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Disney ½ Marathon

2/26/2015

At some point I was talking with CK and family about dong a ½ marathon. I think everyone in the conversation has done at least one full marathon except for me. They’re thinking of doing one together at some point this year. In talking with KBW I need to NOT do one before Steelhead, so I’m out for most of the ones they’re talking about, but it got me thinking about going one late in the year.

The Mom and I try to go down to Florida once a year. We have family down there, my aunt and uncle. We generally stay at a Disney resort and they come over and spend a day with us. This year we decided not to go, in part because of my training and in part because for some very hectic work schedules. On some random day I decided to see if Disney had a triathlon, thinking that would be fun to do. While I did not find a Disney Tri, I did find a variety of run options throughout the year, one of which is in November. It’s a ½ marathon though the parks at night! It sounded kind of cool, so I sent The Mom an email about it. To be honest I was only about half serious. I very quickly got a call saying “Yes, Yes, Yes!”

The Mom, being very spry and active decided to do the 5k option! I went from moderate interest in the event to full blown excitement! Registration opened and I signed us both up for our events (both of which sold out in under 30 minutes!) I’m as excited about doing this with The Mom as I am about my Ironman!

Now this isn’t all rainbows and puppy dogs, I have to be able to do the ½ at a certain pace (16min/mls), this might seem really easy to most people, but that’s still a struggle for me over that distance, but I have some time to work on that.

Regardless, The Mom and I are headed down to hang with the Main Mouse and participate in a running event together! I couldn’t be happier!

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LEARNING TO LOVE THE THINGS I HATE

2/5/2015

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Only I would pick a sport that entails one of my least favorite activities! It turns out that running is indeed a part of triathlon. Ok, obviously I knew that already, but I generally tried to ignore it. I hate to run; I have always hated to run! I have lots of friends who are “runners” and they continue to try to convince me that running is “fun”! They tell me things like “it’s relaxing”, “it gives you time to think”, “you can clear your mind”…yup, all my friends are bold faced liars! Ok, that’s not true, but all I think about when I’m running is how happy I’ll be when I’m no longer running!

Running for me has always been an exercise in pain and frustration. It hurts to run, hurts my feet, hurts my knees, my back, my lungs, pretty much everything! Now as I noted in my last post, I’m not small, not by any stretch of the imagination. So that doesn’t help me any.

For the most part I haven’t done much running in training, a few minutes for a warm up, but that’s about it, until last week. I get my workouts on Sunday; I generally look things over so I have some idea of what time I need to be at the gym each day. I won’t lie, my heart stopped when I saw a two mile run set for last Thursday. I wasn’t sure it was ever going to start again when I then saw a 3 mile run on Saturday! Has she forgotten who I am? I can’t run a mile, much less 2 or 3! But…but…my heal…and my knees …and <insert excuse here>

Well, as I mentioned before, running is a part of this mess, so I guess I better suck it up. Each day I would go through my workout and watch the “run” creep closer. I actually did a relatively good job at keeping the negative thoughts at bay. Thursday finally arrived and I went into it with the attitude that I would take it nice and easy, this wasn’t about time, it was about distance, if I had to walk, so what. And I did, a lot! My legs started to hurt about a quarter of a mile in, my shins and calves were using language not fit for children! But I just kept moving. And I managed to survive it, it was slow as hell! Most people with walkers can go faster than me, but who cares?

Saturday came and so did the 3 mile run. I ran a little more and walked a little less and took 30 seconds off my per mile time. My legs didn’t protest as much either. Yes, I’m still slow, but again, who cares? The next run was Tuesday and it was faster yet. While I’m happy the times are coming down, I’m excited about the fact I’m not dreading it when I see a run on the schedule, in fact I have another shorter run later this week, we’ll see how it goes.

Next in the list is yoga!

KBW started mixing in some yoga for MK and I at the first of the year. I have done yoga before and my overall opinion of it not exactly positive. First of all, yoga is all about going slow, breathing properly, being graceful and flexible. I’m 5’10”, 260, arthritic and as flexible as a 4x4. As for breathing, I can’t begin to breathe in most of the poses.

Go on YouTube and look up yoga workout, now, tell me how many people my size you see doing yoga well! 99.9% of the videos are of people who weight about 90 pounds and the average age in about 20. And look at what they’re wearing! Trust me, no one wants to see this mess in yoga pants…including me!!!

Unlike the running, there is not yoga in triathlon (thank Christ in Heaven!), however there is plenty of information out there that suggests to is beneficial and will help with the sports that are. (I’m not sure I believe this) So several times a week I frustrate myself to the point of tears trying to contort my uncooperative body in to poses I can’t pronounce. I mean seriously, who the hell came up with these names, several of which sound border line X rated!

I blatantly refuse to do yoga at the gym, its one thing to look like an overweight new born giraffe in the privacy of my own home, but the public humiliation is more than I can handle. MK holds a similar view and we both tend to whine to each other and occasionally to KBW. I even asked KBW if I could stop doing it…yea, it’s still showing up on my schedule.

At the end of the day I trust my beloved trainer and will do what she tells me to. While my hatred of running seems to be lessening, my hatred of yoga is still going strong!

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THE WAITING GAME

2/4/2015

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There are times when I seem to be in perpetual motion, from the minute I get up until I collapse bask into bed I’m on the go. My life revolves around workouts, work, family, friends, social events, business trips, the karate school, my house, our farm and about a million other things. I’ve gotten to the point that I almost panic if I have more than five minutes to sit still because I feel like I’m forgetting to do something.

With that being said I realized lately that I also do a considerable amount of waiting. Waiting for the work day to be over, waiting for long workouts to be over, waiting for the weather to break, waiting to see progress, waiting for my new bike arrive (she a week overdue) and waiting for my damn scale to say something other than 260! (No, I’m not one of those women who lie about their weight)

My scale has faithfully read somewhere between 257 and 263 pretty much every single day since last May. With one exception, on Sept 16th I was at 255.6! Yes, it’s true, I weigh more than the average NFL Running Back. I managed to drop 25 pounds in 3 months and then…nada…nothing…zip…zilch! It has become the most frustrating part of my day, my week, my life!

People keep telling me I look great and asking how much I’ve lost. My favorite line is “wow, you’ve lost a lot of weight” No, no I haven’t! And when I tell people they say things like “well, you’re all muscle!” Wrong again…care to go for the trifecta?

For several months this didn’t bother me that much, while I was working out I was still eating like absolute crap. How upset could I be with my scale when I still had Papa Johns on speed dial? But last fall I made the attempt to at least clean up my eating. Yes, we had the holidays, but that wasn’t that bad because I spent most of December with some variation of the flu and for days on end couldn’t keep anything down.

Through most of January I felt I did ok. There was room for improvement, but I didn’t order and pizzas, I stayed away from fast food, most junk food and I haven’t had much to drink besides water and 2 cups of coffee a day. Am I eating perfectly, hell no and I’m not sure I ever want too; I like things like ice cream and chocolate. But I at least try to make better choices and stay within the parameters KBW has set for me.

But I’m not going to lie; it’s hard to watch everyone around me eat pizza and doughnuts and whatever the hell they want while I choke down carrot sticks, cashews and chicken. Last week I had some technical issues with my food logging app and just didn’t care enough to go back and fill it back in. It’s not so much that I want to eat poorly again, in fact I tried to partake in a Super Bowl party we had last week and couldn’t manage to eat any of the greasy, over-processed, cheese covered things I use to survive on.

I waver between feeling that I'm some kind of massive failure, somehow I’m screwing this up, to other days where I just feel like I’m completely incapable to ever dropping any weight, clearly my body hates me. I just wish I’d see some progress of some kind. (Yes, I’m whining, it happens, let it go).

At this point I’ve come to the conclusion that I will do the Half Ironman in August, well north of where I’d hoped to be. My knees will hate me and it will be exponentially harder than it needs to be, but I do most things the hard way anyhow! =)

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Disney ½ Marathon

LEARNING TO LOVE THE THINGS I HATE

THE WAITING GAME

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