SO Close!

I went to weigh-in last night. Let me back up a bit first. Yesterday I was at an all day workshop in Sacramento, about 1.5 hours away. My boss and I drove up for the 9am start. Basically, I was sequestered with muffins and croissants all morning. Then they served lunch. I didn't plan for lunch and had to eat it. Salad, lasagna, black beans, rice, and enchiladas. Weird. Of course I had a little of everything. I ate more than I should have but kept to water for a beverage. Then in the afternoon I was sequestered with massive chocolate chip cookies. I ate one. I tracked it all and feel okay about my choices.

I didn't get home to make it to my normal 5pm WW meeting. But when I got home at 5:30 I realized I had enough time to ride to the 6:30pm meeting. The meeting is about 5 miles from my house so I put on my shorts and stuff and rode to the meeting. As of last week I was .8 pounds away from passing the 70 pounds lost mark. On the way to the meeting I thought it would be better to celebrate that milestone in my regular meeting with all my WW buddies. I guess I talked myself into it because I lost .6 pounds. Agh! I now weigh 164 and have lost 69.8 pounds. If I lose at all next week I will pass the 70 pounds lost mark. The good news is I will get to celebrate with my WW regulars.

So last week I lost .8, this week .6 down. I wonder if next it'll be a .4 pound loss. You know, I have 19 pounds to lose to get to my goal of 145. 19 pounds. Less than 20 pounds to go. For months I've thought, "wow, it'll be amazing when I have less than 20 pounds to lose." I am 14 pounds overweight according to the BMI categories. I am SO close. And yet, sometimes, I feel so far away. I see the fat on my thighs, on my stomach, on my arms, and it just feels like it will never go away. I really need to reconcile that with myself because I know even at 145 I will still have some excess body fat. It's not like I'm shooting to look like a jockey. A jockey? Where did that come from? I went off to Internetland to find a pic of a jockey and found this inspiring story about Sylvia Harris. In this picture she's weighing in; check out those arms! Check out her story. Anyway...

I rode home from the meeting. My legs were sore from the gym on Wednesday so the ride was a real challenge. The muscles in my legs hurt in a way that haven't for a while. It was nice to be on my bike again though; I hadn't been on it since the 30 mile ride.

Last thing...what's on tap for this weekend?? Tonight (Friday) I'm going out to dinner with some friends in The City (SF). Tomorrow Miguel and I are going to do a swim/cycle brick. He's whining about how he doesn't want to swim, just cycle, but since he hasn't swam AT ALL since we signed up for this thing I'm holding my ground. Plus I don't want the first time I do a transition to be at the actual Tri. So we're going to practice both transitions. We're going to swim, transition, cycle, transition (the latter being just for practice because we're not going to run). I hope it all goes smoothly because...

MY TRI IS NEXT WEEKEND! Wow. Oh, a little shot of adrenaline. Nice. Alright, I'm off to face the day. Everyone have a great weekend!!

A Mini Survey of Utmost Importance

I've been tagged (for the first time ever!) by IronSnoopy, from whom I borrowed my post-title too. So, here goes.

The Rules:

Tagging is easy. Just copy the following onto your post. The rules of the game are posted at the start of your blog post. In this case, I'm asking you 5 questions about running. Each player answers the 5 questions on their own blog. At the end of your post you tag 5 other people and post their names. Go to their blogs and leave a comment on their blogs telling them they've been tagged and to look at your blog for details. When they've answered the questions on their own blog, they come back to yours to tell you. Got that? (Stolen in it's entirety from Flo by way of Irene ;)

1. How would you describe your running 10 years ago?
Non-existent. Running and I very new friends really and I haven't yet decided how fond I am of this new friend. We're taking things slow.

2. What is your best/worst running experience?
My best running experience was the very first time the "run" portion of my c25k was "easy". Something just clicked and I felt like I could run for miles. I couldn't, actually, but the feeling was incredible. I believe that was around Week 6. My worst running experience was when I first started and would get shin-splints all the time. I hope if this tag goes around next year I will have a race event to talk about like all the other cool answers I've seen.

3. Why do you run?
To see if I can, to challenge myself, to get in better shape, to burn calories. Maybe not in that order, but close. I started out wanting to do a 5k because that just seemed so impossibly challenging, and now I'm signed up for a Sprint Triathlon! So I guess I also now run so I don't embarrass myself too badly, so I can actually finish the Sprint and so I'm not the last person to cross the finish line.

4. What is the best or worst piece of running advice that you've been given about running?
I think the advice from coolrunning.com's Couch to 5k Running Plan, to take it slow, to build up gradually, to rest in between running days, to focus on endurance (not speed). Oh! And to invest in decent running shoes. I think those shoes went a long way to solving my shin splints problem. I just realized I have never posted a picture of my beloved Adidas Running Shoes...until now :) They look so new and pretty because they've hardly been out in the real world. They are spoiled gym-rat running jogging shoes.

5. Tell us something surprising about yourself that not many people would know.
Well, it's not necessarily surprising but at least I know no one knows because it was only in my head. Today at the gym while trying to get through Mile 2 of my tougher-than-usual run I started chanting in my head, "You can do this, run, run, run" and then went to "You will do this, run, run, run" and I finally settled on "I will do this, run, run, run" over and over. Today my run was suddenly hard again and I had to break it up with three walk breaks. I really like what Flo said about Just Keep Moving in her answer to these questions. That's what I did and I totaled up 3 miles of jogging by the end.

That's it! Thanks for tagging me IronSnoopy, that was fun. Now I'm going to tag The Forty Project, BikiniBound and Jessica Slow & Steady.

Chocolate for Dinner?

Sunday evening I went to my mother's for dinner. She always makes a healthy meal when I go over now, which is really sweet. I had a nice dinner of poached sole with onion and tomato, brown rice with mushrooms and pine nuts, corn on the cob and steamed carrots. I ate a few other snacky things while there and got home around 7pm. For some reason I was feeling very foody, and a little irritable. I started grazing and realized that I needed to do something to intervene or I'd eat all evening. A while back I read this article about how successful weight losers are able to intervene in these situations and started going over the suggestions I remember from the article - reading, run errands, etc. I didn't think those would work but I knew a walk would.

Several times in the past, during an evening at home, I have had the thought, "I should go for a walk". I have never actually gone on the walk. But on Sunday evening I did. It just seemed so right. I laced up my shoes, grabbed my ipod and went on my way. My calves were/are really sore from hiking down Mt. Tam on Saturday so I was slow to warm up but once I got going I felt great. Oh, I forgot to mention this before but on Friday when I went into the locker room to change for my workout I had the thought, "you're about to feel better than you have all day." Wow, I am really seeing the payoff of exercise when I have a thought like that. And it was so true. So I got going on my walk and sure enough, after about 10 minutes I was bopping along and feeling good. The walk was about 4.5 miles and I was gone for an hour. So to top it off I earned 3 Activity Points! And I need them this week because...

Yesterday (Monday) I decided to skip the gym for two reasons. One, I needed to work late because of work that I just HAD to catch up on. And two, my calves were still really sore and I felt they needed to rest. So there I was...alone at the office...with the big bowl of chocolate. This time it was filled with Hershey's Miniatures. I rationalized that I could eat just one serving, 4 candies. I ate those. But it didn't end there. By the time I left the office I estimated I'd eaten 15 of them, or about 12 Points worth. Ack! So I tracked them and found myself with 1 Point left for dinner. I'd already exhausted my Weekly Points Allowance. I knew if I went home the eating would continue so I ran some errands. When I got home I made a spring greens salad with chopped egg whites and light dressing. That pushed me over on Points for the week by .5 but I'm ok with that.

Well, I am trying very hard to stick to my daily points for today and tomorrow until they reset on Thursday. Tonight I might go for a walk if I have time and feel like it. I'm going to the gym tomorrow so I'll get a couple APs there. Let's hope I can manage a loss on Thursday!

Past the Yellow Brick Road, Down the Dipsea, and Swing into Mill Valley

When one has an idea to get to the top of a mountain before 1pm one must plan. And by "one", I mean me. I don't know what we were thinking but we didn't leave the house until 10am. About 15 minutes away I realized I didn't have the tickets. I was so focused on getting there I forgot what "there" was, a play in which we needed tickets for entry. We lose another 1/2 hour going home for the ticket. The play is attended by probably a couple thousand people so to make matters worse the area is crowded. Anyway, we didn't have time to hike up the mountain. So we arrived at the spot to catch the complimentary shuttle up the mountain and found a long line of people waiting. We learned there were bus issues and things were running slow. We waited about an hour. Boo! The bus ride up took about 40 minutes. So, in short, we made it up about 15 minutes before the play started.

It was a nice hot day and all the shady spots were taken. It wasn't too bad. The play was fun, I found myself singing along more often than is probably normal. I remember I had The Wizard of Oz record when I was a kid and I'd sit in my room and listen to it over and over on my little record player. "Ding-dong the witch is dead, witch-o-witch, the wicked witch....We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of oz....Somewherrrrrre, over the rainbow, blue birds fly".... See? It's just infectious. Miguel had a big smile on his face during some parts too and we just enjoyed the heck out of ourselves.

So we decided that since we couldn't hike up the mountain, we'd hike down. The hike down to Mill Valley is about 6 miles and winds around in such a way that you're not going downhill the entire time. Enough though that my toes got tired of hitting the front of my shoes. My leg muscles freak me out a little bit in this picture (if you click the image you can see a bigger version of it). They look huge! I'm scared to see what they'll look like when I lose more weight. Bulging muscle-legs is what I'll have. I hope I like that look. The walk was pleasant and fun and we made it in a little under 2 hours. It was a mixture of trails and paved roads. The last bit was walking down the Dipsea stairs, 671 steps altogether. Soon I want to walk up them. Maybe one year I'll enter the Dipsea Race, the oldest cross-country trail running event in the US. You climb the stairs very early on in the 7.1 mile race. Doesn't that sound like fun? I better tackle the stairs all by themselves first. Did I mention my calves are not happy with me this morning?

Lately, while out adventuring, I've been preoccupied with my shadow. Sing with me, "Me and my sha-a-a-dow". Ok, I'll stop. I get startled when I see it being so different than what I expect, so much smaller than I used to be and than I am in my mind's eye. Anyway, I had more opportunities to see it today and I tried to catch it on film.

When we got back to Mill Valley we walked through a park and there were swings and.... Add this to the list of things I wouldn't have done before losing weight. I had so much fun on that swing! When we got to the park my calves were tired and I was hot but that swing revitalized me! Wheeeeeee!!

There you have it. Our day on the mountain. I made sandwiches, packed healthy snacks ate pretty healthy stuff. Ahem, aside from the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Bar, Half Baked: Cookie Dough Ice Cream on a Brownie with a Thick Drizzle of Milk Chocolate Coating. Yum! But 8 Points. Yowza! I have 2 measly WPA points left for the week. I hope I can make it.

What am I doing today? Nada. I need to rest I think. I've been cleaning and stuff and now I have to get ready to go visit my mom. Of course, the clothes I want to wear are in the washing machine as we speak. Alright, on a happier note, one last picture.