Showing posts with label Chalene Johnson. Show all posts

Taking a cue from one of my favorite bloggers...

I am starting Operation Suck Less in honor of Suck Less, Whine More.  But I can't add more whining to my regimen because, as you know if you read my last post, I am already in tip top whining shape.


And where, exactly, has all my whining gotten me?  Oh, that's right... crying in bed yesterday after running 3.66 miles when I was planning on running 9 miles.  Really?  I still ran 3.66 miles!  Six months ago, I was not running 3.66 miles.  Running a mile seemed a little challenging.  I have come a long way!  So what if I didn't run 9 miles - I ran 11 miles last week!  And not in the course of the week, but all in one day!  At one time!  I couldn't have done that even three months ago.  Three years ago, I couldn't even run without getting horribly out of breath after only a few seconds.  I let myself get emotional yesterday, and while it wasn't the best response, I'm not going to beat myself up about it, because it's okay.  Everything's okay.  I'm alive.  I'm healthy (as long as you don't count the fact that my bloodstream is currently 90% candy orange slices).   And I regularly get punched in the arm (in a good way) by an amazing blogging community filled with motivating people like Amylee (who is, in case you didn't know, gorgeous... on top of being a running rockstar and finishing the Top of Utah Marathon AND qualifying for Boston!).  So am I giving up like I whined about yesterday?


Hell no, I'm not!

Instead, I am going to start sucking less.  For me, this means the following:

  1. Stop beating yourself up for not constantly being God's gift to exercise.  Miss a workout?  Life goes on.  Ran 1 mile instead of 10?  It'll be okay.
  2. Don't allow rule #1 to turn into "I don't feel like running 10 miles, so I'll do 2 crunches instead and then take a nap."  While beating yourself up is no longer required, effort is still required.  You don't feel like doing a HIIT workout today?  Too bad.  You are required to at least attempt it.  If you start and you are in pain or feel awful, that's one thing, but no skipping workouts just because you don't feel like getting sweaty or you'd rather eat Chick-fil-a.
  3. Listen to your body.  When your knees hurt, ice them and stop jumping around like a maniac trying to impress Chalene Johnson.  When you're tired, rest.  When you are thirsty, have some water.  When you are hungry, don't listen to the voice that tells you to buy Oreos.  Eat a freaking banana.
  4. Floss.  Seriously.
  5. And, perhaps most importantly given yesterday's emo kid post... FINALLY REGISTER FOR AND RUN THE ROCK 'N ROLL DENVER HALF MARATHON.

I know.  I needed to do this a while ago.  And I can cough up a million excuses for why I didn't, but let's be honest... when you get right down to it, I'd say it was 50% fear and 50% laziness.  Neither of which should be part of my running.  So I am shutting up and registering.  And I have a backup bribe in case I start to chicken out - after I register, I get to pick out a new outfit for race day.  I will absolutely finish registration if I know there's shopping at the end.  It's kind of the best way to bribe me into anything.

So that's it.  Operation Suck Less... commence!
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Seven miles down!!

Today's run:
Half Marathon Training Week Seven, Day Three (7 mile run)
7.49 miles/1:38:30


My first seven mile run of all time has now been completed!  If I had any energy left, I would probably do a cheer.  Instead, I am channeling all of my energy into typing.  No, really.  I had to take a break from typing the word "channeling" to yawn because I didn't think I could type and yawn at the same time.  This is how exhausted running seven miles made me.

Overall, I'm very proud of myself... and thrilled that my mom is a very nice woman who will pick me up at the end of long runs so I don't have to run hills to get home.  But this was an incredibly challenging run.  Interestingly enough, I think it was actually more challenging for me mentally than physically.  Yes, my legs were heavy and tired, but it was my brain that really wanted to quit.  I actually did almost quit about halfway through.  But I kept telling myself that I was strong and that I could do this.  I thought of my bestie Chalene, who regularly reminds me to speak to myself in a positive voice.

Of course, if I had those legs, I would constantly speak to myself in a positive voice. 


It turns out I have a lot of negative voices in my head and very few positive ones.  So while there were several boisterous opinions about my failings bouncing around, there was just a very small voice saying, "It's okay, just keep running, you can do this."  It's amazing I heard it at all.  I am going to have to work on that - letting go of my negative voices.

Physically, the run wasn't too bad.  I am finding that the first few miles are actually a lot harder than the last few for me.  I think for the first two or three, my body just keeps saying, "Seriously?  We're doing this?  Are you sure you want to keep doing this?"  And so I drag my feet and question my abilities and worry and freak out about pacing.  But after that, my body resigns itself... "Well, damn, I guess you're not going to stop running.  All right.  I give up."  That being said, Lefty the Angry Hammy did make an appearance again today, presenting itself at around 2.5 miles, and never leaving.  Lefty is wearing out his welcome.  I came home and stretched for a while and sticked it, so I'm hoping that helps.  This week, I'm going to try using the Stick after every workout - normally I use it after running, and kind of only when I remember, so I'm going to add it into my post-Turbo routine as well and see how that goes.

Benefits of the run?  I got to meet a black and white kitty (and yes, I stopped my Garmin and my iPod just so I could pet a cat for a few minutes... I am desperate for cat love), saw the sun rise, saw several deer having a nice grassy breakfast, and... oh yeah, ate half a Snickers bar.  

Chocolatey perfection.


I think that's the first Snickers I've had since last Halloween.  Not going to lie, I love me some Snickers, but it is kind of odd to be eating that at 5:45 in the morning.  I'm not sure how well it worked for me, either.  I crashed HARD during this run.  But that might also be a combination of factors - I left a half hour later than I did for my 6 mile run, so it was a little hotter, and I was rationing out the Cytomax, which left me very thirsty.  Note to self: BUY A CAMELBAK, FOOL.  Plus, I only got about 6 hours of sleep, and I was sore from yesterday's 20 minutes of Turbo followed by manic packing and zero stretching.  But boy did that Snickers get me out of bed... I was really having trouble getting up, and the second I thought of the Snickers bar, I jumped right out.  Proving that you can take the fat off of the girl, but you can't get it out of her head.  Or something like that.  I told you I was tired.

Sidenote: if you noticed that my mileage on dailymile (or my sidebar) and/or the number of cheeseburgers it says I earned on my sidebar went WAY up, it's because I finally took the time to update my dailymile account and add in several weeks of runs.  I can't believe I've run 144 miles this year... especially since I only really started running again in April.  That's 144 miles in a little over 4 months! I'm so proud I can hardly stand it.  So... I'll just go to bed instead.  

Do you have negative voices in your head during runs?  What do you do to combat them?
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Apparently I can only take pictures with my thumbs up.

Today's workout:
Power Training (read: Body Pump on crack)
a lot of calories/a very painful hour


I woke up this morning with the intention of going to the rec center with my mom to take a class called Body Fit, which was described as follows on the website: "Define tone and strengthen your muscles with various resistance movements and low impact aerobics, all fitness levels welcome."  Since my problem with my current schedule is lack of strength training (sorry, Chalene, but Sculpt 30 and Tone 30 aren't cutting it for a strength junkie), I thought this would be a great class to check out.  So we went.  And as we waited outside the door of the room, other people started showing up... most in their 60s and 70s.  Suddenly, it looked like "all fitness levels welcome" meant "Jessica will cry as she uses 2 pound weights for squats."  Luckily, my mom is incredibly understanding, and suggested that I try another class that was going on at the same time.  I thought the class was Muscle Plus, which is described as such: " A pound of muscle can burn 30 - 50 extra calories a day, so build up your fat burner! Some light aerobics, but mostly we’ll be stoking your furnace and sleeking up your muscles!"  I like sleeking muscles.  This sounded good to me.

But I was wrong.  I instead walked into Power Training.  " This high intensity, weight lifting based class will help sculpt your entire body.  Adjustable bar bell sets, hand weights, balls, gliders and resistance bands will be used.  Increase balance, core and muscle strength/endurance.  This is not your ordinary class."  I'm not kidding - Body Pump on crack.  It was all of the difficult aspects of Body Pump (high repetitions, 3-5 minutes spent on a single muscle group, 8000 squats) plus other scary things.  Like holding a small squishy ball between your thighs while you do those 8000 squats.  And lunges on slippery discs that some fool called "gliders" to make them sound nicer.



You know what are evil?  Gliders.  Seriously, these things are Satanic.  There I am, in the middle of what I think will be a traditional strength training workout, lying on the floor on my stomach and doing the breaststroke on the floor with my hands on these little purple discs, pretending that I'm Michael Phelps.  Or was I lying on the floor on my stomach imaging Michael Phelps stroking me?  Either way, it hurt.

There... that hurts less.


Shockingly, I skipped my Turbo Fire workout for the day.  Which is a little sad because it was my favorite workout today (Fire 45 EZ).  But I'm starting to worry a little bit about doing intense cardio exercise all the time... so I took a breather.  Hopefully that means I can get a great run in tomorrow morning and do another HIIT workout afterwards.  Good old HIIT.  I hope they're not lying to me, and that HIIT really does torch calories.  Because I'm not a huge fan.

You know what I am a huge fan of though?  Having my thumbs up in pictures and making ridiculous faces.  I know I do it a lot on pictures for this blog, but I didn't quite realize that it's the only thing I actually do in pictures until the photos from the Liberty Run came in...

Jessica at the start of the race.

Jessica at the end of the race.  Notice any similarities?  Maybe for my next race I'll try just smiling like a normal person.  Maybe.
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It is past my bedtime.

Today's workout:
P90X Chest and Back + Ab Ripper X
430 calories/69 hateful minutes and 31 agonizing seconds


This will probably be a delusional post because I'm super tired...


... but D-Money insisted I blog so that he could read it.  Sweet.  But bordering on abusive.


And in case you're wondering, why yes, I am addicted to the vertical strip of pictures that I vainly take of myself on The Mugshot Machine.  I guess it isn't that vain though... I mean, look at what I'm showing you.  If you look closely, you can see the lovely little pooch of fat that gathers next to my armpit when I decide to go off plan for several months and eat a lot of this.

The same roommates that introduced me to Cats 101 (see latest Triple Tangent Tuesday for that gem) referred to that little fat deposit as the "baby vagina."  Call it what you will... it ain't pretty.


Today's workout... um... it was P90X.  What else can you say?  I did a whole lot of pushups and pull-ups.  I'd have to check my worksheet for exact numbers (and it is down two flights of stairs, so that obviously isn't happening) but I'm going to say I did about 8000.  Or at least that's what it felt like.  You know what doesn't feel good?  A whole bunch of pull-ups when you haven't done a single pull-up in months.  Yummy.  And before you start thinking I'm really hardcore, please know that I had a chair in front of me with one leg up on it at all times.  I think my legs are more sore than my back.

The real highlight of this workout was Ab Ripper X.  That workout is Satanic.  Anyone who thinks Lady Gaga is the Anti-Christ is incorrect.  Ab Ripper X is the Anti-Christ.

My girl Gaga is just a little special, that's all.


I think I probably only did about half of Ab Ripper X.  I had to keep taking breaks because I thought I was going to throw up.  That's a delightful feeling, isn't it?  You're going along, having a good workout, and then suddenly... that Cytomax/energy gel/drug of choice is biting you right in the ass.  All was well and I got to keep my breakfast, but I have to admit that I was worn out all day after this workout.  Meh.  Maybe I needed some more cardio to get the blood pumping?  Perhaps on top of my run tomorrow, I'll have a date with my bestie Chalene.  She'll tell me, "Guess what?  You're not tired!"  And I'll cry because I will be tired, and sweaty, and nasty... and she will still be able to kick me in the face with perfect bangs.



This is literally the limit of my mental capacity right now.  I swear I will have more coherent things to say tomorrow after serious amounts of sleep.  For right now, I will just say...

YOU GUYS ROCK AND YOU MADE MY WHOLE DAY!
While I was Skyping with David today (before he became super abusive and really nicely and supportively encouraged me to post tonight... the nerve of him) he informed me that I am now up to EIGHT READERS!  I'm not kidding, I did a happy dance with a huge grin on my face and just about peed my pants.  I know eight isn't a huge number (I'm no Skinny Runner or Hungry Runner Girl), but it's a big deal to me.  Selfishly, I'm excited and flattered that anyone thinks my whining is worthy of attention.  Slightly less selfishly, I know that when I was progressing through my weight loss journey and getting into fitness, it helped me a lot to read about other people and their struggles and triumphs... and if I can help anybody else out there, even if it's just my showing that even a Weight Watchers Lifetime member and Leader makes mistakes, it will make every late night blog post absolutely worth it. So THANK YOU LOVELY READERS!


And now I will pass out.  It will look a lot like that last sleepy picture, but with more drool.  You're welcome.
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Why am I wearing fleece in May?!

Ahem.  I swear I got off my couch and out of my sweatpants this week.  But my laptop is so heavy, blogging was impossible.  Okay... so I'm lazy.  Here.  Evidence.

Tuesday's run:
Couch to 5K Week Six, Day One
2.39 miles/33:16

Tuesday's Turbo Fire workout:
HIIT 20
178 calories/21:03

Today's run:
Couch to 5K Week Six, Day Two
2.41 miles/31:53

Okay, you say.  You've been working out.  Congratulations, you're not the laziest human ever.  Buuuuut... have you washed your hair?

Unimportant detail.


What can I say about my runs this week?  Well, for starters, they've been REALLY FREAKING COLD!  Someone forgot to inform Colorado that it's May, and that while it's allowed to be a total jerk during the winter with snow and single digit temperatures, it is supposed to be nice by summer.  But is it?  No.  When I went out for my run today, not only was it grey, dreary, and misting (no pictures of today's run because all you would have seen was frizz), but it was 41 degrees outside.  Um.  Last I checked, 41 was not enough degrees.  Especially since it was almost noon.

That being said, both runs were actually pretty good.  On Tuesday, I backed off on my pace because I was feeling pretty sore from Fire 55 Not-So-EZ on Monday.  I was not exactly speedy today either, and my legs were just unhappy.  I think part of it is the weather... I've been a little down in the dumps because of the lack of sunshine, and I think it's starting to affect me physically.  But supposedly the sun will make a triumphant return on Saturday, so fingers crossed!

Today's run was actually really good for me mentally.  All morning, I was making every excuse I could to not go out... I spent a good 20 minutes whining about how I didn't want to ruin my iPod by taking it out in the rain and I could not bear to run without music!  The humanity!  But I finally decided to suck it up and just go.  Here is where I really want to tell you that it was a fabulous run and I did seven minute miles and the heavens smiled upon me.  But they keep telling me that lying is a sin.  Really, it was a hard run - my legs felt heavy and sore only a few minutes in and the misty rain combined with a cold wind made for icy hands and ears (insert rant about how regretting running without gloves in May is ABSURD).  

I got through the run because of two mantras... the first was "You are stronger than the elements."  This really helped when the wind nearly blew off my earbuds and my ears started tingling.  At one point during my run, at the top of a bridge, I actually threw both arms up in the hair and yelled "I am stronger than the elements!"  Well, yelled might be an exaggeration since I was wheezing at the time.  But I digress.  The second was a Chalene line from Turbo Fire that I've actually been using as a mantra for a few days now: "Guess what?  You're not tired!"  She says this a lot in Turbo Fire.  She also will say "You're not tired - you are getting your second wind," which I used a few times today as well.  Chalene is big on the idea that you will believe anything you tell yourself.  This is something I am constantly working on, but even if telling myself that I'm not tired doesn't always do the trick, hearing her positive voice in my head does help.  She's my new bestie.  I might stalk her.



Okay, this post has been way too much talk and not enough awkward pictures.  I promise that will change tomorrow, and I promise that I will actually update tomorrow for a fun new change!  Until then, I will sit quietly and devour my newfound love...



... ironically enough, I lead my very first Weight Watchers meeting tomorrow morning.  I will not be mentioning them, even though the topic is breakfast, and these are clearly the breakfast of champions. 

Don't judge me.

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