The first time through this whole weight loss /healthy living thing, I had no love for my body. I managed to use that to my advantage and lose about 60 pounds in a little under a year. Excellent.

Then I gained 30 back, and I can’t seem to lose it again. I’m working on that.

Somewhere in between it would seem it’s getting harder to hate my body.

This is the body that allows me to run for miles like I’ve never run before.
It’s the body that supports me when I practice yoga.
It’s the body that makes me feel strong when I’m lifting weights.
The body that makes me feel confident and able when I practice karate.

It’s pretty hard to argue with that. So now it’s time to put the two together and see where it gets me.

How do you feel about your body? Do you love the things it’s capable of even if you don’t love the way it looks? What are you doing to properly fuel it for all the exercise you’re doing? That’s the part that’s really throwing me off now, trying to find the right amount to be well fueled and still lose weight.

Comments and suggestions welcome, as always.

My face that I don’t love nearly as much as I suppose I should has been showing up here a lot more than normal, lately. I need to stop doing interesting things that result in pictures of me landing here I think.

Yesterday I went to get my hair done. And I had my friend Morgan put in some big chunks of PURPLE. Awesome, right? Yes, it seemed awesome when I was driving home last night, way awesome.

It photographed a little blue, but looked very purple in person. I was very giddy about it.

Then I ran this morning, which resulted in hot pink streaks on my neck from the fresh dye mixed with streaming sweat. So off to the shower I went. And when I was done in there, half of the purple had turned teal.

I don’t really like blue very much. It’s an alright color, but never has been a favorite of mine.

It would seem that when Morgan’s open bottle of purple passion ran out, instead of grabbing the next unopened purple, she ended up with the teal, which looked almost identical in the bottle… and went on a dark enough blue to pass for purple when freshly applied. Today, it’s bright blue.

I went to walmart rather unsure of how I felt about this, sort of wanting to cry. And it turned into quite an experience. Older people giving me mean looks. The people at the pharmacy passing me off to one another like none of them wanted to sell me my medicine. (This could just be how much Walmart’s pharmacy sucks, I don’t typically go there.) Then I had a burst of good from a woman in her 50′s that worked there telling me that she liked my hair with sincerity in her voice. Naturally, it was followed by the old lady in line behind me moving herself and her basket back every time I got something from the front of my basket to put on the counter, as if I must be contagious.  And the cashier with her snotty tone of voice who refused to meet my eyes. I’d like to say it was all her, but I’ve seen her before and she was never rude like this.

That said, I had a teenager tell me last night that my hair was awesome, and today we had lunch at a place where lots of young girls with funky hair work and no one said anything, because it evidentially just seemed normal to them.

So I figured I needed to show you this gradient purple/blue hair of mine. And being the smart woman that I am, I thought maybe I could do this with my webcam in my lightless living room. The cat of course decided to make an appearance in the picture and this is what I got.

Nope, can’t see my hair at all, but the kitten is pretty!

So I grabbed my phone and headed for light.

Still look purple to you? How about a closeup?

I guess I’ll be washing my hair a lot. And then either going with all purple, or giving pink a try. I like pink, I can deal with that.

Considering I haven’t really stopped talking about it yet, you must remember that 5k race I ran last Sunday. The official photos are in and it’s something to laugh about.

They did catch a couple of me and my sister Kelli running. They don’t seem to have caught her at the finish line. But they caught me. I’m giving it my all. And I have the ugliest face in the world on. And I’m pretty sure neither of my feet are on the ground.

Maybe this is why most of the people walking at the park don’t seem to like me much. I’ve seen people look pretty cool when running. I am clearly not one of those people.

I have really cool Oakleys though.

I ran the Red Bud Classic 5k with my sister yesterday.

I have to say, it was much harder than I thought it was going to be. It was in the afternoon, and it was very hot and sunny. That made it hard. My leg was randomly cramping up for no good reason. Too many people signed up for this race. It was hard to move with so many people all around me. I thought since I’d been running 5k’s all week straight through that I wouldn’t need to walk at all. Wrong. I had to.

But I made it. I even gave it my all at the end and ran faster than I have in a long time across the finish line. Yay me. It would have been alot harder on me without my sister there to talk me through it. Having someone with marathon experience telling you it’s ok and that everyone’s first race is hard helped a ton and kept me from beating myself up about it.

The point is, I did it. And next time I’ll do it better. I believe my time was around 43 minutes. That sucks. I ran the same distance 2 days before that in 37. But it wasn’t 80 degrees with full sun, and I wasn’t stressed out about it.

Here’s me trying not to die.

And my husband took some pictures of us and put them up here.

http://picasaweb.google.com/thejhereg/RedbudClassic2010#

Mommy’s summer boot camp starts today… I need to toughen up and lose more weight. I lost over 60, then started gradually putting it back on when I stopped smoking last summer, and have regained around 30. I wasn’t a runner 30 pounds ago, not yet… but I think I’d be a better runner without it. I’m going to see if I can get rid of a little before my next 5k on May 1st. And then more, because I want to be healthy, and I really like this whole athletic thing. I think I can do this better if I work on me some more.

edit:  My official time was 43:45.

My first official race will be this Sunday. My sister and I are going to run the Red Bud Classic 5K. Then, after being the last to cross the finish line, if I am still alive I will still be running the Piece Walk on May 1st.

I figure I may as well just get this whole race thing under my spibelt.

And it had nothing to do with dead fish. Though as a side note, it seems the dead fish post was fairly popular. Who’d have known?

This morning I decided it was time to run a 5k at the park continuously. What that means is, without stopping. No stop between miles for some water, no stopping to stretch, no stopping to catch my breath. No stopping at all. I didn’t know how this was going to go, but I did it and I lived. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. This is good news as the 5k event I’ll be running at is now under a month away. I will say, I ran slower than dirt. I should maybe try to do something about that.

Does this explain why I’ve been quiet today? No, not really. I just felt like having a quiet day.