Mommy Blog

Random Post

2012-02-10T20:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm doing a Weight Watchers challenge called Beat the Winter Blahs, and this week's silly project was to make our own "happy meal". So here is my version of a happy meal.

I have to be honest however, I enjoyed having a lunch that looked like a face and all, but I enjoyed my dinner a whole lot more. My hubby is not a fan of quiche or shrimp and I went all out at dinner and made myself a salad, with cilantro lime shrimp from skinny taste, and combined it with my Wild Mushroom and Gouda Tart that I made last week (don't worry I froze them). As cute as eating food with a face is, the work that went into my meal below, made me much happier than my lunch!

Happy, Silly Moment.

2012-02-09T23:55:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this week has been one of those back and forth weeks. One minute it's awesome and I'm super happy, the next they babies are screaming, and I'm on the floor ready to cry or slap someone. So needless to say my running, booty camp and good friend Jenn have really helped to get me through the week. Well and the chocolate I bought Tuesday at the Lindt outlet didn't hurt either! But tonight I brought my BRF to booty camp with her, so when I'm working out and she's planning my training runs she now knows what I'm going through. Afterwards we went for coffee and I didn't realize it until we left, but we spent like 90 minutes just chatting in Starbucks. I really enjoyed the adult conversation and getting her feedback/opinion on some running and personal things I've been pondering lately. She also shared a few really funny stories and reminded me that it's nice to have some grown up time. And yes, we both discussed how ridiculously excited we are for our post-race brunch on Sunday! We're each already dreaming about what delicious food we'll get to eat. Then when I got home I found my Valentine's gift from my hubby in the mail, so I came in and instead of giving him the bag, I showed it to him, opened it, put the shirt on and ran away wearing it. Lucky for him his gift arrived in January (from thinkgeek) and I came back and gave him his. I picked out the t-shirt because honestly lately I've been feeling like a Rino on a treadmill and he thinks I'm the unicorn in the picture, so it made me laugh. Hope you're all having a great week, and that mine ends as well as today went!

Scale Wars - I win!

2012-02-09T10:49:00.002-05:00

It seems that mixing up my workouts in January by adding a boot camp has really helped to jump start my weight loss again. I was down another 1.6 lbs this week, which is the largest loss of the year. I also think that dropping my daily points by 1 last week probably didn't hurt my efforts this week. I hit a weight point where my tracker actually wanted to drop my points but I told it to shush since I'm working on dropping my points my own way because of nursing and Steve and I agree that gradual is better than too quick. I mean it wanted me to drop another 2 points this week after I just dropped one last week. That's half my nursing points, which I don't think is a great idea considering I'm still nursing five or six times a day, some days more.

So from now until the end of May I'm dropping 1 point every 4th week, and at one time I will drop 2 to bring me down to 30 by the time I return to work. I'm going until the end of May not only because of work, but also because that is when I start my marathon training. Once I do that, I will need to play with my points a lot at that time to ensure I am eating enough for my training. I plan to continue tracking so that I don't use my runs as an excuse to eat. I've made a deal with my coach that we'll take it week by week until we get the right number. I'm thinking that as long as I don't drop more than 1 lbs a week I'll still be eating enough. I also, plan to track my running as running instead of walking like I do now, and will set up my tracker so that I eat my activity points, which will give me the extra points for all my protein and carbs. I'm glad I'm training in the summer, because I love salad and salad with a nice piece of fish or chicken on the bbq is a great meal. I'll just have to make sure I get enough carbs. Looks like a lot of pancake and oatmeal breakfasts.

My husband is also doing well again. He's lost all his business trip gain, and he's only 0.4lbs away from the lowest he's been on his journey, which was before Christmas and his Sweden trip. I know how hard it is to lose weight, so I feel for him, and have been making sure he's got lots of healthy snacks, and delicious meals at home that are all on point, so when his team of guys go out for lunch he can use his weeklies with them, and start on track at home. The poor guy doesn't know I'm going to make him run this week too! I have to take rest days around my race on Sunday which means he should run on those days. Poor guy, he's got no idea what is going to happen to him this weekend.

Finally, in regards to numbers (which I so love) I've surpassed my 25lbs lost this week. I'm now at 26.3lbs gone, which is 56.6% of my goal so I am feeling pretty pumped this week. I'm hopeful that this week will rock as well and I can drop below 165 lbs next week. One exciting thing is that I'm actually better off than my numbers show since my 145lbs goal, is the goal I had after Lillian, not the weight I actually got to. I only made it down to between 148.2 so if you use that number I've only got 17 lbs to go. Wow!

Running anyway.

2012-02-08T21:50:00.002-05:00

Okay we all have days that we don't want to workout, and sometimes we run away from the workouts and others we suck it up and do it anyway. Tonight was one of those nights, and I persevered. I was supposed to run an easy 8-10k tonight and I didn't feel much like doing 5k let alone 10k. The first 5k were awful and I didn't want to keep going but I didn't want to fail, and honestly, I didn't want to have to write a blog about how I failed at my run. So I pushed myself to keep going and forced the extra 5k out of my lead legs by doing a split. I ran for 4 minutes and then walked for 1. This is a method I used a lot when I was getting started at running but haven't done it very much since I had Katrina. I used it during my outside training run with Cecilia a few weeks ago and figured it was better to do this method and get it done.

So hurray, for me completing my run when I was tired and did NOT want to do it. Oh yeah, and I have a race on Sunday!!

Training Tuesday.

2012-02-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

This is a quick summary as the week was a rest week. I had planned an additional run on the weekend but with my hubby being in a play and then his family coming over for dinner on Sunday the extra Saturday run didn't happen.

The best part about this week was the fact that I managed to achieve and for several kms maintain my half marathon race pace during my Friday run. I was very scared to do this run after how badly my last attempt went. I felt that if I failed to hit the pace then I was a loser since the weather was PERFECT for a run and there would be nothing to blame it on. I'm aware that I still have a lot of work to do, but for now I'll accept this run and feel proud of myself!

Until next week when I'll have a very exciting race report in my training!

My Crazy Rantings.

2012-02-05T21:02:00.000-05:00

Okay, I have a bunch of crazy thoughts and ideas running around my head, so I thought my blog would be a good place to let them all run free.

First of all, I experienced a strange thing today. Sunday is my day of rest, and I should start by saying that I left it as that, but I could have done my run that is scheduled for tomorrow. I'm not sure how that would work out though (coach any feedback??). I didn't run yesterday because of my sore back, so with that I have two rest days this weekend. After resting yesterday I easily could have run today, and I actually had the energy this evening. I wish I could have done my tempo run that is scheduled for tomorrow, but I didn't know how my coach would feel about it, and so I didn't do it. Now I'm a sad runner and instead need to drag my butt out of bed really early tomorrow morning so I can get the run in. Boo!

Next, I have been feeling a bit sheltered lately with my hubby going here, there and everywhere and I'm just sitting at home taking care of our babies. I also figured out that my hubby just puts all the things he is interested in doing right into our calendar, which makes me think he really needs to go to them, so then I sit at home feeling frustrated that I never get to do anything. So now that I know that I can start throwing everything I am interested in, right into our calendar too, so that our personal functions can fight it out in the calendar. So now I just need to find some things I want to do so that I can throw it in the calendar.

In addition to feeling crazy sheltered I feel like my husband doesn't really understand just how much work it is to take care of two monkies all on your own, especially for multiple days. So I have this urge to flee and show him how much work it really is to keep both babies happy, clothed and fed, while not letting our house turn into a disaster area. So my idea is to run away in the summer! I will stop nursing before I go back to work, so I want to flee for a weekend after I go back to work. Ideally I'll leave Friday morning and come home late, late on Sunday or maybe even Monday. Now I just need to find someone to go with! Maybe I'll pick a random race somewhere and convince my RBF to go with me and count it as marathon training. We'll see if I manage to pull this one off, since it's so hard for me to leave my babies, and I don't know if I want to leave them alone with daddy for that long. He'll fill them with candy, let them wear the same clothes all weekend, and watch far too much television!

So there are my crazy ramblings. Trying to unshelter myself, wanted to run at night, and my hubby stealing all our calendar space!

Weekend of fun

2012-02-04T21:21:00.000-05:00

So I tried to do my pace run yesterday and it went much better than my first attempt. I ran an average pace of 7:15 and was able to run several kms of a 6:39-6:48 pace, which is where I should be. So now at least I have hope for my race in April. I am going to enjoy my weekend and then next week Cecilia and I will have to look over my running and figure out what I need to do in order to ROCK my half-marathon. I know one of the things I have to do is actually run outside a lot more, and work on pushing myself when I'm on my own too. But other than that I'll have to wait and see what my coach has to say about the whole thing!


Don't you even think about touching my puffs!

Today I was supposed to do an easy little 5k but that didn't end up happening, instead Steve and I took the girls to the library and had some quality family time. We've been so busy the past week and a bit, that I felt we were over due for some quality time. I figured I would just run in the evening but then putting Lillian to bed did not go very well, and my back is a bit sore so I decided to forgo my run. Normally I would have pushed myself to do it, but I have a race next Sunday, and I figured I should take advantage of my rest week so I am ready to go next week.

Tonight my husband has his last show, which is the theatre group we met in, and I am sooo happy about it. He's been so busy with rehearsals the last week that I am feeling like a single mom a bit, and am getting a bit lonely. For the rest of the month I pretty much own his time so at least I'll be able to get my runs in but I still feel a bit frustrated. I am glad he's happy and out there meeting new people, and networking, but at the same time I feel like I don't matter as much as I used to. I know our girls are the priority and they should be, but I wish I was on that list too, and some days I don't feel like I am.

So after days of not seeing him, and him coming home at like 4am after the show parties, I get to make lunch for his family tomorrow. We're trying to have his father and brother down once a month and for some silly reason he picked the day after the show. I'll be glad when this weekend is over, and my life can get back to normal again, or at least some sort of normal. I don't think you can be a crazy running mama of two babies (only 20 months apart) and have a "normal" life.

Thinning Thursday.

2012-02-02T12:30:00.000-05:00

So today I've been rocking my weight loss for 6 straight weeks! Go me! I keep working hard, tracking everything and doing my best and after 6 weeks of no change at the end of November and December I feel that I deserve it. I feel as if I'm sliding a little bit this week so I need to make sure that next week I am more diligent about my tracking and weighing and such. A good reminder to be extra careful the next week and not let snacking get the better of me. This week I was rewarded for all my hard work with a loss of 1.0lbs. I'm feeling on top of the world.

I've also decided that I should drop 1 of my daily points from my allowance this week. Katrina is starting to eat a LOT of real food and I want to slowly decrease my points instead of dropping them all at once when I stop nursing, and I figured now is as good a time as any to start that. I plan to drop one every month (or four weeks) from now until June when I go back to work, and then drop whatever are missing when I stop nursing. Wish me luck as it's never easy to lose one.

Finally, in addition to having dropped a great amount of weight I have had some wonderful non-scale related victories over the past few weeks (and months)! These are the great things that happened regardless of my scale's speed of decreasing. Below are my top 5 victories!

I can go from sitting cross legged to standing pain free, while holding Katrina in my arms, without needing to push off my knees or lean on something to support me.
I can run at 6.0 for a whole half mile, and 6.5 for a fifth of a mile consistantly.
I finally fit in my awesome size 11 jeans, that I originally got in grade 11.
I've learned how much or how little food my body needs to keep going and feel amazing, and I pay for it when I don't eat my healthy stuff.
I know that I can do this even if it takes a little longer than I want it to, and that I am setting a great example for my children so they will not struggle with their weight like I did when I was younger.

Lillian's whatever face. This kid cracks me up!

Bootcamp Midpoint

2012-02-01T16:40:00.001-05:00

Okay, so I have been going to boot camp for what they call 4 weeks and what I call 3 weeks (** see ramble at bottom) and I have to say I'm pretty happy with some of my results. I wish I'd dropped more inches, at this time I'm only down 1 inch in the butt and a bit in the bust but since I was wearing a tighter bra I don't even know how accurate that is. But what I find interesting is the body fat decrease. So as you can see I dropped almost 10 lbs of body fat! I lost 5lbs and switched 5lbs from fat to lean muscle mass. So I have to say that makes me feel pretty good.

So I know the first few weeks are easier to get muscle mass and I will have to work much harder the next 4 weeks if I want to see more results. But I have to say that I am a bit skeptical about some of these numbers since they show such a HUGE change in my body, fat mass wise, but the inches are not disappearing so I am a bit confused by this. But I won't complain!

** I call it 3 weeks because we started classes on Tuesday January 10th, and while this week is the 4th week of classes, being measured on the Tuesday is actually only 3 weeks completed whether they call it 4 weeks or whatever.

January Summary

2012-01-31T17:00:00.000-05:00

After everything I went through in December, I have to say that January was a BIG improvement!

I started the month at 171.4lbs and ended it at 167.8lbs which means I only lost 3.6lbs! Having stalled at the end of last year I am thrilled with that loss, and even more thrilled to be back in the 160's! January was a very busy time in our house, with Steve going to Sweden on business, and myself starting boot camp but we survived it and I did so lighter than the beginning!

As for running this month things went well. I run 122.28km over the course of the month. It should have been more, but considering my husband was on an international business trip for 8 days and I caught a horrible cold (which I still have) the last week of the month, I'm going to call my totals AWESOME! The breakdown is that I ran an average of 3.95km or 29:46 minutes a day. The monthly speed is lower than December's but I did more windy day runs this month than the last. I have been trying to prepare for the February refridgeeightor race in a few weeks, plus the days I ran while sick were quite a bit slower than average.

I also ran less because I had boot camp two days a week in January, and they have been making me feel great. Not as much pain as I expected, but I feel good about it and I got a DVD out of it that I can do after boot camp ends.

I'm looking forward to February and what it brings.


Katrina says to get a jump start on February!

Training Tuesday.

2012-01-31T06:30:00.000-05:00

Above is this past week's training schedule.

Monday went well for me, despite my cold and running in the morning. I was a little worried about how a pre-sun rise run would work out but I managed to do well. I rocked the run, though I did step off the treadmill more often than I would usually. I found that, until my cold kicked in, the early morning runs were not as hard as I thought they would be. I enjoyed the burst of energy they gave me and even though I used up some points for a pre-run snack, I didn't need coffee that morning to wake myself up so it all balanced out. Let's hope it all works out that I can keep up the early morning runs, once the cold is over!

Boot camp is going well and I'm excited about it. We did some different things this week and I enjoyed it even though it was exhausting. I found it funny that during the Thursday workout I got so sweaty that during burpies when I had to get up off the mat there was a sweaty outline of me. I have to say that is a new one, but was most impressive. Guess I'm getting my money's worth.

My so called long run was sad and not a big run. I didn't manage to run the distance or speed that I wanted to, but weather sucked and my cold got to me. C'est la vie!

Photo updates!

2012-01-28T23:09:00.001-05:00

I'm sure you've all been in withdrawl from not having baby photos so here you go! I have to remember to be thankful for all I have. My hubby was in a minor car accident yesterday (car got banged up a bit but he was completely fine) and it reminds you what matters most in life! So here are my lovely little ones that mean the world to us.

Snowman building with daddy.

I like cheerioes and drool.

Whatever!


I'm gonna eat this toy.

Friday Failures.

2012-01-27T14:26:00.003-05:00

Sorry about the posting glitches this morning with my unfinished Friday favourites. Never got around to finishing them as it's been a very busy week. I hope to have some new Friday favourites at the middle or end of February. For now you get to hear about my sad little run today.

So to summarise, I'm just really bummed today. I planned a great run. My husband took the day off of work today so it was ideal! It should have been great and everything I dreamed of but instead everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, was against me!

So to start off with I have a cold. I've had it since Monday, and it isn't normally an issue but outside it literally took my breathe away from coughing. My husband's family day off turned into a my friend from out of town wants to go out for lunch. Fine, I shift my afternoon run to the morning which means running 14 hours after boot camp instead of 18, but I can overcome that. Next, I oversleep (baby woke up at 6am to be fed and I planned to stay up but instead I fell asleep again - ops). But that means I didn't have enough wake/bathroom time before my run. I also woke up to snow on the ground and it was still snowing! So those 1-2 inches of snow really hides ice. Not to mention the 33 or 43km per hour wind gusts.

All in all, I planned to try to test my race pace for as long as I could and with my chest cold and the wind I didn't even make it to race pace, let alone hold it. So now I feel like a big fat failure. I wanted to test my body's ability to handle the necessary 6:44 pace and I couldn't even hit the pace. My best was barely a 6:59 I know the conditions were not ideal and my cold is really something that I should have taken into account when I made my run plan, but I didn't and not having met my goals makes me feel like I big LOSER!

So in the end, I did the best I could with my run and I know that. I cut the 12k down to an 8k. After the pathetic pace up until 5k I just stopped looking at my garmin, tied it to my water belt and just ran the best I could until I got home. I figure under the circumstances I did great but I'm still bummed. I hate runs like this where I come home feeling like a failure. They make me question why I even bother running when I have nothing to show for it. The logical side of me knows it all takes time and conditions of each run play a huge factor but my emotional side doesn't care.

And just to prove what a bad week I'm having I just managed to fall off the couch while blogging this because in an attempt to stand up and get my coffee I caught my foot on a baby toy and slid out causing me to crash into the table I keep my water on. Alexander said it best with his "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!"

Thinning Thursday.

2012-01-26T15:48:00.000-05:00

I feel good (though sickly).

So this week I worked really hard. I did my booty camp, one day with a sore calve, and one day with tired thighs. I ate really well, and ran a great tempo run and a good weekend training run, but I didn't eat all my weekly points and I even had some super salty soup for lunch yesterday, but it was sooo yummy. I'm also fighting a pretty yucky cold, which means my, ummm how do I say this, bathroom schedule is not right, and I'm working on getting used to getting up early in the morning to run also. So all in all I had a really busy week but it was WORTH it.

Today I weighed in at 167.8 which means I dropped 0.4 lbs from last week! Woot, go me! It may not be an amazing loss but after last week I'll take it!

My husband came back from Sweden having gained a few pounds and I told him I would be in complete control of his food and help him drop it. He lost 2.8lbs of the 3.2lbs he gained on his business trip. So pretty soon he'll be back down to pre-trip weight and he'll feel super good about himself.

Life and thoughts.

2012-01-25T20:21:00.002-05:00

So today I had planned to get up before 6am and head to my treadmill to do a run, but I woke up and was full of snot, and coughing and pretty achy. Not boot camp achy but sickly achy. So I fed Katrina and turned off the alarm clock and went back to sleep. I debated running this afternoon but in the end figured that since next week is a rest week, I can run Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then rest again on Monday. That way I still get my distance, my number of runs and all that good stuff in this week, but then next week I can take it really easy.

Still don't have my Mac back but I am trying to wait patiently. It just means that I can't post photos (since they are all organized on my Mac and I don't want to have to do the job twice) and that I can't watch my normal shows or such. My hubby's computer is fine for weight watchers and facebook but blogging just isn't the same, and I don't have my regular files so I'll have a lot of running data to input when I get it back. But at least I will get it back soon (I hope!).

Training Tuesday - week 12 of 25

2012-01-24T07:30:00.000-05:00

Below is this past week's training schedule.

My Monday speed run went really well and I felt like I might be sick during the last set, which I think is a good thing. I feel I should be pushing myself well beyond my usual comfort zone and these runs are really bringing that out, so I'm happy with how well it went.I also notice that my recovery time is much better and that I'm not struggling as much as I did before to catch my breathe on a mini break which makes me feel very proud. My easy runs were done in small parts and I'm not too happy that most of my runs are ending up at 5k or less because of the girls' sleep schedule. I have a plan for next week to increase my distances and it involves using my morning person, personality to my advantage. We'll see how that goes.

Jan 16 – 22		Week 12 of 25
01/16/12	9.98km	Speed run - 1 mile @ 5.2mph, 6 sets of 0.5/0.2 mile @ 6.0/4.6mph, 1 mile @ 5.2
01/17/12	XT	Week 12 of 25
01/18/12	8.37km	Easy treadmill run in 2 parts
01/19/12	XT	Booty camp
01/20/12	4.99km	Easy treadmill run
01/21/12	12.82km	Refridgerator training run
01/22/12	Rest Day
Total	36 km	YTD: 97 km

My cross training is still a lot of fun. This week it brought on a bit of pain in my left calf but I took that as a sign that I was working hard, and I could still run with it, so that was a good thing. It did take about three days for the pain to go away but that's part of boot camp. I expect muscles that don't get used too much in running to hurt a bit during these work outs, and if nothing does, then why am I paying for it?

My long run with Cecilia went very well. It was an easy pace where we ran 5 minutes and walked 1 minute and chatted the whole time, so I really enjoyed myself and like to think she did too. Afterwards we went back to her place for pancakes and lattes. A very good way to start my weekend. I learned a few things on this run. First of all, I am not worried about running my Refridgee-Eighter race in less than three weeks since we did the route, and even with snow it's not too bad and the only hill is a mini-hill compared to the ones I usually run out here. Also, I know my yaks are doing their job and will keep me safe on this run. I also, figured out I need to make a reservation for brunch with Cecilia (if she wishes) and my hubby and girls after my race because goodness I was hungry and what better way to celebrate completing it than with brunch, or lunch depending on what time the race begins!

Updates!

2012-01-23T14:52:00.002-05:00

So Steve took my beloved Mac to the apple store today and they have ordered us a new hard drive. When they tried to turn it on in store, the computer told them it didn't have the hard drive. So very easy to see why that might be an issue. Hurray for apple care protection. Sadly it may take 1-5 days for it to be repaired. I miss my Mac but am happy to know that it will be home sooner rather than later. When our old Dell broke we had to mail it to them and it took 3 weeks to fix, so less than 1 week is fine by me. So sorry that I blog less right now, but I hate using my husband's Ubuntu laptops and the big computer is in the office and only available when he's not home, and honestly he bought this fancy keyboard from Germany and it's really loud when you type and it bugs the crap out of me. So until my Mac is home I probably won't be writing every day but I'll make up for it once it's back. Promise!

We had a really busy weekend with running, and theatre stuff but that's okay. I usually hate being really busy but now that Steve is back from Sweden being busy doesn't feel nearly as bad as when he was gone, because I was so crazy busy trying to get everything done while he wasn't here. This week alone, we have my two boot camps nights, Steve's two computer/entrepreneurial events, play stuff on the weekend ... It's just CRAZY! Then next week is show week but luckily it's also my rest week so we can manage that well. I want Steve to be happy so I'm trying to get him out into more events so if he decides to switch careers he'll have the connections that he can.

In the world of Alice's running, I did my first really early am run today, and I survived it. I did my tempo run after feeding the baby, who woke up at 5:40am. So after she was changed and ate, I grabbed a half piece of peanut butter toast and hit the treadmill at 6:25am. I did my run, and it was over 9k in 61 minutes which is great. I'm hoping this will allow me to get longer runs in without worrying about whether or not the girls will nap for me. A few things I'll do differently next time. I'll boil the water for Steve's coffee in case the babies wake up (today I got upstairs at 7:30am and everyone was sound asleep still). I'll put my nuun drink in a water bottle on the treadmill so I don't have to step off to get it. I'll give myself a small slow warm up period (though that can't happen with tempo/speed runs) because that first mile SUCKED!!! But I have to say I'm pleased with how the run went and look forward to doing it again on Wednesday. We'll see how it goes after my evening boot camp the night before!

Feeling bummed.

2012-01-21T21:47:00.001-05:00

First of all, FYI, my mac is DEAD and I am so bummed about it. Myhusband has a bunch of computers but they all run on Ubuntu and I'mnot liking it. The mouse is too sensitive so I can't control what Iwant to do with it. I can't open my Mac files and my whole life is onthat computer and I'm so frustrated. Steve is on it, but I wish itwere faster and easier to fix. Big sad face!

But on to other topics. So I went for a training run today forwith my BRF and I think it went okay. I ran an easy 8:11 pace, andrealized it's only 3 weeks to my race. I'm excited to run my firstrace of 2012, but I'm also a bit nervous because I've done some math(with Cecilia) and I've found out that in order to run my halfmarathon in 2:22:22 I need to run a 6:44 pace and my best run outsideso far was only 7:44 which means I have a long way to go in order todo this. A lot of my treadmill runs (especially my speed and temporuns) are in the 6:5X range, and my treadmill easy runs are aroundthe 7:15 mark. So while I'm hopeful I'm going to go into my race andaim for 3 goals.

1/ Finish in the half-marathon goal 6:44 pace
2/ Finish in themarathon goal 7:05 pace
3/ Finish in under 1:40 and not hurtmyself (weather depending this may be all I manage)

So now I have to figure out if it's even possible for me to manageto run up to the 6:44 pace for my half marathon. I plan to do my bestat the race in 3 weeks and look over my results there to see if I canget my speed up in time (12 weeks from that point) for the Waterloohalf. For now I have to focus on getting my 8-12km runs in, whichmeans running a lot in the morning when I can put more time in it.

Thinning Thursday.

2012-01-19T09:28:00.000-05:00

So I had a long, long, long week with my hubby gone. Mostly it went well and I know that if he has to go away again it won't be a problem for us (especially if I don't have boot camp two days a week in addition to my daughter's gymnastics class) and we'll have a fun time. I feel happy that I managed to do so well this week. Woot!

So I have managed to drop 1lbs and get down to 168.2lbs. I was a little worried with how much I stalled at the end of 2011 but so far this year has been going really well!And I just noticed that I'm half way to my goal! 23.3lbs gone and 23.2 to go!

Enjoy a cute baby below!

Mid-week updates.

2012-01-17T22:11:00.001-05:00

I just want to state for the record that I could have made an alliteration for the title here but I didn't! I figured you're all sick of those by now. So I have a few things to update and discuss.

First off I had a kick ass speed run on Monday despite my hubby being gone and having to do the run at 8pm at night. So woot go me, little bit of praise there! Not to mention the fact that I got over my fear of running in our basement. What I did was not do laundry, turn off the lights around the birds so they went to sleep and were quiet and watched a funny TV show while I ran to drown out the sounds. I also had both baby monitors on the table near the treadmill so I could hear my girls if needed, and it all worked. I felt amazing after I finished, especially because I didn't know if I could run that long without getting scared again.

Boot camp is going well. Tuesday's class was fun, though they were doing work in our normal room so we had to go to another run, which happened to be very hot. That part wasn't fun, but the workout was great. I also admitted to the instructor that I wouldn't be doing the DVDs because I'm not allowed to. She asked me why not, because she was worried I was hurt, but I explained that my running coach says no because of my running. I told her how I'm trying to get a PR in my half in April and then move on to marathon training for the Toronto waterfront. She said that's great, and said the same thing Cecilia did, which is that doing running all the time (4 days a week) with boot camp as cross training is great. She did say if I want to do one of the workouts I should focus on the glutes one because she's seen a lot of runners who get knee issues because their glutes weaken as their legs strengthen. She has a degree in sports medicine or something like that so I figure on weeks were I am resting from running or days that I can't run far, it'll be an extra little addition to my workout.

Lillian resting in her nicely cleaned car seat.

I've also had a lot of baby fun this week. On Monday my girlfriends and I had a baby playdate! We had a great time, though I could have done without Lillian getting car sick. Now one of my friends is gone in February so the playdate will be short 1 mama and a few babies, but that's okay. My friend Alyson and I are planning a visit to someplace with our kidlets, and that should be a blast. I also babysat for a friend for a few hours on Tuesday, so we had three babies (7, 15 and 27 months old) in this house. CRAZY!!

Katrina looks like she needs a hot tub.

So now I have another boot camp on Thursday to look forward to, and hopefully some sort of run on Wednesday during the day, though I haven't decided yet whether it will be inside on the treadmill or outside in the stroller. I guess the weather will be the deciding factor.

Training Tuesday - week 11 of 25

2012-01-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

This week was much lower in total kms than I wanted it to be, but I expected that with Steve being away on business, though it does make me sad a little bit. I don't like failing at my goals, but this week I won't let it get me down. I managed to ROCK my tempo run, which is really the only thing that I hoped to achieve this week. I figured I would have reasonable expectations for the week. I also managed to have a great outside run on Wednesday with my girls in the stroller. I love having them in the stroller, even though Katrina fussed for a large part of the run.

I did not get my long run in this week and I've noticed that I haven't been doing enough long runs as of late. I haven't run more than 13km at one shot since the end of November so I'm planning a good long run on the weekend once my husband is back. I think he owes me a few long runs once he's home.

The Lost run.

2012-01-15T15:28:00.000-05:00

My RBF said something that really resounded with me a few weeks ago. She told me about how if she misses a run due to bad timing, a cold, work, etc.. that she lets it go and it becomes a lost run. The idea of not making up the run or the distance seems so foreign to me. I who pushes myself as far as my body will take me, can't contemplate not making up missed distance, but this month I'm going to do just that. I couldn't run yesterday because of the fear, and since Sunday is my rest day and tomorrow will be my speed work, I figured that I will accept the loss of yesterday's run instead of trying to push myself into running today and then do my speed work tomorrow.

The last few times I said I would do this I actually ended up running despite saying I wouldn't. So hopefully I will actually manage to NOT run. Here are some photos of what has been keeping me busy from running.

Trying to become mobile.

Baking cupcakes for her friends.

Not my day for running.

2012-01-14T21:41:00.000-05:00

Saturday is my typical long run day but with Steve being gone for several days now I was pretty busy today and Katrina had a bit of a rough morning so I was a bit tired tonight, but more so it was the fear. Not fear of running, but fear of being home alone in the house with our two girls and running alone in the basement. I know it sounds silly or crazy but I'm a worry wort. I kept hearing noises, our parrot and washing machine, and was freaked out after only a little bit of time so I just stopped running and figured I'll take my little ladies on a run tomorrow during the day if the weather is accommodating for us.

Wish me luck!

Before and After - here we go again - 6 month update!

2012-01-13T06:40:00.000-05:00

So here we are! It's 6 months after really starting my post-pregnancy fitness journey. I've worked really hard and am doing much better than I thought I was. I felt as if I hadn't made as much progress these past 3 months as I did my first 3 months, but the stats don't lie and though my inches didn't drop as much that is normal for inches to slow down from doing the same activity, but my weight loss was almost the same. Okay I'll be honest, I weighed in on Tuesday this week because Steve was going away on business, and recorded that number but today's would have put me exactly 10 lbs down in 3 months, just like the first 3 months!

So I'm thrilled that I've dropped an additional 9.8lbs and another 5.5 inches. That means a total of 19.8lbs and 13.5 inches. Now while I would say I wish I'd have lost more, I have to say I am thrilled with the results. I also know that my 8 weeks of boot camp will help to boost the number of inches I drop in the next 3 month cycle. I'm excited to see what the next 3 months bring as I'm going to be running some big numbers over the next few months to prepare for my half marathon and hopefully at the end of it I'll be in another decade.

July 12, 2011

January 12, 2012

October 12, 2011