2017 Race #3 - Towpath Ten-Ten

It's still exciting to me to be writing race reports again.

The Towpath Ten-Ten was my 3rd race of the year, and the 2nd of the Towpath Trilogy. I think I may have already mentioned it in my 5 miler recap from April; but I am planning to actually complete the trilogy this year. In 2012 I did the 10 miler in June and the 10k in October but hadn't done any of the distances in April so I didn't complete the trilogy. Back then I had decided that in 2013 I was going to complete the trilogy.....but we all know what happened in 2013.

So when I started running consistently again in late 2016, I decided that THIS would be the year that I would finally tackle the trilogy. And now I have completed 2 of the 3 races and definitely plan to complete the 3rd in October.

It's funny because I re-read my race recap from this race 5 years ago and back then I wasn't really "feeling" the race either. I made a comment that I had to remind myself I was running 10 miles that weekend and had to stop thinking about it like it was no big deal. Well, this time I didn't really have to remind myself and I was well aware it was a big deal; but I just couldn't get excited about it. I was thinking I would struggle and I wasn't feeling overly confident about the 10 miles. I was kind of wishing I would have signed up for the 10k instead of the 10 miler. But alas, I had signed up for the 10 miler so that was what I was going to complete.

I did not have my partner in crime because a) she's out of town and b) she's not able to run right now anyway. The good news was that my sister and brother in-law were also doing the 10 miler. That meant I at least had someone to walk to the start line with and hang out until the race started. We met in the parking lot and made the almost 1 mile trek to the starting line for the 10 miler.

The big races are fun and all, but there is something I really enjoy about smaller races. We didn't have to wait very long once we got to the start line and before we knew it they were ringing the cowbell and we were off. I lined up at the very back of the pack on purpose. Lisa and Chris took off (as I knew they would) and I started my intervals. I had decided to just stick with my 2/1 intervals even though recently I have started doing intervals based on my heart rate. Since I have really just started doing that I didn't feel confident about finishing 10 miles that way.

The first mile certainly didn't feel easy. I think I was running pretty fast when I was running and walking at an OK pace during the walk breaks. I hit the first mile at 12:42 and I was quite happy with that. Again, my watch was slightly ahead of the mile markers and by the end of the race my watch said I traveled 10.3 miles instead of "just" 10. So, again, I like my pace on my Garmin better than my official pace! 😆

My watched beeped for mile 2 and told me that mile was in 12:57. It went downhill from there. I think it was some time around mile 3 that I decided to pay attention to my heart rate. It was HOT and HUMID and I just got the feeling that I should start paying attention to my heart rate. I think perhaps it was a good thing I did because my heart rate was high (which is not anything new) and was having a hard time recovering. I started walking a lot more to try to get my HR back down before I ran again. I was finding it harder and harder to get my HR low enough to be OK with running. Then, I would start running again and it would probably take 10 seconds for my HR to spike up again.

All alone on the course

The interesting thing about yesterday was that I never got really upset. I mean, did I want to do better? Of course. But, perspective is a wonderful thing. I remembered reading my recap from 2012 and being so negative about not keeping my intervals and being slow, etc. I ended up crushing the goal I had set for myself, but I was still not happy because the goal I set was "so slow". Well guess what? Yesterday I never really picked a solid goal, but of course I had a couple in mind. I DID NOT HIT ANY OF THOSE GOALS AND THAT IS TOTALLY FINE! I was able to go out there and cover 10 miles and finish upright. I don't take that stuff for granted anymore. This was also the first time I ever actually thought I might not finish a race. Around mile 6 I realized I was pretty much all alone on the course. There were obviously people in front of me, but they were so far in front of me that I couldn't see them. I knew there was at least one person behind me and she was far enough behind that as some points I couldn't see her either. I was struggling and knew I had 4 more miles to go. I walked almost the entire 6th mile because I couldn't get my HR to go below 163. Around mile 8 I became more confident I would finish, but I wasn't feeling good. I would try to run and when I stopped I would get light headed. When that happened I decided that it was stupid to push myself to an extreme that might hurt me. I basically walked the rest of the race. I might have put a few 1 minute run intervals in there, but not many.

I crossed the finish line in 2:33:34. As a reminder, in 2012 I crossed the finish line in 2:17:04 and I was not happy with that. Yesterday I came in dead last in my age group and I came in 342nd out of 350....and I don't care. Well, I don't care is not really the correct statement. I care. I want to be faster. I wish I could just push through and finish, but I can't (yet) and that's OK. At least I'm out there trying and not giving up. The heat and humidity were no joke. I thought the half marathon was hot/humid and yesterday was 12 degrees hotter and I'm guessing the humidity was higher as well.

This is my "it is what it is, at least I got the medal" face.

It's been awhile......

It's been almost a month since my last blog post and, as usual, that is because I have been struggling.

Struggling now, like I was struggling to get up this hill. 

The good news is that I've "only" gained about 2 pounds since my lowest weigh in on May 1st. The bad news is that I can't seem to get my head out of my butt and get myself back on track! I do wonder if this is a little of those post race blues. I talked about this experience after completing the full marathon in 2012. The same type of thing is happening now. I completed the half marathon in May, which was my BIG goal for the year. It was my "comeback" race. It was the race to prove to myself that I actually CAN do this again and I will get back to where I once was (and continue on). And now it's over.

BEST RACE PIC EVER!!!!!

It's so weird because it's not like I don't have other goals for this year. I have the Towpath 10-10 coming up this weekend and I'm doing the 10 miler. I was thinking about tackling the full marathon distance again this year, but have since decided not to push it (for so many reasons). But, I would like to complete at least one more half marathon this year so it's not like I don't have an idea of "what's next". If I have more goals to tackle, WHY am I having such a hard time doing that?

Perhaps one reason is because my partner in crime is currently injured so we haven't been working out together. Thankfully I gave my mom the running bug last summer so I have her to run with once a week. The last 2 weekends we have met to cover 6 miles, which has been GREAT! But during the week I am struggling to find the motivation to get my exercise in. It's summer so my schedule is all thrown off. I don't have the workout class that I do 2 days per week during the school year. I have spent some time gardening (splitting hostas, spreading mulch, etc) and I am getting on the treadmill at least a few times a week; but I'm just not feeling it. Yes, the treadmill is boring, but I find I'm more likely to just do that then to go outside by myself to run. It's also stinking hot so running in my cool basement is better than outside in the hot sun.

Matchy-matchy! :)

I wonder if some of my lack of motivation comes from my poor eating choices of late. I really think it does all go hand in hand. My food has not been going well for well over a month now. I mean, I first started talking about my struggling with this post on May 8th! June 15th and I have yet to have really gotten back on track with my food. I texted Leslie this week and told her that this was IT. This was my week to get my head out of my butt and to get back on track with my food. I lasted ONE DAY. Sigh........

It's really so stupid. This is truly NOT that hard. If I just exercise and track my food I can lose weight and do it pretty easily. If I'm exercising I can afford to eat more calories and still lose weight; but I need to track those calories to keep everything in check. My goals are not lofty. I'd like to average 4-8 lbs lost per month. This amounts to 1-2 lbs per week. I am not asking for too much and I am more than capable of achieving those goals. I'm not going to achieve any of my fitness goals without achieving these weight loss goals.
So it's time. It's time to stop being stupid. It's time to resume tracking my food. It's time to up my exercise. It's time to lose this weight before I put any more of it back on. 2 pounds isn't bad, but 2 can become 5, can become 10 and before I know it I will have re-gained the 40lbs I have lost from my highest ever weight. I can not and will not let that happen. In fact; I think it's time for me to go hop on that treadmill.

Determination

2017 Rite Aid Cleveland HALF Marathon

It's here folks! My first half marathon race report on this blog! I started this blog on May 25, 2012 and did not write a "race report" for the half marathon that year. It wasn't a good race at all and I was focused on blogging about my full marathon training.

Yesterday was a very emotional day for me. I was actually starting to get really emotional leading up to Sunday. I started looking at the weather forecast as soon as I could. I was worried (of course) because they were calling for HOT and HUMID and potential thunderstorms. The race in 2012 was hot and humid to a degree that I heard rumors about them red-flagging the race by the time I was done (not sure if it was actually red-flagged or not).

I started to worry the most that they would actually have to end up canceling the event due to lightening. I know that the last thing race directors want to do is cancel a race; but I also know they want to keep us all safe.

Now to wait!

So Saturday I tried to go to bed early knowing I'd have to get up around 4 AM Sunday. I failed and ended up see the clock every hour until about 1 AM. Oddly enough, the next time I looked at the clock it was 4:04 AM and I decided to just get out of bed and not wait for my alarm to go off at 4:15. I looked at the weather one last time and watched the radar. It looked like the rain was going to hold off until about 9:30 and it looked to me like the lightening might hold off all together. This definitely put me more at ease.

I picked Leslie up and we were downtown and in a parking spot by about 5:50. We walked to the starting area and ended up hanging out inside the Q (Quicken Loans Arena) while we waited the hour+ for the start. My sister was running the 10k with her husband and amazingly they found us. Leslie and I were walking around in the Q and all of the sudden I heard my name. I turned and saw my brother in law.

We then all walked around the Q for a while until we decided to head out to the corrals. It was kind of crazy because we were heading towards our corral and the national anthem started. I have NEVER not been already in my starting corral when they play the national anthem! After the national anthem ended we made our way into our corral. We actually ended up being a little farther up than I had originally planned, but the crowd had started moving forward so we just jumped in.

Look at all the people!!! 

In 2011 I believe it took me about 10+ minutes to actually cross the start line from when they started the clock. In 2012 it took me more like 20 minutes. I was shocked this year that it was only about 7:08 when we were crossing that start line! And then we were off!

The start felt really good. I felt like I was moving at a pretty good pace and those first 2 minutes of running just flew by. It is ALWAYS  hard to stop to walk after only 2 minutes in a race, but I knew that if I just kept running I would struggle (even more) in the second half of the race. I am always careful to know my surroundings though and since the course is still pretty congested at this time I make sure I'm off to the side and no one is directly behind me before I walk. There were a couple times we had to run a few seconds extra to be sure we didn't trip anyone.

My watch beeped to let me know we hit mile 1 and I noticed

Starting line selfie! (complete with photo bomber)

that we hadn't actually crossed the 1 mile flag so I knew my Garmin was going to be off. By the end of the race my Garmin read 13.6 miles instead of 13.1. No biggie, but it just means that I like the pace my Garmin says I ran better than my official results! Miles 1-4 were AMAZING! Every time my watch beeped I would look at my wrist and would see we were not only maintaining an awesome pace, but we were pretty darn consistent. Mile 5 was slower because there was a pretty decent hill at some point between miles 4 and 5. We were able to speed back up a little after that hill, but our pace was definitely getting consistently SLOWER starting with mile 5. I believe that I finished 5 miles slightly faster than I did during the Towpath 5 miler in April.

The struggling really started between miles 8 and 9. I had to talk myself through the rest of the miles. Every time we hit a new mile marker I would tell myself I'm just looking for the next mile.

One of these days I'll negative split a race!

Prior to race day I was not feeling overly confident about my finishing time. I knew I could do it. Even when we had a horrible 14 mile run, we still covered the distance. I always want to at least beat my slowest half marathon time. Obviously getting a PR every time I race is amazing. That's what happened in 2011. I did the Cleveland Half in May and PR'd by 24 minutes (that's a LOT). I then did another half marathon in November and took off another 14 minutes. Not only was I PRing every time, but I was taking significant chunks of time off. Of course I know that even the best runners don't get better every single time they go out there. My half in 2012 was the 2nd worst time I've ever gotten and as much as that sucked I was just happy to finish. So, I wanted better than 3:20 and wasn't feeling confident about that. Of course I REALLY wanted less than 3 hours, but I thought there was NO WAY that was happening.

The good and bad of having my Garmin is that I knew how close I was to finishing in under 3 hours. I have no idea if I would have pushed myself more if I didn't know. I do know that I got to a certain point around mile 12 when I knew I wasn't going to break 3 hours, but I knew I was going to be way closer than I ever thought so it was OK to not push quite as hard. My official finishing time was 3:05.00.

There is that nasty part of myself that is upset that I was SO CLOSE to breaking 3 hours and I didn't push myself a little harder. But, I am quieting that mean person and listening to the more reasonable person who tells me that my time doesn't matter! This has been 5 YEARS in the making. Crohn's Disease tried to beat me. It worked really hard for 3 years fighting my efforts to quiet it. Crohn's may have slowed me down for a few years, but I never stopped fighting. I fought every step of the way even when I didn't feel like it. And now I'm back. Screw you, Crohn's. You WILL not beat me.

Sweaty, Salty, but still SMILING! 

I have told her many times, but I'm not sure that Leslie will ever realize the role she played in my comeback. I can guarantee you that without her I would not be writing this post. I am so thankful that our boys became friends and that we ended up connecting the way we do. Not only did she start running with me back in November 2016, but she stayed with me every step of the way yesterday. She was never more than a few steps in front of me and didn't even seem annoyed when I needed to take extra walk breaks. I have such a hard time believing that she doesn't care about going slow; but perhaps I'm starting to believe her.

And I think one of the coolest things was while watching Fox 8 News this morning I happened to look up from my computer when they mentioned the marathon. As I'm watching the clip I see ME about to cross the finish line! How cool is that!?!?!? And, it might be hard to tell in the pic, but I look SO HAPPY! I was. And I am.

Crash and Burn

And then get back up!

The spiral started on Friday and ended last night.

Let me first tell you that I AM FINE. It happened. I do NOT feel guilty about it and am not going to beat myself up about it. I am going to pick myself up, brush myself off, and keep moving forward.

On the schedule for Friday was our last long run before the half marathon on May 21st! (eeekkkk....I can't believe we're already at taper time). The plan called for 14 miles and I was actually looking forward to it. The weather was not our friend, but we decided to just deal with it and run in the rain.

The run started off a bit interesting. We got to the park and I asked Leslie if she had her keys. She said she put her key fob in her pocket and proceeded to lock and close her door. For whatever reason she went to double check her pocket as we were starting to walk on the path and discovered she did NOT have her key fob in her pocket. Yup. Keys were locked in the car. Sigh.

I suggested we just run and call my husband to bring her an extra key later. She didn't want to bother my husband with it. There was a park employee sitting in his truck so we decided to see if he had anything to help. He didn't. But, he had the number for the park ranger so Leslie called them. We then proceeded to start our run in the parking lot by running in circles.

The park ranger arrived about 15 minutes later and after a little while was able to get Leslie's door open. I then confiscated her key fob and put it in my hydration pack. About 40 minutes after starting our run we were now on our way to complete 14 miles. I was mad because my Garmin auto-saved the first mile since it was paused for too long. I know it doesn't matter, but you know how much I like my numbers!

Ranger Jeff - our hero!

So we set out to do 13 miles now since we knew we had completed at least 1 already. The first mile (running circles in the parking lot) actually felt pretty good. When we started down the trail though it felt tough from the get go. Perhaps that was because the first little bit is uphill. Perhaps because after warming up for 1 mile we then stood in the rain while the park ranger opened the door. Perhaps it was because it was wet and chilly. Whatever it was, I was struggling pretty early on.

We hadn't even gotten to our turn around point yet (6.5 miles) and I was needing to walk extra. My breathing was labored and I ended up getting upset with myself which  made me tearful and that never helps my breathing. I'm not even sure when it was, but I think somewhere around mile 7 we started walking. I was able to pick up my walking pace to much faster than what I walk at when I'm doing intervals. I decided I was probably moving as fast just walking as I was when I was struggling through the intervals.

Slower than my first half marathon - and not even as far :( 

Eventually I just wanted to be done so I started adding running intervals in when I felt I could. Man, it sucked. What sucked more than the run was how I felt about it. Leslie had never run more than 13.1 miles and I felt like I robbed her of a milestone. She still covered 14 miles, but it was not the way it was "supposed" to be. She's awesome and tries to assure me that it doesn't matter. That she's not mad and that if I weren't out there with her she wouldn't be out there at all. I can't get out of my head about this (perhaps a topic for another post).

Friday was then pretty much a food free for all and that was OK because I burned so many calories. I  have absolutely no problem taking my long run day and using that as a "free" day. If you're going to do that you mind as well do it on a day you burned a slew of calories. I also had wine for the first time in over a month. It was yummy, but I think it started the spiral. I ended up having wine every night this weekend. And where there is wine there is snacking.

Something else interesting that I noticed though; where there is wine there is less control in my eating the next day. I ended up NOT tracking my food Saturday or Sunday. I tracked some of my food Saturday, but stopped and then didn't track anything on Sunday. I was going to go back and track, but honestly I'm sure I would miss things and it doesn't really matter. It is what it is. It's done and I'm moving on.

I will say I am glad I am not weighing myself. It is still REALLY early in the month and I have plenty of time to get back on track and still have a good number come May 31st. If I were to have gotten on the scale this morning it could have done more damage. Believe it or not, I'm starting to feel a little freedom from the scale. Not freedom like, "I'm not weighing myself so I can eat whatever I want". But freedom like, "the scale doesn't matter. Do what you're supposed to do. Get back on track if you fall off and TRUST THE PROCESS".

Drum Roll Please

Well, it's May 1st and I finally got to get on the scale! But first, let's see how I did with my April goals.

April goal #1 - avoiding McDonald's. It has now been 3 full months since I've eaten McDonald's. I'm still waiting for it to get easy. It's easier; but the fact that McDonald's is so close to my house makes it stay harder than I would like.

April goal #2 - NO wine. CHECK! I did not have one drop of wine this entire month and it honestly wasn't that hard. I was in a MOOD this weekend and really wanted to just chill out with a glass bottle of wine, but I didn't.

April goal #3 - TRACK every day. Again, CHECK! I tracked my food every single day in April. There were certainly days that were more accurately tracked than others; but I tracked at least 90% of my food every day. I did not necessarily stay within my calorie goal, but that wasn't the goal.

April goal #4 - workout 6 days per week. I talked about this one already in one of my April blog posts.  I still worked out 22 out of 30 days in April so it's not like I got lazy or something!

April goal #5 - the scale. You already know from this post that I got to get a kind of sneak peek at my weight last week when I had my doctor's appointment. But, the goal was to stay off MY scale and THAT I did! :) And when I got on the scale this morning is was 6.2 pounds LESS than it was on April 1st. Now, to be fair, it was "only" 4.6 lbs less than it was on March 31st because I obviously binged that night so that scale was up April 1st. 4.6 or 6.2 I don't really care. Down is down and I am beyond happy about that. I averaged 2,130 calories/day during the month of April. BUT, I averaged 1,139 NET calories. I guess there is something to these net calories after all. My calorie goal on MyFitnessPal is at 1,310 NET calories per day. That goal is supposed to give me a 1.5lb per week loss (on average). Obviously net calories aren't an exact science. If I actually only ate 1200 calories per day for a month I should have lost probably more than 2lbs per week throughout the month. However, all these devices and tools are obviously not going to be 100% accurate. The fact that I ate well over 2000 calories per day and still lost around 5 lbs in a month tells me that the net calories do mean something. So when I see those calories go over 2000 calories on a day when my Garmin says I've burned a lot, I can maybe trust the process more and not stress about eating too much.

I have been really struggling with coming up with my goals for the month of May. Let's see what I came up with.

Goal #1: Sigh.......continue to stay away from McDonald's. As my weight continues to drop I will start to feel like I can keep it under control; but I know from my past that isn't true. My hope is that if I keep this a goal long enough I'll get to the point where it doesn't have to be a goal because I just don't WANT it.

Goal #2: TRUST THE PROCESS. A mental goal of sorts. Really work on taking the stress out of losing weight. Do what I am supposed to do and trust that it will work. Stress and weight loss do not mix. If I can do as much as possible to remove the stress of losing weight from my life I may even notice more of a drop in my weight.

Goal #3: Track. I don't want to have this goal this month. I want to have days where I don't track. BUT, I am a numbers freak (which we have learned through the years) and there is something I love about being able to look at what I did over the month to get the outcome that I got. So, the goal is to continue to track so that I can continue to be armed with knowledge.

Goal #4: Eat a little less. Last month the goal was just to track my food and not worry about if my calories were saying in my goal range. This month I'm going to kick it up one little notch. My goal is to keep MFP calories in the green (or at 0 to break even) 5 out of 7 days a week. I'm giving myself 2 days a week to be in the red because there are 2 days a week I have planned rest days. Eating 1,310 calories a day is hard for me so I want to give myself the (mental) freedom to not feel guilty those days I don't earn extra calories, but still eat 1600 or even 1800 calories. In April I had 13 days in the red. So, the goal for May is to have no more than 8 days in the red.

Goal #5: The scale.....hmmmmm....I am so torn on this one. I was thinking that when I stayed off the scale in Feb and April I lost more weight than between March and April; but that's actually not true. However, looking at my weight in March when I was weighing myself sporadically, I see that it was down and then up and down a little but not to the lowest it had it, then up again. Ugh. I made the decision to get off the scale in April because I was feeling like I wasn't losing weight while I was weighing myself. For May I was thinking either STAY OFF THE SCALE again or, weigh myself ONCE A WEEK on MONDAY mornings only and deal with whatever the number is. I think I know what you all would say if I asked your opinion. June 1st won't work as my next weigh in though because I won't be home so no access to my scale. So, I will stay off the scale until May 31st. There. I said it. Ugh....now to torture myself again for another 30 days!

You'll notice that I didn't put anything about wine for the month of May. More importantly though I want to focus on keeping my calories more in check. I can't do that if I'm drinking wine to excess every single weekend. But, it will give me the freedom to enjoy my wine on evenings when I've had a long run. Or, to celebrate finishing my first half marathon after a 5 year hiatus!

Can you even believe we're in half marathon month?!?!? But that's a whole different subject!

Home Stretch

One week left in April!

I really can't believe I stayed off the scale this entire month. I feel like I've been eating a LOT this month, but my tracker tells me I'm still doing OK because most days I still had calories remaining. However, my calories have averaged right around 2000 calories/day this entire month! I was talking to my friend yesterday (while we were covering 12 miles) and I told her how I'm so curious to see what the scale will say next Monday. I have a level of "fear" that it'll be up because I feel like I've been eating so much this month. But, I decided that I'm not going to fear the scale on Monday. I have been tracking my food EVERY day this month so those days that I eat WAY more than I should (like Easter or days that I do my long run) are tracked. In the past I would have at least 1 or 2 days a week where I would maybe not actually track everything or I would just not track at all. So of course my calories those weeks averaged around 1500 or so (and actually a lot of those weeks were more like 1800-1900 average), but if I would have tracked those higher calorie days my average calories over the week would certainly have increased.

This month is my experiment of sorts. If I actually lost weight perhaps I will FINALLY believe that I can just trust the process. If I gained weight or even maintained my weight, then I will know that I can't sustain 2000 calories/day and still lose weight regardless of the amount of activity I am doing. So really this month will give me some answers and will hopefully put my obnoxious mind at ease.

Having said all that; I will tell you a little secret.......I already know I've lost weight this month! WHAAAAAAATTTT?!?!?! But, I've been being SO good about not getting on the scale! Well, I didn't get on my scale.

After my run yesterday I decided it was time to go see my doctor regarding what is probably exercise induced asthma. I once again had a run where I was unable to continue my intervals due to the fact that I couldn't breathe. I ended up walking pretty much the entire last mile because I could NOT get my breathing under control and therefore could not get my heart rate to come down. Anyway, so I went to the doctor this morning. I had to have a lot of self-talk last night in preparation for what that scale might say (the same type of self-talk I would have had prior to weighing myself on May 1st). The saving grace about today was that I still have this week before my "official" May 1st weigh in.

My sleep pattern NEVER looks like this! Apparently running 12 miles does wonders for my sleep! 

What's kind of funny is that I've been going crazy this month about not getting on the scale, but in reality I've been weighed twice. April 3rd I had a follow up appointment with my Crohn's doc so I had to get on the scale then. This morning I had the appointment with my primary care doc (who did give me a script for an inhaler and also scheduled me for a pulmonary function test). The difference of weight between the April 3rd doc visit and today's??? 3.1 pounds!! Let me tell you how excited I am about that!

**side note: I only compare doc office weights to other doc office weights. I have no idea what my scale would have said this morning in terms of weight loss from what my scale said April 1st. I ALMOST used this as an excuse to get on my scale today, but I resisted that urge!**

Now, some people may look at 3lbs in the course of 3 weeks and be disappointed. At some point in my journey I would have TOTALLY been one of those people. I mean, I can lose 3 (or more) pounds in a WEEK. However, when I'm losing 3, 4, 5 pounds in a week I can guarantee you I'm not eating 2000+ calories per day. Losing an average of 1 pound a week is nothing to be mad about. It still means 52 pounds in a year.

Time for the home stretch. The goal this week will be to not only stay the course, but to be a little more strict with my food choices/calories so that I can be even more excited about the scale on Monday!

This picture has nothing to do with today's blog post but I absolutely love it! My dad and my son watching my daughter's track meet the other day. 💗

How is YOUR April going??

This month has been far from easy.

I had 5 goals that I targeted for the month of April. I have been doing pretty well with all of them, but it hasn't been without struggles.

Honestly I think the absolute easiest goal this month has been to stay away from wine. I've barely even thought about the fact that I "can't" have wine. It's more just a matter of fact - I gave up wine this month so I'm just not having it.

McDonald's has been pretty easy too. I've had some days (like yesterday and today) where I just want it for no real reason. I get into these lunch funks where I just don't know what I'm in the mood to eat. I don't really want anything, but I want to EAT because I like to eat (and I'm hungry)! Those are the times that I used to just head to McD's for lunch because it was easier. But I have continued to resist that urge. You would think after almost 3 full months of not having McDonald's this wouldn't be this hard still.

A beautiful sight before a 4 mile run.

The one goal that I haven't succeeded in is exercising 6 days per week. I'm actually totally fine with this though. Last week I had 11 miles on the schedule and we did that on a Wednesday. I didn't have my workout class that Thursday like I usually would so I decided to rest on Thursday. I then rested on my usual Saturday rest day and couldn't bring myself to get up and run on Easter morning. And now I'm having some slight discomfort in my knee so I'm planning to take it easy the rest of this week so that I don't end up doing serious damage. After doing some research today I think it's just a little case of "runner's knee". So, I will be moving my 12.5 mile training run from this Friday to next so I can take some time to rest my knee. Interestingly enough though, my knee feels the best while I'm running.

Long runs = ice baths!

I have miraculously tracked the entire month of April so far. This has been an amazing feat because I have been eating like crazy. It'll definitely be interesting to see what the scale says come May 1st given how much I have been eating.

Coloring Easter Eggs

And that brings me to my last April goal - the damn scale. It's April 19th and I'm feeling like May 1st can't come soon enough! The start of the month I was thinking it was considerably easier this time than it was back in February; but now I'm feeling it. It's funny (weird) because the whole reason I want to get on the scale is because I'm scared I've gained. I can't seem to get myself back on track this month and I think that if I get on the scale it'll just help something to click. That's probably not the case. I'm really not "off track" even though I FEEL like I am. I have been tracking all month and there have only been about 3 days all month where I ate more calories than my Garmin said I burned. All the other days that I felt like I was eating way too much (because I ate over 2,000 calories), I still had at least a few hundred calorie deficit. So IF any of these devices actually work to even estimate calories burned and consumed I should have lost at least some weight this month.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what the scale says. I know that I've been struggling to keep my calories lower this month and if the scale isn't down I know why. If it IS down it will show me that perhaps I CAN eat slightly higher calories and still lose weight because of the activity that I do and perhaps I just need to CHILL out and TRUST THE PROCESS. I am trying to remind myself and convince myself that it really doesn't matter how long it takes to lose this weight as long as I'm losing it. As much truth as there is in that statement it also isn't always helpful. I've said it before. I've said it lots of times over the last 5 years since I started this blog and yet, I STILL have the weight to lose. It may not matter how quickly it happens, but it needs to be happening.....and continue happening until I'm where I want to be....

If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time you may have noticed that I go back and forth between different "diets" or ways of eating. I hate the word diet and when I use it I just mean it in terms of what I'm eating at the time. My diet will never be perfect. I know that my diet will forever consist of tracking of some sort if I want to lose or maintain my weight. I tend to switch up the way I track and that doesn't necessarily mean I'm changing diets; but that I'm just trying to change things up to keep from getting bored. Right now I'm struggling with tracking calories. I'm not eating nearly enough fruits and veggies and am just worrying about how many calories I'm eating and not where those calories are coming from. I get into this funk when I'm counting calories. Sometimes switching to WW (Weight Watchers) and counting points helps because fruits and veggies are "free" so if I'm feeling like I want to eat I can eat lots of those and don't need to feel like I have to weigh/measure/track, etc. But, it annoys me because why can't I just up my fruit and veggie intake without having to change the way I track things? Why can't I just choose the foods that I KNOW are better for my body than the ones that aren't the best choices? And herein lies the problem. And this is my journey to try to figure it all out!