Eager to run

In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like an athlete eager to run a race.(from Psalm 19)

Long before I ever thought about running even 1 mile and certainly not 26.1, I fell in love with marathons. One of my best friends had set out to train for her first marathon after we graduated from college, and a small group of us surprised her by flying to FL from all over the East Coast where we had scattered to support her in her race. I learned something that day we watched and cheered not just for Taryn but for hundreds of strangers who were doing this amazing thing with their bodies. You can't destroy hope. You can't blow up perseverance. Even if you stop someone's race, you can't take away their spirit, especially the spirit that drove them to try this insane thing, running 26.2 miles, in the first place.

And marathon supporters? They are pretty amazing people, too. They wake up early, freeze their tails off, carry sweaty shoes, sweaty clothes, and sweaty friends, and they usually do it with a joyful smile. They endure being yelled at when a run goes horribly and grumpiness when feet and knees and backs hurt. They massage out cramps in the middle of the night. They look at a lot of ugly blisters against their own will. They keep shouting and whistling and holding up signs proclaiming, "You look great! You can do it!" even when you don't look great, and it feels like you can't do it. Marathon supporters embody love and selfless presence and encouragement.

In the face of what happened in Boston yesterday, which was horrible and terrifying for what it was, but also for what it reminds us, that people live in this kind of terror and danger day in and day out in many parts of the world - I pray that these good things - hope, perseverance, spirit, love, selfless presence, and encouragement - I pray that these good things will endure and rise to the top of our consciousness and actions.

Early Easter thoughts

I was stressing last night about how I thought I had a great new-to-me angle on the Luke Easter account, but then I discovered it was the exact angle I had three years ago. I posted on the RevGals Facebook page that I'm not tall afraid of a repreach or a tweak, but it is still early in the week to go down that road in my planning.

Then this morning, fresh off the treadmill and heading toward the shower, I had a new thought. I'm thinking about how different people in the Like account received The good news of the resurrection. The women were caught off guard, terrified, humbled, and eventually empowered. Most of the 11 were dismissive, but then Peter has a need to see for himself. On Easter Sunday, when we have ALL SORTS of different people in worship all over the spectrum of faith, we have some of each of these even in our midst. The good news is that the promise of the resurrection doesn't depend on how we receive it or how much we believe it or how we've reconciled it with our knowledge or logic or even our faith. God doesn't wait for us to believe to raise Jesus from the dead. God raises Jesus to new life first then invites us into the journey of faith to see what that new life is all about. Dang.

Promises and Invitations

Keeping On Keeping On

I didn't realize it had been almost a month since I last posted.  I've talked a lot in my head!

I'll start with successes since they're most fun.
Running is going GREAT!
1.  My pace is increasing little by little.
2.  Last week's long run was 6 miles, and I ran the entire way on the treadmill.  I kept the pace slow and steady, and ...
3.  I felt like I could have gone another mile if I needed to.
4.  With that confidence I went ahead and signed up for a 7K race (about 4.4 miles) that is 2 weeks from today.  I want to get some races in again before the half marathon.
5.  Oh yeah!!!  I got into the Grandma's Half Marathon through the lottery system, so that is ON!
6.  I stopped by The Running Room to get some help with gear for running outside when it is still cold.  I dropped some money (shhhh...don't tell my husband), but I've got to start getting off the treadmill.  The long runs are really long there, and even if I keep doing them to continue running with my partners, I want to get outside for some of my training runs to get used to real terrain and hills and all of that.  I wore my stuff for a "recovery" run today, and it was perfect!
7.  I now have two running partners.  My usual partner is a friend who is also running the half marathon.  Our new treadmill friend is another friend from church who we bumped into a few times at the Y.  Now all three of us meet three times a week.  The new member of our treadmill line-up is a VETERAN racer.  She's 20+ weeks pregnant and runs our same distances in about 2/3 of the time.  Whew.  An inspiration.
8.  On my outside run today I figured out that the hill up from my house to the church is about the same rise and length as the big hill on the race route.  I think I'll try to consistently do my Saturday run up that hill.  One of my mini-goals for the half marathon is to do the big famous "Lemon Drop Hill" running.

Food and weight are doing OK:
1.  We have gone to the planned meals from the program I bought, and they are going well.  I like having different thought out dishes instead of just noodles and red sauce because we didn't think ahead.  I do a big shopping trip once every week or ten days and we have real meals to cook and eat each night.  I like cooking almost every night actually which to some sounds weird.
2.  I have lost some weight.  Today I weighed in at 184.5, so I'm down about 5 pounds from where I started, and less than 20 pounds from my ultimate goal this summer.  I did set a mid-term goal of 175 by April 19.

Now some of the other things that aren't so great
1.  My right heel hurts.  Bad.  From what I'm reading it sounds like plantar fasciitis, which is an issue with the tissue that connects your toes to your heel across the bottom of your foot. Formally thought to be an inflammation problem, many now think it's actually a bunch of small tears in the tissue.  I probably should have rested today to give it two full days of rest, but I didn't.  I've bought some inserts that are supposed to help which is good.  I need to start wearing shoes around the house all the time to reduce the stress on my heels all the time.  What the means is I need to go buy some "house only" shoes and more inserts.
2.  The sidewalks are still icy in a lot of place.  Very annoying.  I want to get outside, but have to do a lot of stopping and starting to get around the dangerous parts.
3.  The weight loss isn't what I want it to be, but I'm getting over that goal a little.  I get SO HUNGRY as my mileage goes up.  If I don't gain, I'll be happy.  If I keep chipping away at it little by little, I'll be thrilled.  It's still a little frustrating, but I'm trying to five myself a pass on that.  I might hit my midterm goal, but I'm not convinced.  That's OK.  That's OK.


I think that's it.  I'm feeling very good about all of this, and am thrilled to be on my way to really, actually doing 13.1 miles.  The husband of our new 20+ week pregnant running partner asked me when we were all out for pizza and beer last night (I know, it doesn't nothing for that weight goal, but don't judge) why I got it in my head that I wanted to do a half marathon.  I didn't really get to answer fully because of the kid interruptions.  I did tell the story that I said the only reason I'd ever get a tattoo is if I ran a full marathon.  Once I said that (a year or so ago) the idea became more and more enticing.  Of course I haven't known what I would get for that tattoo.  I told him that I was sure that something would come to mind and be important as I trained and worked up to that.  Well, that might have come today.

My little man came up to me today and said, "Mom, I learned something in my dream last night.  If you don't win at something, you win in God's heart." Five and half years old.  He floored me. I asked him how he learned it in his dream and he said, "I heard it then I just kept saying it over and over again."  It chokes me up 12 hours later because I can't even imagine having that kind of certainty or insight or wisdom or innocence or trust or understanding or, or, anything!  So, I think my tattoo and my mantra through the half marathon and beyond to the marathon someday is this "I learned something in my dream."

Food!!!

First, the successes - - My running is going GREAT!!!  My partner and I didn't have compatible schedules on Monday which was just supposed to be a two mile run.  I was on my own, but I went anyway.  I'm paying attention to the instructions about pace and exertion on the virtual training schedule, so I saw that the schedule said the run was supposed to be at 70% exertion.  I don't really know how to calculate that based on how I feel, but I've got a dream pace I'm hoping for in the final race, so I figured I would try the two miles at ..... there was a long drawn out calculation there.  Anyway, instead of running at an 11:00/mile pace, I aimed for about 11:18/mile.  I totally surprised myself by running the whole 2 miles without taking a walk break and finishing a tiny bit before I should have, an 11:16/mile average pace..  Today was a three mile run, and I did the whole thing again without a walk break.  This one was supposed to be and "easy fun" run with no attention paid to pace.  I couldn't just NOT pay attention, but I didn't try to push it or anything.  I did it at 11:31/mile average.  Nice!  This second week is pretty much the easiest of all of them, since the runs are only 2 and 3 miles each time.  Last week even had a 4 in it.  It's doing a lot for my confidence, though, so I'll take it.

However (Why does there always have to be a however), I'm doing horribly in the food department.  Usually when I do one aspect well, I kick into gear and do them both well.  Not so much this time.  I'm eating horribly!  I'll do well during the day at work, but evenings and weekends are just so hard.  There are all sorts of reasons for this - - lack of planning ahead, lack of will-power, more lack of planning ahead, differing cooking styles between my husband and me.  Did I mention lack of planning ahead?  My birthday happened.  A Super Bowl party was in there.  All sorts of reasons, none of them helpful, though.

I decided to tackle the planning ahead part of the problem this week, though.  A couple of months ago a friend linked to a neat service called emeals.  I don't actually know if she uses it, but I went to look at it when she talked about it.  I signed up yesterday.  Basically, it's a meal-planning service.  You pay a monthly fee, and they send you  weekly menus and shopping list for dinners for seven days.  There's a main dish and a side dish for each day of the week.  You can select your style of cooking or meal preferences (simple gourmet, low carb, natural & organic, gluten free, classic meals, etc) and switch to another at any time.  The "portion control" plan is the one I picked and it seems to be compatible with some version of Weight Watchers.  They don't have the name brand on there anywhere, but it references popular national weight-loss programs and has a point value assigned to each menu item.  I'm not doing Weight Watchers right now, although I've considered it, but I can still remember about what the points are in my head from the last time I did it.  It would be nice if instead of the points they put the actual nutritional info.  That would help me as I use the food tracking system at SparkPeople.  I can work it out, though.  It won't take much extra time at all.

I was nervous about breaking the news to my husband that I thought we needed to change this up a little.  He does at least 50% of the dinner prep at our house, so it's not just going to be a burden for me.  We are used to cooking one meal, then eating it in leftovers for a day or two.  This will mean cooking something every night.  None of the recipes are that intensive or anything, but it'll just be a change. It means we won't just thrown spaghetti in a pot and then have that for dinner two or three nights in a row.  I can't eat like that and be successful.

The weird thing is that even as I pitched it to him and declared this is what we are going to start doing, I couldn't say out loud that I wanted to do it because I want to lose weight.  I can talk about it with my girlfriends.  I'm obviously getting better about saying it here, but I just can't bring myself to say to him that I don't like my body.  So strange to me.

Oh well, hopefully this will help me over probably my biggest food hurdle which is the planning piece and having ideas to even eat that are healthy and tasty.  The menus look good and for the most part very kid-friendly.  I'm not fired up about the ham and beans one, but I think we'll just skip that!  We don't do a lot of fish, either, but we like it.  We just don't really know much about cooking it.  There's at least one fish meal every week.  I think this will be good for all of us!

Accidental Success

My running partner and I have settled on our training program.  I've been trying to find just the right program (app) that will help me get from my (mental and physical) couch to running the half marathon.  I mean running the whole thing.  Without taking walk breaks.  So many of the training programs for half marathons that I see base each training session on mileage.  Run 3 miles this day, 2 the next, and 4, 6, , or 8 for a long run.  Seeing those mileages has always terrified me because I feel like I can't even run 3 miles without walking.

But then this week after doing another interval work out (run 3 minutes, walk 1 minute) for about 46 minutes, I think, I went 3.92 miles on the treadmill.  (Don't worry, I did another 44 seconds to get the even 4 miles.  On top of that I could still walk and talk at the end of it.  Well, hello!!!! My dream pace for the half marathon would be 11:00 min/miles.  I just did 4 miles at an 11:41 min/mile pace without intending to get there.

We scrapped the interval training programs and went to the mileage based one.  In fact that 4 mile run on the plan should have been a 3 mile run.  The next day's 2 mile recovery run was a breeze.  I ran about 90% of it.  Today I did 4 miles, which was on the schedule this time, at a minute slower than my dream pace (like my "virtual coach" said).  In about 48 minutes, I think I walked 7 or 8 of them, pieced together here and there, not even a full 5 minute warm up.

Next week are all 2 or 3 mile runs so I'll try to do at least the 2s without walking, but even if I do, who cares???  I'm doing it!

I've increased my training days from 3 days a week to 4 days.  I think that will just help me feel more confident and a stronger runner.  It also REALLY makes me appreciate my days off.  It also makes it harder to skip some days for some reason.  It's all a mental game for me.

My weight hasn't gone anywhere good, but at least it hasn't gotten worse.  I've been eating pretty badly.  I've got to get that back under control.  I'll have 3 or 4 days that are good, then blow it completely for 3 days.  Weekends are the worst.  I eat way worse at home than I do when I'm being more scheduled and thoughtful about it on work days.

Since my running isn't bad this week, maybe I'll make that a better focus - - well, after the Super Bowl party!

Found my jeans

It's taken me a little while to figure out how to put a date on my SMART goal(s), but a date is needed.  I'm thinking of the weight in particular because the running goal will get a date on it by virtue of signing up for a race.  My friend's goal is be in her pair of red jeans by her birthday in April.  The date part is going to be important for me otherwise I'll just keep wandering.

My plan is my wedding weight, by my wedding date - - actually, my 10th anniversary, July 12, 2013.  This is MORE than enough time, which is a good thing because maybe what it will also help me do is learn to maintain the healthy weight, which is the hard part for me.

Another piece I think I need to do is say the numbers "out loud."  I have a log where I keep track, but I think  it needs to be more visible than hidden in an app on my iPad.  So, as of this morning I'm 189 and I'm heading down to 167.  Here goes!

Finding My Jeans

A new friend of mine is a personal trainer and health coach.  I only wish she lived closer to I could hire her in person.

Lucky for me, and hopefully many others, she's started a blog chronicling her own health and training efforts which can also serve as training and coaching for the rest of us.  I think I'm going to join in.  (She may or may not be remaining anonymous, so I'm not going to blow her cover unless she does.)

My blog has been weak, to say the least, lately.  And by lately I mean the last year.  I've been slack about posting my sermons.  Part of that has been because I've been posting most of them on the church blog, too, and I'm just tired of reformatting them twice.  Who knows what the other parts are?  I've never gotten fully engaged in blogging culture.  I don't read around a whole lot.  Oh yeah - - I actually hate writing.  :)  There's that.  I have a lot of ideas, and I love thoughtful engagement.  I just hate actually writing.  So, we'll see how this restart goes.

Anyway, back to the training and coaching - - My friend has started a blog called "The Red Jeans Project" on which she will document her journey to fit into her AWESOME red jeans by her birthday in April 2013.  I need something to get me back in gear.  I do this stupid year round yo-yo thing with my health and fitness, and I hate it.  I care more some times then others.  When I get frustrated, I get really frustrated.  When I can't commit to all aspects (food, exercise, and sleep) I don't even work on one of them.  If I can't work out in a week I go ahead and finish a package of Oreos in 5 days because, why the hell not?  If I blew it this week, I might as well totally blow it.  I hate this.  It makes me hate myself, too.  What is this all about?

Lots to work on, but let's start where my friend starts with SMART goals. I posted a question over at her blog about how many goals can be worked on at once.  I wonder about this.  Some of my goals seem like they overlap, but in the end might not necessarily if what I get is not necessarily a smaller body, but a more fit body, one that I can push to the next limit, which is a real goal.

1.  I want to run a half marathon.  I've been planning on this one for a while.  Unfortunately, the one I've been planning to run isn't going to work because it is on the same day as a youth triathlon I'm helping to coordinate in our town.  I'm looking for another one, but most of them are on Sundays.  I work Sundays (duh).  Not thrilled about this conflict at all.  I think this is attainable.  I hope it is.  I haven't been running long, and I'm not great about running consistently year round, just during my own little season, but my first year I ran 5K races and survived.  Last year I increased to 10K races and survived.  This year I want to do a 1/2 marathon.  I think I can stick to it if I could just. get. started.  Why does getting started suck so badly?

2.  I want to lose 20 pounds.  Like my friend at the Red Jeans Project, I have had success in major weight loss in the past, but I have over time (and over pregnancies) put some of it back on.  I hate that.  I know it's possible to lose weight, but I don't know how to maintain a healthy target.  I don't like having to pay attention.  Maybe it's being lazy, but whatever.  I don't like it.

Here's my problem, when I increase my exercise like I need to increase it to get back up to any distance beyond a 5K, I get hungry.  VERY hungry.  I get that I can eat more when I am exercising heavily, and I calculate that into my calorie counts and all of that, but still.  Even when I do, I just get so hungry.  I try to make smarter food choices so that I can eat more.  But, even when I do, I just get so hungry.

And then on top of all this, there's just the time.  I can't figure out how to carve out the time to do my first goal.  Maybe that makes it unattainable.  In the past I have done my training on workouts 3 days a week.  I just don't know that I can do a 1/2 marathon training program on 3 days a week.  I think I need to go up to 4  days a week to feel confident with it, but I don't know how to fit 4 days of workouts into my week.

Oy vey.  More to think about still.  Most of all I just need to find some motivation.  I want something fun like red jeans because the anticipation of just knowing that I will feel good having met those two goals is not nearly enough.  I'm only motivated by things much more tangible.

Where will I find my jeans?!?!?!