11:45 (!!)

I managed to take Monday off from exercising and it didn't kill me.  I did miss that feeling of being ahead of the game as I start the week.  I went to the gym on Tuesday and the training schedule called for a 4 mile run.  I mis-read and thought it was a "pace" run.  Since this was on the treadmill I decided to do a bunch of intervals that would keep me from getting bored.  I did the first mile doing incline intervals, increasing .5 degrees each minute until I finished a minute at 5 degrees.  For the second mile I did 5mph, 5.5mph, and 6mph for a minute each and cycled through those until I got to a mile.  I did the same things for mile 3 and 4 and when I was done I felt like I'd kicked butt!  And the neat thing was I beat the 12 minute mile pace, I averaged 11:45 minute miles - I did 4 miles in 47 minutes - with inclines!  That was pretty cool.

What was NOT cool was that I had legs/shoulders/core to do for strength training when I was done.  I tried to do the lunges and squats on the smith machine but that was just not happening so I did them with free weights.  Much better.  I still had to take lots of breaks but I got them all done.  Later, when I was supposed to do three sets of squats with shoulder presses I could barely do one set so I didn't quite do everything but I felt great about my workout nonetheless.

I don't think I've mentioned that boot camp is out.  I liked it but financially I couldn't justify paying for classes when I already have a gym membership.  So today was to be my first day getting up at 5am to hit the gym instead of boot camp.  I got all my clothes together last night but I wasn't sure if I'd actually do it.  Unfortunately I stayed up later than I planned so that made it even worse when the alarm went off.  I rolled over and had a little dialogue with myself:

"Should I go? What's more important - 2 more hours sleep or the gym?  I am tired.  If I go will I be tired all day and cranky with the kids?  Maybe I should just go, see how it is, and if it's awful I will make a new workout plan that does not involve Wednesday morning workouts."

I honestly wasn't sure what the "right" thing to do was but I got out of bed and went.  My workout went ok.  I did the bike for 25 minutes and then chest/triceps/core for strength training.  I forgot to take a few bites of banana before I left the house and I think eating on empty didn't help.  I just didn't feel quite as strong as I normally do.  And I was stiff as heck when it came time to stretch!  But that could be residual from the running and not the fact that it was still dark out and I should probably be in bed.  I got home and 5 minutes after I walked in Marek woke up.  No going back to sleep for me!

The day went fine.  My mom and a friend with her daughter came over, which was nice.  We had pizza and salad for lunch and I'm sure that helped.  I took Vitamin B in the afternoon just in case.  And I had a second round of coffee around 11am - something I never do.  With the extra calories, caffeine, vitamins and people over I made it through the day.  I think I'll keep Wednesday workouts for now but just make sure I go to bed on time the night before and eat a little something before I head out the door.

My legs were a bit sore today but by this evening they were really hurting.  I took some ibuprofen and probably should have taken a bath but that didn't occur to me until just now and I'm heading to bed in a few minutes.

On the food front - I had a low moment last night.  I had cereal after dinner.  Twice.  And it wasn't my "healthy" cereal - it was Miguel's Frosted Flakes.  What really irritated me later is that I didn't even remember tea.  Darnit, tea might have saved me those calories and the frustration with myself.  Ah well, live and learn.  Tonight I was all about the tea.  I ate a small amount at dinner to balance out the pizza lunch so I am a little hungry right now but I'll survive and the tea helped.  That reminds me, wasn't there some "dieter's tea?" that people were drinking back when?  I wonder what that had in it?  I'm off to google.  'night all!