Stop Being a Lazy Ass

Gimme a 'P'!

As in P is for Pa-the-tic!

Seriously.  Remember those presidential fitness tests you used to have to do in school?  You know....the one where you were SUPPOSED to be able to do 15 pullups (but could only do one on a really, really stellar day?) and 20 pushups (um, yeah) and 25 FULL sit ups AND run a 10 minute mile (right, whatEVER)?  Remember how we were certain that the Ruskies were going to kick our asses if we couldn't do 15 measly pullups because of COURSE the Russians could, right?  Have you SEEN the big, burly, blond Russian kids on the Olympics??  So yeah, it was going to Red Dawn and we weren't going to be able to do anything about it and that nice Mr. Kennedy, he was going to be disappointed in us, and yeah we knew he was dead and all, but if Pres. Kennedy said it was important........remember that?

AHEM

So yeah - we went running this morning.  Or, at least, we CALLED it running.  I might be remembering it all wrong through the red haze of oxygen debt, but I'm pretty sure it was mostly walking with a bunch of teeny-tiny jogging-like-moments thrown in.  Last week I was all cocky in my certainty that just because a)once upon a time, 3 years ago, I ran a couple half-marathons, b)I walk all over creation for my public transportation, and c) I AM on a first name basis with my bicycle, because of these things I could surely get back out on the street and jog for a nonstop 3 minutes. Right? I only put that 4th week of the Couch-to-5K program in there to humor my need to feel like I was 'taking it slow'.  I was certain that we COULD start with week 5, but that we SHOULD start with week 4. 

Not so much.  It's a little depressing how far I've fallen from the runner I was 3 years ago. It's also a little funny. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Sticking to it as I alter 'The Plan' to include week THREE of that damned Couch-to-5K plan.  Tee hee.  Look at the silly girl in her stripey, too-small tights and and her beet-red face gasping like a fish in a duststorm....isn't she funny?

So if you live in Somerville or Cambridge and see girl with short red hair in ratty-assed running gear giggling hysterically as she throws up from - er, whatever it is that makes us throw up when we run too far too fast - just give her the thumbs up, 'mmmkay?

Lists are our friends

Yesterday we talked about the goal.

Now we have a plan, adapted from a couple of the major running sites, www.coolrunning.com and www.runnersworld.com.  (It's an excel file, btw, to view or save, your choice.)  This was far harder to do than I thought it would be, and for entirely different reasons than I originally thought.  Turns out that I'm not very patient.  No, don't all rush to defend me at once. *ahem*  It's true, I.am.not.patient.  There, I've said it.

What does that have to do with this plan?  It means that when I went out looking for some training guidance, I started out with a basic 5K plan.  One that assumes that the trainee has been running, oh....20 miles or so a week.  Um....that would maybe not be me.  So then I went to one of the 'Couch-to-5K' plans, which assume that the trainee hasn't walked any further than the distance from the couch to the 'fridge in a decade.  Also not exactly my profile....*sigh*  So, after a few moments of whining about the injustice of it all, I began adapting the programs to fit us and our goals, etc.  So here it is.  Who wants to join me in a little 5K fun?  Race Tshirts and yarn stores on a summer afternoon.  Can it really get any better than that?  I didn't think so.  You know you wanna....

Actually, that makes me wonder....are there any knitting runners or running knitters out there?  How does one do THAT sort of blog search?

Goals, schmoals.

I'm all for setting fitness goals, but one of the things I learned when last we picked up the running habit is that I need a deadline.  A goal of I-will-run-4-days-a-week simply does not work for me.  Instead I have to do something a bit more drastic.  Like sign up for a race.  Like this one: http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/1/1_39/3688.shtml, http://www.coolrunning.com/major/06/applecountryfast5k/
http://www.coolrunning.com/major/06/applecountryfast5k/map.gif
Fastest 5K in New England (it's downhill all the way - woo hoo), AND it's run at 6:30 pm instead of ass-o-clock in the morning.  Suh-weet!

As an extra incentive, I've taken the time to find the closest yarn shops.  Maybe we can make a day of it.

Ewe'll Love It!
100 Main Street, Suite 4
Nashua, NH 03060
+1 (603) 578-2630

The Woolery--Fine Yarns & Knitting Necessities
40 West Intervale Road
Wilton, NH 03086-0031
+1 (603) 654-7030
Owner: Deb Degan
email: [email protected]
World Wide Web: http://www.nhwoolery.com
Wide variety of yarns in wool, alpaca, cottons and other natural fibers as well as man-made. All weights and styles. We carry everything from shawl wt yarn to super bulky. Needles from Crystal Palace, Inox, Brittany, addi Turbo. Knitting bags buttons, notions, and gadgets. Books and patterns galore. Classes. Located just off Route 101 in Southern NH. Rural setting and lots of parking!

Ooops.

Hi.  Missed a Friday check in didn't I?  What with all the birthday\St Patrick's Day stuff going on, I just sorta forgot to report in.

Stats:

Weight goals:
151 pounds
6 pounds lost
15-ish pounds to go

Activity goals:
Errrrrr.....*cough*...*cough*...have I mentioned the bird flu?  I guess I have to stop using that as an excuse eventually, don't I?

Right.  So I'm still not stopping the lazy ass part of this bargain.  It's time to work on that for real.  I think the bike up on the trainer in the basement will give me a decent start. So that's the deal, either tonight or Thursday night will be bike set up and tune up.  How often should I ride I wonder?  Is it reasonable to expect myself to try to ride every day?

Hmmm....can I knit while riding?

Announcing:

No Phat Phridays*: 
On which we check in, weigh up, and sort shit out.

Today we'll do the listy-list thing because I like lists.

1. To business: 
153.5 pounds
25.5% BFP
55.3% water

Pounds lost:  3.5

2. There's nothing like a couple of days of a fever of 102 to make a girl afraid to eat even something as benign as mashed potatoes b/c it hurts too much to 'chew' them shed some unwanted pounds, now is there? 

3. In the comments yesterday, Beth reminded me of this site, which I love, love, love, love and had utterly and completely forgotten. THANK YOU BETH! I can't tell you how much fun it was to find this again.  Why do I love this site so much?  There are a lot of reasons actually, mostly involving the fact that this is the basic, no-nonsense, 'pull up your bootstraps', eat less to weigh less, exercise because it's fun and good for you kind of stuff i believe in.  But if you really want to know what really yanks my chain here, I just have five words for you:

Weighted.Average.Trend.Analysis.Charts !

I KNOW!  Are there angels singing in the backgound at your house too?  Just when you think it can't get any better, here's the best part.....he's already done the work for you. SO easy.  All you have to do is download the files and track your weight daily!  THAT I can do.  Anyone can do that. 

4.  Early next week will be goal setting time here at SBALA.  Sure, the wieght loss thing is one goal, but it is just one aspect of what's going on here, so I need to put down, in writing, in PUBLIC, what the intentions and goals are.  Since I've been off the road for a while, I suspect it will be some sort of couch-to-5k thing to start for the running and something similar for the bike.

5.  You guys ROCK!  Thanks so much for all your encouragement and support, and not to mention for taking the time out of your lives to read these long-winded posts, especially when you know that there's no knitting or yarn porn at the end of the tunnel.

*No, there's not a chance on Earth that I'm going to go without fat for even one day, much less one day a week.

Stop Being a Lazy Ass

Warning: No knitting talk today.  In fact, it's the worst sort of stereotypical girlie-blog stuff here right now because I'm going to talk about weight & exercise & such.  It's true. But now you've been warned and can feel free to wander away to cooler, more interesting knitting stuff elsewhere. Like here, or here, or here (OMG, must have mittens and soon!)

--------------------------------

A while back, Elisa posted a thing about her upcoming battle of the pudge.  Now, I personally think she was being a little free with her use of the word 'Fat' when applying it to herself, but that's just one girl's opinion.  When she bravely and sincerely posted her intentions, I thought it all seemed like a really, really great idea, not so much from the aspect of not wanting to carry extra pounds around (though god knows I CERTAINLY am and really, really need to shed a few *cough*20*cough* pounds) but from a remember-what-it-was-like-to-feel-healthy-and-powerful-and-in-touch-with-your-body-? standpoint.  I thought I was ready to commit, but apparently I wasn't.  Apparently, 'outgrowing' my favorite pants was going to be the key.

First, some back story. About 6 years ago, I took up running.  It was a Life.Altering.Experience.  (I'd also like to stop and take a moment here to thank all biochemists everywhere for drugs like Singulair, Allegra, Serevent, and Flonase.  Without you guys, I couldn't even begin to do....well....a lot of things.  Seriously.  Thank you.) See, I was blessed with a jet-rocket metabolism all through my childhood and teen years, right up until my late 20's. This was an especially important thing (though I didn't know it at the time) because it allowed me to stay pretty thin even though I a)ate whatever the f*^k I wanted, whenever I wanted it, and b) my allergies and the allergy-triggered asthma I suffered would have kept me from exercising......er....assuming that it ever occured to me to do so. Somewhere in my late 20's, that all came to a grinding halt and the naked me began to look more like a Stone Age Earth Mother figurine than I ended up being happy with.  So I started running out of necessity.  Then (and you can't even BEGIN to imagine my surprise here) I began to run for the joy of it, for the way it made me feel -- Strong.  Fit.  Confident that I could control my body even when it didn't want to do what I told it to do. In turn, as I began to be more active, more and more of my hobbies involved sport-like activities.  Cycling, kayaking, scuba diving, etc.  We began training for longer and longer road races and exploring the possibilites of Adventure Racing.  At 35 I was healthier, happier, and in better shape than I had been in my entire life.  Mind you, I said healthy, not skinny, because really, if I can't keep eating cheesecake and Thin Mints, why the heck would I run?  Or do anything, for that matter?  What's life without Thin Mints? So while I would never be Kate Moss (and you can't know how FINE I am with that), I was in much better shape.

And then we bought a house. 

A house with spotty plumbing and an inconveniently semi-broken hot water heater.  For many, many months, I actually did ALL my showering at my gym.  No shit.  Not working out there, mind you....there certainly wasn't time for THAT, just the showering.  It was like camping except that there was a phone and some cable TV.  In all of this hubbub surrounding the move and the renovations and the inability to shower in our own home, we fell out of our scheduled routine.  We fell down, and have not been able to get back up. 

So now......it's TIME.
It's time to get my ass back into gear.
It's time to haul my butt out of bed in the mornings and hit the proverbial street. 
It's time to stop being out of breath just climbing the stairs in my house. 
And, yes, it's time to STOP BEING A LAZY ASS (SBALA, for short).

In the last year and a half, I have gained almost twenty pounds.  Say it with me.  TWENTY POUNDS.  That's an extra 72,000 calories in 18 months.  I probably shouldn't even think this calculation through, but that's aproximately 720 MILES of calories. But then, over a year's time that works out to about 14 miles a week......at three times a week, that's about 4 1/2 miles a run.  I can do that.  I've done FAR more.

So here's what we're going to do.  I'm going to promise to never talk about this here again because there's going to be a little sideline project over on the button bar and it's going to look something like this:

....and it's going to lead here.  And here I'm going to track the progress of  SBALA and see just how long it takes to go from 157 lbs & 28.5% body fat (WTF!), to something closer to 135 lbs and 20-ish% body fat.  There will be blood, sweat, tears, drama, and....oh, let's face it, this will be boring as heck to almost everyone else but me, but it will be there anyway.  For me.  Also, maybe for anyone else that feels like playing along.  There won't be any crazy must-run-14-miles-a-week rules, BTW, that was just an example.

Dude!  Where's my yoga mat?