Four Football Games + Golf

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I feel like every time I come to my blog to write a post lately, I just whine about how busy I am. 😮  Now, I am well aware that I am not the only special snowflake mom in the world with a busy schedule. But damn, some days it feels like my schedule is too much for one person to handle!! 😛

Which brings me to the topic of last weekend. 😉 Starting with Thursday night, and ending Sunday night, I shot four football games: JV and varsity for Jamie’s school, and A team and B team for JJ’s school.  In addition, on Saturday I took all of the pictures at the golf outing for JJ’s hockey team. On Sunday, in addition to the fourth football game of the weekend, I worked at the school/parish festival for most of the afternoon and part of the evening. And, on top of all that…

I ran 11 f’ng miles Saturday morning! 😮

I know, I know…more whining. 😉 But there is a point to all of this, I swear. Clearly, I was busy, but it was also a very “active” kind of busy. When I’m shooting football games, I walk back and forth down the sideline, and sometimes I even run if the plays move quickly, and I’m trying to get in position to get what I think will be a good shot.

And addition to all the “steps” I got in at football, the golf outing turned out to be a little more activity than I expected:  in years past, I always had a golf cart to take me around so that I could shoot portraits in action shots. Unfortunately, due to a mix-up with the attendance list, they didn’t have a spare golf cart. No, I didn’t walk the entire course! 😛 What I ended up doing was situating myself at a spot where I was at the beginning of one hole, but close enough to the end of the previous hole to walk back and forth. It was my best bet for getting both group portraits and action shots, but it meant a lot more walking than I expected. It was also tough to just be sitting at that spot for hours on end. I didn’t want to get up and leave, because I didn’t want to take the chance that I would miss a group of golfers.

That made eating a challenge, too. I had planned ahead and brought a cooler with some snacks, because I really wanted to avoid the typical “golf outing” food (hot dogs and chips). I had cottage cheese, applesauce, and some peaches, but I’ll admit that the chips and hot dogs were tempting. I haven’t eaten hotdogs in a couple of years, because I found they don’t agree with me anymore, but man do I love a good hotdog. I almost caved toward the end of the afternoon-sometimes, willpower is hard!  But I’m glad that I stuck with my plan. If I’ve learned anything in five years of maintenance, it’s that planning ahead can really make a difference in those difficult social situations.

By the time I got home Saturday night, I was exhausted. (Remember, I had run 11 miles before the football game and the golf outing!) I checked my steps for the day on my iPhone and was shocked to see that I had over 35,000 steps. Say what!? I didn’t get that many steps in on the days that I ran my last two 1/2 marathons! Jason worked the golf outing, too, and we were both so tired that we just said to heck with cooking.  I let him stop and get a pizza and some salad, and the boys all ate pizza while I ate a chicken salad straight from the Styrofoam container:

My husband knows me well enough that he got the fat free raspberry vinaigrette dressing without even asking me. 😉 It certainly wasn’t the best salad I’ve ever had, but it wasn’t bad, and it served its purpose. Normally, after an 11-mile run, I would treat myself to all kinds of indulgences, like dessert and definitely at least a couple of glasses of wine. (Ha, who am I kidding, more like three or four glasses…) I had a glass of wine while waiting for Jason to bring home the pizza, then I ate my salad while I finished processing tomatoes, and then I went to bed.

As mentioned before, Sunday was another football game, working the chicken dinner at the festival, then working the concession stand for the festival softball tournament. When I finally got home, I indulged in a little more wine while processing more tomatoes and making a nice dinner of spicy honey chicken, Alfredo pasta, and green beans for the boys and me. It was almost midnight by the time I got done with tomatoes, and I was so tired I just fell right into bed… with 38 FitPoints left over for the end of my week! I don’t think I’ve ever had that many FitPoints left over in one week!

The next morning, I overslept and had to skip my run, as well as my weigh-in.  I got a partial run in Monday night while I was waiting for JJ to finish football practice, and then on Tuesday, I did my dreaded speed work and finally managed to find time to weigh in.

I actually looked at the scale when the reading came up and said out loud, “That can’t be right!” I hopped off, reset the scale, and tried it again, with the same result. I guess not eating all those FitPoints clearly had an effect! I should probably try that more often, although I don’t really think I want to run 11 miles and walk around golf courses for seven hours every week. 😛

I’ll admit it’s nice to be only 3 pounds from my goal right now,  as opposed to seven or eight. I suspect it’s a combination of losing some of the summer humidity, which tends to make me retain water, and the fact that I’m in the heart of half-marathon training. My pants are fitting better, and I feel more energized (except for when I only get five hours of sleep, which is been a little too common these days!).

So that’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m coming up on a very important weekend, one I have every year but that I’ve had to postpone for two weeks due to circumstances out of my control. If you’ve read my blog over the last five years, you might be able to guess with that weekend is, and you’ll know that it’s usually my “free-for-all” eating weekend…the one weekend out of the year where I say screw the healthy eating plan and just eat whatever is in front of me. Part of me knows that it’s probably not the best thing for me, but then again, I’ve been doing it for the five years that I’ve been on maintenance, and I’m still only 3 pounds from my goal at this moment, so I guess maybe it’s not so bad for me?

We’ll see how things shake out this weekend, but for now, I will leave you with a sunset picture I took a couple of weeks ago that I’m rather proud of. I do seem to spend an in ordinate amount of my life chasing sunrises and sunsets, but sometimes I get lucky and I catch them. 😉

Thanks for reading!

4 thoughts on “Four Football Games + Golf

  1. Cindy R

    Enjoy every crazy minute of your hectic life with your boys and their activities because in the blink of an eye they will be off to college and the craziness comes to a sudden halt. The moms of the seniors on my son’s high school football team got together at the start of the boys football season and we met every other week until the end of the season on Sundays. Between the photos we took ourselves at games and the photos from parents such as yourself who took outstanding photos, each mother made a senior album for their son as a keepsake starting with the first game of the season and going through the last game. We included the rooster of players from each game, clippings on the games from the local paper, scores, etc. Each album had a different flavor depending on what the mother chose to include. We met every other Sunday at my house to work on the albums where we shared glue sticks, paper cutters, backing sheets, and scrape booking accessories from Michael’s. It was also a chance for us to talk about college applications, homecoming, school gossip, status of injured players among other things. At the season end dinner, we presented the boys with their scrapbook. Afterwards I continued my son’s scrape book though the end of his senior year to include other highlights. When my daughter hit her senior year, she asked me why I wasn’t working on a scrapbook for her because she wanted one for her sports/achievements also. I had to think quickly on my feet and told her that some things were meant to be a surprise.

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