Owning It

So, first off, what do you think of my new site design?  I was getting really sick of the old one, so I decided to spruce things up a bit with a free theme.  If you find anything is not user-friendly or has broken links, please let me know!

Now it’s time to catch you up on last week and the happenings that occurred therein. 🙂  We’ll start with an update on JJ’s 8k training.  He had hockey tryouts two days last week (Monday and Thursday), but on Tuesday, we had some time to kill during Jamie’s lacrosse practice, so we made good use of it!

He agreed to run a mile, but since I had the watch, I made it a mile and a half.  😉  He was fine, though.  In fact, he was less concerned about his pace than he was with climbing the straw bales we found on the path.

I love that kid. 😉  He did make a big show at the end of being “exhausted.”

He still ran to the car afterwards, ha ha!

Thursday was kind of a rough day; it was the day we went to the school to try to deal with Jamie’s issues, as mentioned in a previous post. The situation did not go well, and I will say that I did not make my best food choices on Thursday night.  To the tune of…

That turned out to be my my pre-dinner snack.  I’m sure you’re not surprised to know I went over (way over) my calorie goal that day. :/

Last week, I had some text conversations with my friend Katie from Runs for Cookies. Specifically, I was asking her about the running program she’s been using that has helped her get faster and lose weight, the MAF program. I’ve been kind of floundering lately as far as what goals to set for 2016–on the one hand, I would like to try for a new PR for a half-marathon, but on the other hand, I still remember how very difficult (read: miserable) my most recent PR finish was, and I really don’t relish the idea of going through it again.

I thought that maybe this program might help me get faster the right way–by improving my heart-rate and making it less difficult to run 13 miles at a 9:50ish pace.  Friday morning, I got up and did my first MAF run.  Only, it barely qualified as a run. 🙁  My target heart rate was 141, but it was so hard to keep it that low.  I would jog at a miserably slow pace for a very short period, and then I’d have to walk.  Unfortunately, I discovered that it was hard for me to keep my HR down even while walking!  It wasn’t a very pleasant experience, and I’ll admit to just giving up in the last half mile of my normal three-mile run and jogging despite my climbing heart rate.  It took me a miserable 44 minutes to go three miles (compare that to my awesome run on Monday in 28:31), but on the bright side, I did burn 283 calories.

That turned out to be a good thing, since I made Jamie a cookie cake for his birthday!

The frosting I could take or leave, but I do love a good chocolate chip cookie, and I like to think that mine are the best. 😉  I ate a good-sized piece, but thanks to my run and my limited eating during the day, I actually stayed under my calorie goal for the day.

Saturday, I had a run scheduled with Katie–ten miles!  It was the longest I’d run since November, and I was a bit nervous about keeping up with her.  She said she was fine with going slow, but I hate holding my friends back, you know?

I got there right at 7:30am, and it was a beautiful morning, albeit a bit chilly. Great sunrise!

To my surprise, the run went by really fast!  We talked a lot, and poor Katie had to hear the whole story about Jamie’s school issues (bless her heart for listening!), and although I did have to walk at miles 4 and 6, the last four miles just flew by, and before I knew it, we were done!

I was stunned to find that we’d run an 11-minute pace for ten miles! And pretty proud of myself, too!

After the run, I was tired, but I was feeling guilty about not getting in my second strength training workout that week.  So, even after running 10 miles, I went out to the barn and did my workout!

I was pretty geeked about the 948 calories I’d burned that day, and I had joked with Jamie the day before about getting a Monica’s cinnamon roll after my run.  I ended up not doing it, just because it would have been out of my way (they only sell them at the south town location, boo hoo!), but when we were having dinner, I asked JJ what he did while Jamie was at lacrosse practice (he had to go, since I was still out running).  He mentioned that he’d forgotten to eat breakfast, but that his dad had given him part of a cinnamon roll that had been leftover from the day before. If I were a dog, my ears would have perked up. :p

“Cinnamon roll? From where?”

“Ummm…that place.”

“From Monica’s?”

[JJ nods, looking like he’d just been busted.]

[Directed at my husband] “You bought a cinnamon roll from Monica’s and didn’t share any with me?!  Even though you knew I was running 10 miles today?!”

My poor husband looked pretty guilty, and apologized, but then he added that he didn’t completely screw up.  At that point, he got up from the table in the middle of dinner, went out to his truck, and came back with this:

Ha ha ha!  He had been driving by Monica’s Friday afternoon, and he decided to stop and buy me one.  When he saw they only had 5 left–he bought them all! I enjoyed half of one, just because I didn’t want to overdo it with Easter coming the next day.  But let me tell you–it was delicious!  (Not as good as it would have been had it been fresh. :p )

Easter dawned cold but beautiful, and our family enjoyed the early service at church.

The youth group hosted the breakfast, which meant that I made 2 casseroles and some coffee cake on Saturday.  There turned out to be quite a spread!

The casseroles were good, but I only had a bit, because I was more focused on one thing…

That’s my coffee cake, and if I do say so myself…it was ah-mazing!  And pricey, too…each of those tiny little pieces was 200 calories. 😮  But that didn’t stop me from having five pieces throughout the day.  (Because of course, I took the leftovers home.)  I also enjoyed some more cookie cake, as well.  And three servings of my egg/cheese/biscuit/bacon casserole.

Yep, I went overboard.  Totally.  But here’s the thing:  I love Easter food.  I can resist a lot of other holiday meals, but for some reason, Easter food is my weakness.  And I figured that since it only comes once a year, it’s okay to indulge in my favorite things.  Because, darn it–sometimes you just have to enjoy life!  And I did enjoy myself yesterday.  A little too much, admittedly.  In fact, I felt so full by the late afternoon, I decided to go for another MAF “run” to work off some of the food I’d eaten.  It was even worse than the first one:

It’s pretty bad when you can text and create a pic collage during your “run.” Sigh.  I don’t know what went wrong, but my average pace for that 3-miler was almost 22-minutes-per-mile!  Argh!!

I got up this morning and did another MAF run, to the tune of over 22-minutes-per-mile.  Then I did another workout, and then I weighed myself.

Whoa, dude.  That’s a 3.8-pound gain in one week.  Clearly, the coffee cake had its way with me (as well as the chocolate and wine from Thursday). :/

I could’ve waited, maybe given it a few days before I weighed myself, but I just decided to heck with it.  Yes, I ate too much last week.  I totally own it.  But you know what?  I know how to get back on track.  I’ll just use the habits I’ve been using for four years, the ones that helped me fit in this size 2 dress yesterday.

It may take me a few weeks to get that 4 pounds off, but I know I can do it.  Especially since all the coffee cake is gone! 😉

Thanks for reading!