Best Body Bootcamp

It’s over.  Bootcamp is over and I’m very pleased. Let’s talk  about what’s happened.

• I started lifting weights/strength training again.  And loved it!
• I lost 4 pounds and 5 inches off my body.
• I tracked my food consistently for two months.
• I completed my third super sprint triathlon and set a PR.
• I’ve gotten in better shape and have increased my speed in all events.

I wish the second bullet point had bigger numbers in it, but because of the third bullet I know exactly why.  It doesn’t matter that I work out before and after workout when I eat 500-1000 more calories a day than I should.  And bootcamp gave me the motivation to see that.  That kick in the pants to see – HEY you aren’t doing as well as you think you are.

This last week I tracked and tried to stay in my calorie range.  And I did it 5 days out of 7.  Date night Friday and two different crawfish boils on Saturday didn’t go so well, but I’m still happy.

Plus while I didn’t lose that many inches, I’m certain that what I did lose was fat, because my muscles are bigger and my legs and arms are less jiggly.

This is a new start for me.

Thanks Tina Reale for putting together this amazing program.  Can’t wait until August!!

 

Best Body Bootcamp Week 6

In some ways this was my lamest participation week yet, I didn’t even do yoga one day, I didn’t get in 5 activity days, and I sure as shootin didn’t do my strength training. But it ended with such and AWESOME note, I can’t complain or feel bad about it.  I completed my third triathlon on Sunday, increasing my paces from last season in both the swim and the bike, setting a new PR by almost 20 minutes. My run pace was slower than last year, but that’s because I let myself get even slower during training for my half marathon last winter.  My pace was actually about two minutes faster than training runs from the beginning of bootcamp.  And those weren’t runs that were done after swimming and biking either.

When I signed up for this race I really wanted to complete it in under an hour.  Towards the end of training, I didn’t think that would be possible and I just wanted to do it as fast as I could, DEFINITELY under 1:10, hopefully under 1:05.  I did it in 1:02 and some change.  I’m super excited.  The swim and the bike went REALLY well and the run went okay.  I know that in all honest I probably could have done it faster.  I maybe could have reached that original goal of under an hour.  But still, it was a GREAT race. I actually cried a bit during the run, but instead of like the last time I cried during a tri, these were happy tears.

I’ve lost the weigh I gained in the winter so I’m back to the same weight I was last year, but I feel better, I feel stronger, I feel fitter.  And I know a good part of that is thanks to bootcamp.  Seriously, this has been the best 25 dollars I have spent on myself in a very long time.  I’m hitting the ground running for these last two weeks, trying to follow the plan even more close sly than I did in the first 4 weeks as I have two months until my next Tri.  And when I finalize the rest of my training plan for that race so many of these amazing workouts are going to be incorporated into it so that I can get even stronger as this season continues. I am so thankful for this program and for Tina!  It’s put me back on track to being myself for the first time in a long time.

Best Body Bootcamp

I just finished my final workout for week 4.  It was the arms workout and my arms are LITERALLY quivering as I type this.  Intense.  Week 4 has gone amazing compared to Week 3.  I didn’t miss a single planned workout.  I’ve tracked every day. (Until today – We’re about to go to a crawfish boil and I’m going to go worry about how many of those suckers I take out!) I’ve stayed in, or relatively close to my range as well.

As the first of the month this was my weigh-in and measurement day.  It was positive, or negative in the form of losses, though not as much as I had hoped for.  And I know the problem lies in what and how much I eat.  Tracking is helping.  A lot.  And I have to hope that it will only get better during this second half of bootcamp.

I decided to change up my second goal to simply stretch every day.  I couldn’t stand the thought of failing at my yoga again and I thought about and realized I’m doing some yoga moves most every day, but because I’m not putting the THOUGHT behind it I really need to, I felt guilty calling it yoga.  So I’m going to call it stretching.  And admit that it’s good for me and go from there.  I’ll be bring back the yoga goal, maybe in week 6 after my Triathlon when I’ll take it a little easy before ramping back up for Tri number 2 of the season.

I”m so glad I decided to work on this program.  It has rekindled my love of weights.  I’ll definitely be following many of the workouts in the future, even after bootcamp is over.

Best Body Bootcamp – Week 3

A BUST!  That’s pretty much what week 3 was for me.

It was supposed to be an easy week with my workouts for my Triathlon planning but instead it turned into more days without workouts than not, eating plans completely derailed and once again, utter yoga failure.  Boo!  Somethings were out of my control, like the day long thunderstorm that kept me out of the pool one day, or performing in the Vagina Monologues that had me snacking and celebrating and performing instead of working out, but other things… well I just made some choices that in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t.  Though I do NOT regret skipping my Friday afternoon workouts to go home, and sip on a glass of wine in the gorgeous weather and read a book.  And that’s one thing I think that this week has taught me.  Sometimes the BEST choice in not necessarily the “healthiest” choice.  Sometimes you need to relax and enjoy.  BUT skipping workouts does not always equate to relaxing and enjoying.  For instance, I missed Saturday and Sunday’s workouts for nothing more than pure laziness.  But when you make that choice to forgo a workout for your mental health, you should NOT feel guilty about it.  Just like I don’t feel guilty for swimming with lightening and thunder and a tornado watch.  Sometimes stormy, turbulent emotions are just like stormy turbulent weather. 

One step back does NOT mean I have to take another.  This week, I am meal planning ahead of time.  I’ll be ramping UP the workouts as the Tri is just a 3 short weeks away.  And I’m looking forward to this bootcamp experience.  I know that not only is this great for me NOW, but I’m going to return to these workouts time and time again when I need something challenging in my workout schedule. 

Best Body Bootcamp – Week 2

I feel GREAT about this week.  The only planned workouts I missed was a yoga class I missed when I slept through my alarm and today I didn’t get to that dreaded Workout C.  I ran intervals, hit spin classes, swam lap after lap and lifted weights at the gym.  Tri training with the bootcamp workouts is going great.

Food intake has been pretty good.  And I’ve been tracking it pretty well.  The past two days were hard with a couple of social events with lots of grazing and munching, but I’m not worried about perfection.  Just effort and movement in the right direction.  And I am seeing that movement.

Week 3 is supposed to be an easier week with my tri training, so I’ll be cutting back on the intensity of some of my workouts this week, but I will still be active the same number of days.

I’ll admit that I’m a little freaked out about the upcoming Tri.  Just FOUR weeks more.  It doesn’t sound like that much and I’m nervous about making the progress I truly want in that amount of time.  But I can only do what I can do.  And I’m certainly trying hard.

Best Body Bootcamp – Week 1

I have decided to take part in Tina’s Best Body Bootcamp last weekend.  I like the idea of prizes.  I like the idea of possibly winning over 1,000 dollars.  And I like the motivation of doing things I need to do.

I’m in triathlon training, so doing my cardio isn’t that hard, but strength training.  Oh, I lack so much motivation for that.  In fact, I still didn’t complete that part of the program the way I wanted to.  But the strength parts I did: whoa.  Next week when I hit it harder, it’s going to be intense.

Tri training is going well.  I only missed one workout this week, choosing sleep over spin class on Thursday morning.  And when cramps and just general yuckiness kept me out of the gym on Monday night, I hit the treadmill for some intervals right after spin class Tuesday.  And then SWAM A MILE that night. 1800 yards in 56 minutes and 31 seconds.  I know it’s not super fast, but I feel pretty good about it.  Actually, I feel amazing about it.  And I think spin classes are really helping with my biking.  I kept a pretty good pace through most of it.  A little under my goal pace time, but I still have five weeks til race day.  My goal is under an hour.  That’s still slow for such a short race, but I think it will really be pushing it for me.

This week I plan on making myself do the strength training workouts after spin class. My additional goals are to do 15 minutes of yoga a day (BIG fail in week 1) and track my food and calories, even if I don’t stay in my range.

Come to Jesus Talk

Several years ago one of my best friends in college told me he needed to have a “Come to Jesus talk.”  I had never heard the term before.  For those of you who were like me, it basically means someone lays down the truth to you, perhaps truth, that you didn’t really want to hear.  The thing is, it’s something you NEED to hear.

The man had this type of talk with me this weekend.  I still think he handled the beginning of the conversation a little ham-fistedly, but end of the conversation was good.  It was painful, but good.

I’ve been saying I need to lose weight for three and half years and I haven’t done it.  All I’ve done is gain it.  When I lost weight several years ago it was after a health scare and ten days in the hosptial.  After I gained it back, that scare wasn’t as fresh.  And while I wanted to get healthier, in a way I already was.  Even when I was at my lowest weight I didn’t do triathlons, I didn’t run a half-marathon.  I didn’t even run at all.  So it seemed that really, honestly, the motivation was just to be skinny again.  And we all know that’s not the best motivation.  When pregnant ladies would talk about being healthy for their baby, I was jealous.  They had a reason.  A REAL reason that was more than just superficial, like getting skinnier or running faster.

This weekend the man gave me that reason.  I am not the same person I was when we met.  I’m just not as vibrant and confident.  And my mental health is important.  And my mental health effects our relationship.  My reason to lose weight is my relationship.  He loves me know matter what I look like, but he believes that to find that old me.  That me that wanted to have fun, that was confident, that laughed more than she sat quietly to the side I need to lose the weight.  He shouldn’t be right, but he is.  It isn’t PC to be unhappy and depressed and LESS of a person than I was just because I weigh more, but that’s how it is.  I might be able to run further, do more, I don’t FEEL like me, so I don’t act like me.  I’m not me.

I have to lose weight to find me.  I have to find me to make our relationship work.  If that’s not motivation, I don’t know what is.

What 10 days of Lazy Wrought

As I said in my last post, I took ten days off of running and swimming for no good reason and filled my body with junk food.

This week, I got back in the swing of things, some what.  No pool yet, but I ran 4 times.  And I still had some junk, but less of it, more home cooked, whole foods and I tracked it all.

I saw the scale move some. In the right direction for the first time since July.

But the really important thing is how I felt.  While I could tell I had taken some time off, it wasn’t as bad as I had thought.  My runs slowed a little and my long run was just average today, though that might have had to do with a bit of dehydration and a pace that was a little too fast thanks to my running partner.

But overall, I felt good that I was able to take some time off and then get back into things without really feeling it.  It was there in subtle ways, but overall… I feel like I have the body of an athelete. Not in appearance obviously, but in ability.  I can keep up my athletic endeavors even if the old nonathletic me rears her head from time to time.  I am slow.  I am fat.  But I am an athelte.

Which reminds me I really need to do my review of the Slow, Fat, Triathlete books.

What a difference a week makes

Last Saturday I had my longest run ever.  6.27 miles in a hour and 40 minutes.  Yes.  That’s SUPER SLOW.  I don’t give a shit.  It was awesome.  My hip bothered me for about a minute halfway through, but I ran through it and it went away.  I think I’m going to have to add a bike ride in to my cross-training, as I don’t seem to have a problem with it when I’m doing tri training.  The bike just strengthens it or stretches it, or both in just the right way.

So I had an awesome run.  Felt great.  sunday night I got my training email for half group and was pysched to see we were doing speed work on Wed. I actually uttered the words “I like speed work.”  And somehow come Monday – I lost the feeling.  I didn’t workout this week at all.  I did yoga.  And finished 100 consecutive days! That will have to be its own  post.  So other than some light yoga nothing.  I skipped my solo runs, skipped speedwork, avoided the poll and didn’t touch weights or the cable machine once.  I also ate junk, junk, junk.  Oh and some more junk.

It’s as if I was a different person.  Or my old person.   In the past it was the norm to eat processed crap more than not, to go home after work and just collapse for the evening.

I know I like working out.  I know I like racing.  I know I like the way I feel when I eat healthy.  But I backslide.  And this week was one of the worst backslides in a long, long time.

But I have hope for this coming week.  One step back must be followed with two steps forward.  Or at least one step forward.

Tropical Storm Lee and the Triathlete

Tropical Storm Lee formed in the Gulf last week and immediately the forecast became rain, rain, rain.  All of it being of the thunderstorm variety according to the ten day forecast.  Thursday morning, I found this very frustrating as I needed to get in a couple of swims and a long run during the next few days.  That morning I decided to pack my bag because maybe the rain would hold off.  And while the rain did come in that afternoon, it was just light showers and no thunder.  I was able to swim without sharing a lane for the first time in weeks.

Friday was also a swim day and I didn’t even bother to pack my bag that morning as the forecast was 100% chance of thunderstorms for pretty much the whole day.  But by lunch time, I was hopeful because while it had certainly poured at points during the day the thunderstorms were staying well off the coast still.  So I went home, grabbed my gym bag and then called the gym when I got off work to double check that they were open.  No lightening, no thunder, you’re good to go.  So I went.  And once again I had a lane to myself, about halfway through my workout I had the whole pool to myself.  Loved it!

Saturday the storm really rolled in.  I was supposed to meet my run group for a long run at the lakes at 7 that morning.  I set my alarm for 6, but the wind and the rain woke me up at 4 and kept me up.  I knew there was no way I was going to make it out anywhere by 7.  When the alarm went off I turned it off and burrowed back under the covers.

Later that morning the rain stopped and the wind lessened and I decided “Hey!  I could go for my run now!”  So I did.  The rain came back after about 20 or 30 minutes, but running in the rain, not so bad really.  Even if that rain is a tropical storm.  I ran in the street more to avoid puddle on the sidewalk and trees over my head, but mostly it was just a really great long run.  The only bad moment came when just a couple of blocks from my house my shoe came untied.  Stopping to tie it and then starting running again… hurt like all get out.  Still, when I was done, I looked like this:

Next week I’m totally ready to conquer six miles.