For Christmas I got a Brooks run happy long sleeve tee (Thanks Mommy!) This is seriously one of my favorite new shirts. It may be one of my favorite shirts ever. Flattering, great fit, great material for running. So I wore it around New Year’s and at the end of the night, my husband noticed the giant gaping hole in the back of the sleeve! I was really, REALLY upset about it. I’d not only already taken the tag off, but I had worn it all day! I knew my mom had ordered it from Brooks, so I couldn’t try to exchange it at a local store that carries it. So after some poking around on brooksrunning.com, I decided to give their live chat a try.

Within minutes I’d had a great conversation with a customer service rep, uploaded a picture live so she could see the damage, and she had an order in to get a new shirt out to me. I was really super impressed at how helpful and fast it was to get a replacement. My new shirt came today! Only a week after my chat with them. It’s perfect and I couldn’t be a happier customer right now.

Thanks Brooks for making my runs happier and my life easier.

No, this is absolutely not a New Year’s Plan, or some kind of useless New Year’s Resolution.

But my game plan is changing a bit and I think embracing that is the best way to go right now. So for the moment, I’m running more.. 3 to 5 miles a few days a week, but at least one mile daily (except on Sunday, and usually Saturday because I’m all kinds of full of excuses to not get up that early on a Saturday). And to run that much and more I am going to have to start eating to support it. I’ve been playing with and tweaking the HCG diet to allow for things like more food and more variety while still rapidly losing weight since last summer. And it’s been great and I have lost a lot. But I don’t have the stamina to keep running when I’m on it, and I want to just keep running and running right now…

So it’s back to keeping track of calories, making sure I eat enough to support my workouts without overdoing it either. I’m going to go high on protein, moderate to low fat and carbs. And I’m going to pay attention to what kind of carbs I consume, making as many of them as possible fruits and veggies and as few as possible processed foods. This isn’t really too different than the way I was eating on HCG, except I get more calories and don’t have to feel guilty if I eat a few more carbs than I meant to.

This morning while formulating these plans, I went to one of my favorite nearby parks to run. Added 4 more miles to the one I’d started my day with. Since then I’ve been eating on my new plan and I feel so good. Lots of energy. I’m usually starting to lag by now. But today I feel fine.

I’ll be working with this plan for a couple of weeks before I reassess. I’d really like to up my mileage while still losing weight. Hopefully this will be the right combination for me.

What new things have you added into your plan lately? Or is the same plan still working for you?

Today I feel like I could just keep going forever.

This morning I had my last class of the semester. My A in Personality Theories is so high that if there was a letter grade above A, I’d have it. I left school in the light, misty rain, with an urge to go run more. Running in the rain has really never been my thing, but I’ve been making myself get up and do it the past couple of mornings. And it was so light, what’s a few sprinkles?

Naturally, I got home and the rain picked up. Out of curiosity, I snagged my rain jacket that I’d given to my daughter to wear and tried it on. It shouldn’t fit me yet, but somehow it does. And the rain lightened up again. So off I went to the park. I kept a slow, comfortable pace and just kept going. I felt like I could keep going like that forever. I’m hoping this is the beginning of a return to more miles. I’ve been wanting this for awhile, but not found the time or the will to make it happen.

Everything just felt right. My breathing was natural instead of being something I needed to think about. The music was making me happy. I wasn’t tired at all until a little into the 3rd mile. After that, I felt the blister coming. And then the rain picked up. I made it home, 3.1 miles in 37 minutes.

I’d like to work on my 5k time and improve it by spring. But I have no complaints about a steady, comfortable run that I enjoyed. If the rain held back and the blister didn’t happen, I’m not sure I’d have stopped running anytime soon. I like that.

How do you feel about running in the rain? 

I decided last week to try something new. Since the semester started, I’ve spent much of my 2 days a week off up at school trying to get all my work done because it’s been harder to focus at home. I did this especially for the couple of weeks of nonstop construction at the bottom of my driveway. There’s still construction on the other side of our street, but there’s less of it and it isn’t interfering with my life as much as it was. Getting my work done is a great thing, but I have other goals, and I hadn’t been working towards them at all. So last week I made the decision that if I’m going to do things like run more miles, I’m going to need at least one day off a week. A day to myself, to both get my homework done and work toward other goals. To work at my own comfortable, relaxed pace, without so many looming deadlines or strict times I need to be finished.

This is week two of Tuesday being mine. I ran 2 extra miles after taking my daughter to school. I’m getting ready to run some errands with a happy smile on my face for a fast mile that broke my recent best time. After that, I’ll come home and do some homework. Maybe even find time for a nap. Maybe exercise some more. Maybe do something completely different. The point is, I’m making Tuesdays about my own personal wellness. Getting my work done reduces my stress level, but it also leaves me feeling like I’m leaving so many other things unfinished. Thursdays if I need to, I can go to school to study, or just sit here until it’s all done. But today is just for me.

How do you make time for yourself in your busy schedule?

This past Saturday I ran the Lifesaver 5k at my college. The purpose? Scholarship money for our nursing students. I didn’t really see anyone I knew there. I’m just a runner who goes to school there and thought it would be fun. It was my first 5k event in over a year. I didn’t really train for it, and have really only been running a mile at a time for the past several months. I’m ready for that to change, and wanted to see how I would do. And it sounded like fun to me.

It was REALLY windy out Saturday morning. I kept telling myself I’d be hot once I was running. I was right, but I froze until then. They brought out the zumba teachers to warm up the crowd with some pre-race zumba. That’s how my kid kept warm, by dancing. She had a blast. They also had fun kid friendly stuff like face painting.

Oh, and did I mention there was a race there, too? Right. The race. This was the most pleasant event I’ve been to yet. Nice and small. Most people were there because they wanted to support the nursing students, not just to spread their egos around. The amazing volunteers that cheered everyone on had the best signs to get us through it. I smiled through a good portion of my 3 miles. That isn’t typical for me. The weather was perfect and the sky was amazing. I’ve been known to start snapping pictures of the sky when pulling out of that parking lot after my classes, because the clouds are often quite perfect there. Running with that view was incredible.

No one ran over me or shoved me. I didn’t feel compelled to outrun anyone around me or compare myself to them. I only needed to walk through one water stop to re-hydrate. I set a nice, steady pace and stuck with it. In the end it turned out to be my best ever time at a 5k event. 36:25. I was the 50th female, 12th in my age group, and 100th runner overall. This may not sound like a big deal to some of you, but it’s very good for me. I was more than pleased.

I will definitely run this event again next year, I think it’s my new favorite! I’m feeling a renewed sense of longing to run that I hadn’t been feeling as strongly for awhile. Feeling the ache in my muscles this weekend reminded me of how badly I want to get out there and run like that more than just once in awhile. Looking forward to adding in some more miles this fall.

Or maybe I’m not, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m running the Lifesaver 5k at my college this Saturday. After overcoming an ankle injury and now feeling completely, happily adjusted to my fairly new shoes, I can’t resist the thought of getting out there and running a race for fun. My last 5k in public was over a year ago. I haven’t been running more than a mile or two at a time lately, and it might take me forever, but I’m getting out there anyway, just because I want to. I don’t do nearly enough things just because I want to.

The political kind, that is…

After what, about 16 years as a psychology major (that should probably be illegal), I’m having a hard time facing the required American Government class. I really hate politics. And I picked the absolute wrong teacher, who wanted to grade us mostly on group work, and kept adding assignments online with no clear directions and no talking about them at all in class. I made the decision to drop the class yesterday, and I feel suddenly stress free. I’m going to have time to really focus on my psych class, and math. And then next semester I’ll have to start all over again, and enroll in government with a different teacher. I’ll be seriously researching who to take in the meantime, because it’s already going to be a hard class for me, so why make it harder?

In other news, I’ve finally hit the mark of 30 lbs lost today. I think another 20 will put me in happiness, so today I begin working on that goal. I refuse to give up and settle for half way there this time.

I’ve been fighting an ankle injury for a couple weeks now. Without saying enough to jinx it, I think I’m finally on the mend. I can’t wait to be able to run more soon. I’m not sure I’m really the psychology kind of scientist anymore either, because at this point I want to know how to fix things like my stupid ankle. I’ve really been shifting to a more physical, tangible kind of science. If I already had a degree in physical therapy, I’d have known what to do about my ankle and headed down the right path sooner. I’m ready to be able to apply that knowledge to myself and others.

So with that it’s off to school to learn something and work on furthering my degrees.

I often feel like I have the most success with meditation when it has been awhile. What I mean by that is, when meditating on a regular basis I feel like I start just going through the motions. I don’t go deep under, I don’t stay nearly as focused. Don’t get me wrong, even when it has been months and I feel deeply engrossed in the moment, I am still thinking about how school is starting soon, and when my daughter will be home, and what if the doorbell rings because I am not getting up to get it. Or wondering if that email I heard come through a few minutes ago was telling me that my super awesome flat iron shipped. Or thinking about the anime the music I am listening to came from, and wondering why I didn’t put those other new songs we got on my tablet yet because they would have made a good addition to my yoga playlist. I don’t know if I will ever have a day when I can completely block everything out and just relax and breathe and be during meditation. But I do know that the more of an every once in awhile occasion I make it, the more I am able to block out, and the more absolutely blissful the moment becomes.

It’s been 4 months since the start of Josie’s bikini body challenge. I can’t believe that much time has gone by already. When we started the challenge, I intended to work hard and put on some new muscle, and hopefully slim out some from being consistent with my nutrition and workouts. I did that for awhile, but I’d just recently started my first semester back in college. And between the ice cream and sugar filled homework coffees, to the homework candy bars, and the my history teacher stresses me out and I have papers due and a million exams so I’m not cooking dinner meals out… Well, you get the point. I put on around 15 pounds between February and May.

And then when the semester ended in mid May, I got serious about my diet and started really working hard at working out. I walk a ton, I run some, and now I’m swimming, too… plus anything else I can find time for. I’ve lost 23 pounds since then. This challenge is NOT about pounds lost. But in the end, that’s what I needed to do to feel comfortable in my own skin again. People who haven’t seen me in awhile, or didn’t see me after the before pic will not likely notice a whole lot of change. I weighed in around 177 in February. And now I weigh around 168. That isn’t much difference. My muscles aren’t really much bigger, at least not since I stopped lifting my heart out in May to focus on losing pounds instead. People who saw me at the end of the semester, or have watched me losing pounds on a daily basis might see a pretty big difference.

To me though, I’ve gained quite a bit from this experience. Everything about me is different. I can tell when I’m truly hungry. I feel significantly more fit than I had been. I feel strong when I walk. When I run, though I may not be running as much right now, I’ve gotten faster again. Once I’m in a happy place I will get back to running more and working on my speed. For the moment I feel joyful at feeling so healthy. I feel good when I eat real foods that I cook myself. I feel amazing after a 3 mile walk. I feel incredible when I run faster than I had been even in this ridiculous summer heat. And I feel especially good about working this hard and making the right choices that influence my family to make good choices, too.

I intend to keep going, keep shedding pounds, keep working my tail off to get fit… and then I’ll get back to working on pretty muscles. I have some pretty nice ones in my legs from all the walking/running/swimming. Upper body will be my agenda when the time comes. In the meantime, I feel like a winner even if my before and after pics look nearly identical. I know they aren’t really. I wasn’t nearly this fit in February as I began sucking down the homework drinks and snacks. I’m comfortable at the park in my running clothes that are suited for 100+ degree weather. Not quite ready for a bikini yet, but I’m on the right path.

Thanks Josie for inspiring us and helping us work towards our goals.