ minutes waiting for the start of the race.

This race felt more crowded than last year. I was surprised at how long the 10Ker's stayed with the half and full marathoners. We were on the same course until right around mile 5 and then we hooked back up with them before mile 6. It was kind of strange, but kind of cool at the same time. When the 10K went straight and everyone else turned left I thought we'd be on our own until basically the last .2 or so (since everyone finishes in the same place). Pretty soon after we broke off, our course took us on a right turn and all of the sudden we had hooked back up with the very speedy half and full marathoners. The mile marker I saw for them at this point was mile 9....and we were at less than 6. In some ways I didn't think this was a great way to do the course because you have the very fast runners meeting up with the middle to the back of the packers for the 10K. It seemed to be OK though since at this point the faster runners could stay over to the left.

Anyway, I was shocked at how crowded the race stayed. It's hard to tell in this picture because it was so dreary, but this was during mile 4 and it was still quite crowded.

I felt good during this entire race. It almost felt easy - until that horribly annoying hill between miles 4 and 5 (just like last year). That slowed me down quite a bit, but I was able to bounce back to my faster pace when that hill was finally done. I have been doing 90 second/30 second intervals and I was able to keep my intervals the entire time. Actually, there were even a couple of times that we ran through our walk breaks because it was a nice downhill and we wanted to take advantage.

Again, you have the difference between what my Garmin says I did and what the official results show. According to my Garmin I covered 6.37 miles in 1:16:11, which amounts to an overall pace of 11:57 minute/mile!!! The official results were 6.2 miles in 1:15:56, which is a 12:15 m/m and officially beats my previous personal record of 1:17:51! And the best part? I really feel like I could have kept going.

And now 6 more days to work on my goals before our awesome vacation!

And this is what happens to my hair after 6.2 wet miles! 

FRIDAY Weigh In & Packet Pick Up!

I did decide to change my "official" weigh in day to Fridays. It really doesn't matter what my official weigh in day is when I'm weighing myself every day; but there has to be a day that I update my weight in the WW app. I went through the app and actually changed all my official weigh-in's to Friday from the time I started. It's kind of cool because now it shows that I have consistently lost weight every week for the last 7 weeks. Some of those were big losses, and some of them were small; but 7 weeks of my weight going down is awesome! And frankly, in the 13 weeks that I've been doing WW my weight went up once and maintained once. Every other week has been a loss.

I was slightly nervous that after changing my official weigh-in, this would be the first Friday in 7 weeks that I went up. I mean, I ate a lot on Saturday and Sunday last weekend so I wouldn't really be able to be mad if I was up today from last Friday. But I wasn't! I was down .6 from last Friday. That means I'm at my lowest weight yet (since probably 2007). Today's weight was 193.2. I have one more week before our Disney vacation. I know I can lose 3.2 in one week because I've done it before; but I'm not sure that I will and I'm totally OK with that. I am pretty confident that I'll be down again (even if it's just another half pound) and that will still be lower than I ever thought I'd be for our trip. I can't wait to add to this comparison pic from our last 2 trips. What's even better is that I cannot wear that tank this trip because it's just way too big!

Moving on to the next topic at hand; the packet pick up. This weekend is the 41st Cleveland Marathon. I have done the half marathon distance of this event 3 times (2011, 2012 and 2017). On Sunday my mom and I are going to be completing the 10K together. This will be my 3rd stand alone 10K and I'm kind of looking for a PR (because, really, I always am); but I'm not feeling confident that will happen so that's OK. One thing that I am super excited about is the fact that I will be the lightest I have ever been when racing. Let that sink in for a minute. Click on my races tab and check out how many races I've completed since 2007.  I'll tell you - 25.

Ok. I just realized that maybe I was lying about that because I did get down to about 190 in 2007. So, I looked it up and I was lighter in 2007 when I completed my first ever 5K (by only a couple of pounds). So for 24 out of the 25 races I have completed I have weighed more than I do right now. That's another reason why I really want a PR. I mean, I should be able to run a little faster than I did back in October or in October of 2012 simply because I weigh less. But, I know that's not how it always works. What will be will be and I'll just be happy that I'm healthy enough to be out there doing it.

And let me end today's post with this little #facetofacefriday. The pic on the left was taken in February of 2013. I had been out of the hospital for a month, was on a ton of new meds including a hefty dose of prednisone and I was pretty miserable. I hated this pic which was unfortunate because it was a cute pic of Robbie and me together. The middle pic was taken this past Christmas and I love this pic of my family. The pic on the right was the one from 2 weeks ago when I was dropping my daughter off to go to DC and she took a selfie of us in the car. I posted the pic on Facebook and my one friend who hasn't seen me in a while (like only 2 months maybe) called me to tell me how she was so shocked when she saw how different my face looked. I didn't necessarily see it when I looked at that pic so I had to find one to compare it to. I didn't (and still don't really) see much of a difference between the middle and right pics, but my husband said he could see it for sure. I'll go with it. 😉

Happy Friday friends! Enjoy your weekend. I'll be back after Sunday with my 10K race report.

Monday Confessional

Day 43 of 55

Welp, this week did not quite go as planned.

I ended up eating and drinking too much both Saturday and Sunday. When I got on the scale this morning it was up again from last week, but I'm still not worried about it. Last Friday the scale was the lowest number I've seen yet. I can't even express to you how bloated I have been feeling lately. It's actually really weird to me. I don't remember getting quite this bloated in the past. I think it's probably because I eat pretty well most of the time and when I don't eat well my body doesn't know how to adjust to that. I mean, the bloat was so uncomfortable last night it woke me up in the middle of the night!

I knew the scale would be up this morning but I will say I was a little surprised to see how much it went up. Again, I'm not worried about it and I'm not stressing about it. I had made the conscious decision this weekend to eat and drink and not have any guilt over it. I may have the negative demon whispering in my ear that this must mean I haven't really changed and that the scale will just keep going in the wrong direction; but I'm not listening. I am changing this time and those changes aren't going to happen all at once or without work. They are going to happen when I fight the demon in my head that tries to tell me that I can't or won't.

The changes will happen when after taking 2 days to indulge I get right back on track the next day. I had decided that I need another little "jumpstart" week like I did back in July of last year. My goal this week will be to try to stay around 1200 calories most days. I should be able to drop the weight I've "gained" over the last 2 weeks (perhaps plus a little more) if I can stay around 1200 calories this week. I will be focusing on using lots of 0 point foods, but I will also track my food in MyFitnessPal to keep accountable with how many calories I'm eating of 0 point foods.

What's funny is how it really all depends on when your official weigh in day is. I mean, I choose to make my official weigh in on Monday mornings. I noticed today that if I would have used Friday as my weigh in day I would be consistently losing every week since back in March! Hmmmm....makes me think maybe I should change my official weigh in day to Fridays! But, more importantly, it shows me that it doesn't really matter. My weight will fluctuate. When weighing myself every day I find it easier to not focus so much on that number - even on my official weigh in day. I can tell you that if I wouldn't have gotten on the scale all week and saw another 1.6 lb gain after gaining 1.4 last week I probably would have lost it. But, since I weigh myself every day and I'm learning how my body responds to things I absolutely expected a gain today. Perhaps not as high as it was, but I didn't let that derail me.

The good is that last week I still had 4 blue dot days and was completely on plan until Saturday. That's another reason why I know the gain isn't really "true" today. Given how many weekly points I had left after Friday (like 27) and how many FitPoints I earn (95 that I could have swapped), I don't even think I went over my points this week. I think if I would have tracked what I ate Saturday and Sunday I would still have some points left; but 2 high calorie days are going to show on the scale regardless.

So that's it. The goal this week is to keep my calories low and to get back to being focused on the task at hand! I ended today right around 1202 calories. A good start. 12 more days until vacation. Regardless of what has happened I know I will be at my goal weight of 195 lbs for this vacation. I am still pretty confident that I'll be under that.

Less Than 3 Weeks!!!

Day 36 of 55

So are you wondering how I did with my week "off"? I have to say I am actually quite proud of myself. I started the week by tracking all my food for the first few days. I wasn't trying to stay within a certain number of points or anything, but I was just wanting to see how much I was eating. I continued to weigh myself every day and I was happy to see the scale actually go down throughout the week. By Friday I weighed about .6 less than I had on Monday. I went into the weekend and really let myself go. And you know what? I'm 100% fine with that. The scale this morning was up 1.4 from last Monday and I am more than OK with that. I've had weeks before when I've "let myself go" and will gain 4 pounds in a week. And since that "gain" came just from the weekend, I am confident that a lot of it is water weight and bloat from eating and drinking too much the last couple days. I have no doubt those 1.4 pounds will come off plus more this week.

There were things I did this week that make me believe I'm actually making changes. For example, on Friday the hubs and I went to lunch because I had been really wanting a burger from Burntwood. When we ended up there I asked him if he wanted to split a burger. We did also split their homemade tator tots appetizer; but every other time we've gone there we've split that appetizer and I would eat the entire burger and fries myself. In a week where I was letting myself basically have all the freedom I wanted, I still chose to split that burger because I knew that the whole burger would be too much and then I wouldn't be happy with myself. When the waiter brought our plates with the burger split and a full serving of fries for each of us I kind of laughed. A big part of the reason I wanted to split the burger was to also split the fries. Fries are one of my biggest weaknesses. I probably ate more than half; but I did not finish my fries! I was able to leave the restaurant feeling full, but not stuffed. It was a great feeling.

Another thing was on Tuesday when I took the kids to get ice cream after my son's concert. I would say probably 90% of the time when we go get ice cream at this place near us I get a specialty sundae. On Tuesday I got a small twist cone. Again, I could have gotten the big sundae. I gave myself "permission" to do that. But I didn't want to. I still have goals in mind even with giving myself a little leeway last week. I had those goals in my mind all week still.

And today? Today I am 100% back on track. I started my morning with a very hard workout at Living Lean.  I decided it was a big breakfast day since it was almost 11 by the time I was able to eat and I had a hard workout prior to that! Believe it or not though, this meal is only 7 points. It amounts to about 565 calories so it's a hearty meal; but it stays with me so that's good too.

Lunch was a turkey sandwich with grapes and carrots with guacamole. I had a couple hard boiled eggs as a snack this afternoon and then some grilled chicken with Brussels sprouts for dinner. I ended my day with some Skinny Pop sea salt popcorn mini cakes and then an Enlightened ice cream bar. My day ends having eaten 21 points and about 1570 calories.

The scale will do whatever tomorrow. Maybe it will go up because my body will have a delayed reaction to over-eating this weekend. Maybe it'll go down because today I was right back on track. Regardless of what the scale does though I feel good. I may step on the scale every day, but it no longer dictates my mood or my day (for now). What makes me feel good is knowing that I'm doing what is in my power to reach my goals. Of course it's easier to feel this way when I had such a successful month in April. The success that I had in April leads me to believe that if I do what I am "supposed" to do, the scale will eventually go down.

Here's to another week. I have 19 days remaining until our vacation. I am feeling pretty confident that I can reach my goal of weighing 190 lbs by the time we leave. I may be super excited for my vacation; but I am going to try to stay as focused as I was in April to meet my goals.

My goals this week are to go back to what I was doing in April:
1) Track everything I eat
2) stick to my workout schedule
3) only use my dailies and weeklies
4) get 5/7 blue dots on my WW tracker.

Is This Real Life?

Is it actually happening this time???

First things first; I've talked about Living Lean several times on the blog since I started going there in January. About a month ago they contacted me and asked if I would mind if they promoted my blog to their members. Seriously? Me? Of course I said YES! I mean, I blog for me, but I am  happy to have people read my inner most thoughts and feelings 😝But seriously, I was absolutely honored to be highlighted in their May newsletter. So, for anyone that might have seen my blog in that newsletter and decided to check me out; thanks! I hope you enjoy the ride!

Back to the task at hand. As cheesy as it sounds, I feel like this can't possibly be real life right now. I can't believe that something has seemed to click in my brain and I am actually doing it. Yes, I still have a long way to go;  but not nearly as long as I had just 4 short months ago. Not as long as I had 6 years ago when I started this blog. And not even as long as 10 years ago!

Honestly, nothing really has changed since all those other times that I've tried. I am doing all the same things that I did back then; eating less and working out. So why is it working this time when it didn't in the past? Well, first of all, it did in the past; just not to the point that it appears to be working this time. It has everything to do with what's going on in my brain. I was texting with Pam the other day (one of the amazing trainers at Living Lean whom I love) and she texted "What I took away from your blog is that you are finally loving yourself and are making choices because you love yourself, not because you have to, but because you want to". Wow.

She's 100% correct. It's so sad to me, but this feeling is so unknown that it continues to amaze me every single day. I was talking to some people at Living Lean today and I was saying that I feel a little silly with all these super positive blog posts these days. I feel like I'm just bragging on myself and that it's kind of narcissistic. Maybe it is. But you know what? I don't care! I am beyond proud of myself. I don't think I realized how much I didn't like myself until I started really loving myself. I love that in all these years of struggling I never gave up. I love that I fought tooth and nail to get my Crohn's into remission and that I continue to listen to the cues my body gives me so I can continue to be the best me possible. I love (and don't take for granted) what my amazing body can do. I no longer hate anything about me. There are things that I still want to change or improve; but I don't hate them. And that, my friends, is huge.

Yesterday I took my daughter to get her haircut and my hairdresser was telling me how great I look and how she's so proud of me. I was loving every second of it because that is how I am feeling. There were some other ladies at the salon who did not know me or where I have come from. One of them asked if I had a before picture so I said sure! When we were in the car going home my daughter said something about me not wanting to show them my before pictures and I said no, I totally wanted to show them. I am now proud of those before pictures because it shows how far I have come. I'm still not a small girl so people might not understand why someone would be telling me how great I look. Show them my before picture and now they understand only slightly more about me. They still can't see the struggles and the years between that before picture and now. And, they can't see the transformation that is taking place inside my head; but they'll understand slightly more why where I am currently is such a big deal.

One last thing before I go. I decided yesterday I had to go shopping because the shorts I put on Wednesday were so big I could take them off without unbuttoning them! Then, yesterday I put on a pair of capris and they were falling halfway down my butt every time I walked. I decided to go to Old Navy because it's been a long time since I've been able to shop there. Since the shorts were an 18 but the capris were a 16 I decided to try on 14's. I thought, if they don't fit I just won't buy anything until they do (or I'll buy them and they will fit soon). Guys, the pants and shorts in these pics are a size 14!!!! And both those tops are a large! Seriously!?!?! Is this real life right now?? And, I wore the cropped pants to a school event last night and after wearing them for a few hours they have a little bit of room.....like I'm thinking they may not fit for that much longer. What?!?! Crazy and amazing. Needless to say, I bought both those tops and both those bottoms. And for the first time in a very long time I had so much fun trying on clothes.

What Did I Eat?

Some of you may be wondering that the heck I ate during the month of April to drop almost 14 pounds in one month. And, you may not really care what I ate. That's cool too. I wanted to do this blog post because I find that when I'm reading through my old posts I kind of wish I would talk about what I was eating in more detail. Recently I was reading through my posts from 2012 when I was doing really well on WW and I talked about points and having a "good" week, etc;  but I didn't really talk about the actual food I was eating.

Obviously everyone is different. I'm not writing this post so that people can tell me that I eat too many carbs or that I should avoid sugar, etc. Clearly, what I did in April worked for me. We're all adults. We can have different opinions. I'm not writing this post so you go and eat what I was eating. I'm just writing it so that when I re-read this when I'm struggling I can see what I did to lose 14 pounds in a month!

Breakfast

Starting every day with a smile :)

Homemade bagel, egg and bacon

I ate probably the same 3 or 4 breakfasts all month. I started the month with hard boiled eggs and a
banana. After following some people on Instagram I decided to branch out and try other things. Several days in April I ate 2 whole grain waffles, 2-3 scrambled eggs with a tiny bit of cheese (I measured out 12-13 grams of cheese), 2 turkey sausage links, and a banana. Then, after deciding to try the 2 ingredient dough, I made bagels and ate those with either laughing cow cheese on them (SO yummy) or as a
breakfast sandwich with eggs and bacon. Most days I also did not eat breakfast until around 10 or even later. I would not eat until after my workout so most days I probably fasted close to 14 hours without even having planned that out or thought about it.

Lunches

Lunch has always been my nemesis. I don't know why I have such issues with lunch, but I do. Lunch would often be the time that I would just run to McDonald's because it's close and easy. The first few days of the month I ate grilled chicken breast with brussels sprouts agratin. The sprouts were a recipe from the beginning of the year when I was doing low carb that I really liked. The problem with them was that they were actually really high in points because of all the dairy in them. After eating those for a few days I decided I wouldn't do that again because it was just too many points for lunch. That first weekend I made myself an egg salad wrap with some grapes and carrots. I probably ate this for lunch more than 50% of my month. It was tasty and I only had to count the tortilla. I sometimes had leftovers from the night before. But, even with a 14 pound weight loss there was one day I had my favorite meal at Chick-fil-a and 2 days that I chose to have popcorn for lunch when I met my mom to see a movie.

Dinners

Turkey meatballs with zoodles.

Sloppy Joes with zoodles and corn

Dinners were where I would get my variety. Each week I would take time to make a menu prior to going grocery shopping. We ate lots of chicken breast, pork tenderloin, steak, etc. But, we also had sloppy joes (I made them with ground turkey instead of beef and put mine over zoodles). We had spaghetti and meatballs a couple times and again, I used zoodles instead of noodles. But then there were at least 3 pizza nights. 2 of those nights were homemade with the 2 ingredient dough; but that 3rd one was pizza from Papa John's. There was also chicken sausages, chicken fajitas, turkey breast, and a couple of dinners out.

Snacks

One of the things I enjoy about eating my breakfast late (or fasting if that's what you want to call it) is that it leaves less hours in the day to eat. I often wouldn't eat breakfast until 10 or sometimes 11.  There would be no need or reason to have any snacks then before lunch. I'd eat lunch around 1:00. Dinner was usually between 5 and 6 most nights. What I did do was eat an Enlightened Ice Cream bar pretty much every night starting in the middle of the month. Most of my other snacks consisted of grapes, bananas, strawberries, oranges, light string cheese, deli turkey, hard boiled eggs, etc. I basically tried to focus on using mainly 0 point foods if I felt like I really needed a snack. I was trying to also focus on only eating when hungry (what a concept, right?). There were plenty of times I was legitimately hungry so I would choose things like turkey or a hard boiled egg to hope that it would fill me up more than some fruit (or some junk food). I frankly fit plenty of "junk food" into my month; but really focused on eating "clean" or "healthy" the majority of the time.

What's so interesting to me is that I found that I really needed to add some 0 point snacks into my days because if I was only eating the 23 points I was allotted, I wasn't even eating 1200 calories most days. I really think this new freestyle program is great; but I also think it could be easy to under eat. If I was "scared" to use 0 point foods because they still have calories, and I was only eating my 23 points, I for sure wouldn't be eating enough. There have been days where I have eaten 30 WW points, but I track my food into MFP and see that I'm still only at 1300 calories. As crazy as it is to be tracking in 2 places I find that it is helping me. I don't feel guilty for having those extra points because I see that in the end I'm still not eating too many calories. Or, I will enter my calories into MFP and see that perhaps I'm hungry because my entire calories for the day are only around 800. It shows me that even though I'm at 23 points I need more calories. That's when I grab some turkey or some eggs to satiate my hunger without adding points, but while adding calories.

So that's how I did it during April. Oh, I also worked out hard 6 days per week. 3 days I did an hour workout at Living Lean, which kicks my butt every time. The other 3 days were running and often were my "easy" days! I would spend Tuesday and Thursday on the treadmill working on running with no walk breaks. Then, on either Saturday or Sunday I would meet my mom for a long run that was between 5 and 6 miles.

There you go. That's what it took. It honestly wasn't that hard and there's NO reason why I can't keep doing this. Here's to a marvelous May!