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Lost Motivation

10 Sep

 

So remember how after the marathon I said I was going to start working out again and stop eating crap? Yeah… that hasn’t really happened.

Instead, I’ve been eating Bagel Bites and watching copious amounts of NCIS. Which is fine… for a time. But I don’t want to become that guy on the couch.

There are a variety of reasons excuses why I’m being lazy, but it pretty much boils down to I have no motivation. Training for a race is my main motivator for being active (and eating healthy follows suit). And with no race on the horizon, my motivation has pulled the disappearing act too. Even though I really do enjoy being active, sometimes the enjoyment of laziness triumphs.

A logical solution would be to just sign up for another race. In Denver, there are races year round. Unfortunately, right now, the thought of training for a race is even less appealing than the thought of working out. Which is kind of weird (since when don’t I want to race?), but also understandable (I’m completely burnt out on racing right now).

I know that you don’t technically need motivation to work out. You don’t need to *feel* like working out to go put on your shoes and head out for a walk. You don’t need to *look forward* to it. Heck, you could even be dreading it. The important part is that you DO it. The motivation follows later (like when you get done and say “I’m so glad I did that!”).

So I’ve decided that I’m going to stop waiting to *feel like* exercising again and Just Do It. No more excuses. No more whiny cries of “But I’m Sooooo tired!” There are times when I need to be nice to myself, but this isn’t one of them – this is when I need to kick myself in the butt.

I’m still going to be realistic. A person doesn’t have unlimited willpower. So my new revised goals are to do at least 30 minutes of cardio + 15 min strength training 3 times a week as well as limit sweets to 1 per day. And if I can’t handle that, Lord help me.

What do you do when you’re feeling unmotivated?

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Labor Day Weekend

7 Sep

I guess since I said I’d post again this week, I’d better do it, huh?

Our Labor Day weekend was great. The time for my flight into Minneapolis Thursday night got changed about 15 times but I finally landed only about 45 minutes later than planned. Travis flew in to the other terminal from Fargo (where he was for a work trip since the previous Sunday) and my dad picked us up from the airport. We made our way over to my older brother’s house, who is moving to San Francisco this fall and renting his house out. My mom met us there and we went out to dinner at a local burger joint call Flameburger. It was delicious. Travis and I split an order of fries and a chocolate malt, and I still managed to eat my entire cheeseburger. Then we made our way to my parents’ cabin, which is about an hour north of the Cities, and crashed.

The next day, we drove back down to my brother’s house to help him out with cleaning and packing. The renters were moving in on Saturday, giving him just one day to get everything done.  Needless to say, he needed help. We worked until 4:45 when we got pizza delivered. In the meantime, my oldest brother, sister-in-law, and nephew (!!) arrived and after we ate our pizza lupper (lunch/supper), we headed back up to the cabin, making a stop for groceries and beers on the way.

On Saturday, the brother that was moving and my youngest brother and sister-in-law arrived. They brought tons of fresh vegetables from their local Farmers Market – sweet corn, green beans, potatoes, bell peppers, tomatoes. Saturday was my oldest brother’s 35th birthday and we celebrated with 24 candles (that was all we had) on an buster bar ice cream cake. It was actually really easy to make and it was delicious – you just mash up a box of Oreos and combine with 1/2 cup melted butter. Press into a 9 x 13 pan and top with sliced vanilla ice cream (I bought the kind that comes in a box). Top that with 1 1/2 cups peanuts and a jar of fudge sauce. Freeze and voila! Deliciousness.

On Sunday, we celebrated my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. I spent hours upon hours the previous several weeks making them a scrapbook of family memories and gave it to them at breakfast. My oldest brother smoked some BBQ ribs for dinner – they were delicious, even if the texture still grossed me out a bit. For dessert, we had an angel food trifle with strawberries and bananas.

Besides eating, we spent a lot of time enjoying the lake on the pontoon and floaties, playing cornhole, bocce ball and ladderball, skiiing (just the guys), and watching my absolutely adorable nephew do all sorts of stuff – crawl, pull himself up, play with his toys and torment the dogs.

 

 

 

Travis and I flew back to Denver Tuesday night, on another delayed flight. Get your act together Southwest! Travis was a sweetheart and dropped me off at our house before going to get the dogs from our friends so that I could go to bed. I was ridiculously tired!

It was a great trip – even though it seemed like we would be there for many days, the time flew by. Hopefully we’ll get back to Minnesota sooner than a year from now!

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Still here!

28 Aug

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Hey friends. Sorry I’ve been so MIA lately. I promise that my posting will pick back up soon.

This week, I’m trying to get lots done before I fly to Minnesota on Thursday for Labor Day weekend. And my work computer for some reason refuses to load any and all WordPress blogs so even though I haven’t been commenting on your blogs, I have been reading what I can! It has been more than a little frustrating to not be able to read Mel’s race report or congratulate my friend B on her first home. Hopefully it’ll get back to normal soon!

As far as running and other workouts are going, I’ve been lazier than I like to admit. I went for my first run in weeks on Sunday morning and it was awesome. Definitely the motivation I needed to be more diligent about getting out there (which I did again last night)! Relaxation is good but I definitely feel better when I’m active.

Anyway, I’m so pumped to be going to Minnesota. Of course to see my family and celebrate my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary, but also to get out on the lake. We haven’t been on the lake ONCE this year. That better not happen ever again!

Have a great holiday weekend friends and I will be back next week! Promise.

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A Mini Backpacking Trip

21 Aug

Last weekend, Travis and I headed up to White Ranch near Golden – a mere 30 minutes from our house – for a mini backpacking trip with some good friends from church and their 2 kids. I say mini backpacking trip because it was only 1 mile to our campsite and we only stayed 1 night.

But it was still a lot of fun! Since we were so close to Denver, we could see the city from the hill we were on, and at night, we could see all of the city lights.

Since it was a mile to the campsite, we packed everything like we would’ve for a longer backpacking trip. And then we saw people with rolling suitcases and wagons and armloads of stuff. I didn’t feel so sheepish about bringing my travel pillow along then (which actually worked great).

We set up camp, ate dinner and then roasted marshmallows for s’mores. The kids were obsessed with poking long sticks into the fire.

 

The next morning, pooches were wide awake by 5:30. At 6:45, I finally decided to get up and let them out.  This was the beautiful site I saw as I got out of the tent:

It was jaw-dropping beautiful. I just stood there for a bit looking at it. The picture does not do it justice.

After using the restrooms, pooches and I went on a little walk down the trail in the opposite direction of where we had come up the night before. When we got a little way from the campsites, I let them off their leashes and they ran around like idiots. They love being outdoors and exploring. It would be a shame if we went camping and they didn’t get to do that.

Everything was so amazingly gorgeous in that early morning light and as I hiked around, I felt so in awe of God and His creation. The heavens and earth truly do declare His praise.

After my meditative hike, pooches and I went back to the campsite and waited for everyone else to get up. I fed the dogs, ate a couple of clementines and laid down on the picnic bench, looking up at blue sky and pine boughs.

People finally got up and we ate breakfast, played on the big rocks, went on another little walk/hike, and then packed up camp. The mile back to the cars went by quickly and then Travis and I headed to Which Wich to have lunch. It was my first time eating there and while I really loved all of the options, it made it difficult to choose what to get! I ended up not being overly crazy about what I ordered but I would definitely go back. They serve breakfast sandwiches all day. Mmmm…

Travis and I are hoping to go camping once more before it snows in the high country, hopefully sometime in September.

 

 

 

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Garmin 210 Review

15 Aug

I got the Garmin Forerunner 210 this year from my parents for my birthday. I was going to get the Forerunner 405 but discovered at REI that they no longer made that model. I wasn’t a fan of the square, bulky screen of the 310 and the 610 and 910 were too much watch for me. I just wanted the basics of distance, pace, time and heart rate. So the 210 it was.

I have to admit, the first couple of times I tried out my Garmin, I was kind of disappointed. One of the main things I was looking forward to was knowing what my pace was at any given moment. It didn’t take me long to discover, though, that the pace jumped all over the place – all the way from 7:30 to 13:00 within just a few minutes. Which made me doubt the accuracy of any pace I saw displayed. I lamented this to Travis and he suggested that the Garmin was just too accurate. Well, as much as I’d like to believe I could run a 7:30 pace, let’s be honest – never gonna happen.

Another aspect of the Garmin I didn’t take into account before getting it was that it calculates the distance you actually run (duh). So if you cut a corner a little tighter than normal, ‘Mile 1’ (as previously mapped online) is that much farther away. No longer was Mile 1 simply 1 mile away. Sometimes, it was only .85 mile; other times, 1.15 miles. Of course, I realize my Garmin is more accurate than my mapping routes and corner cuts but still. Getting to what I knew was Mile 1 and not having it be Mile 1 was annoying.

Add to that the fact that I had pretty much every running route I’d ever need mapped out already and I thought long and hard about returning the Garmin. I just didn’t know if it was worth the money (despite the fact that it was a present). But then… I tried setting the Garmin to show my average pace overall, for the entire run. From my first run, I knew that was a setting I could get behind. In fact, that’s what I used during my marathon and I found it really helpful. So I decided to keep the watch.

Plus, I know that just because I have a store of already-mapped-out routes, that doesn’t mean I will never want to just wing it. As far as I can tell, the mileage is accurate and it’s fun to see the ‘playback’ of my workout on Garmin Connect.

The heart rate monitor works well. The watch and strap both fit well. The watch is not waterproof, which is the only drawback besides the too-accurate pace IMO, but I knew about that before I bought it. Oh, and that whole ‘remembering to charge it’ thing – that’s definitely going to take some getting used to.

So is it worth it? I would say overall, yes. Especially for someone just getting into running and wanting to save precious hours of their life by not painstakingly mapping their running routes out online. Or someone who frequently likes to shake things up at the spur of the moment but still wants their distance and pace stats. Or for someone like me who wants the option of switching things up at the spur of the moment, while still knowing exactly how far you ran.

All that said, I fully expect that my satisfaction with the Garmin will only go up from here, the more I use it instead of trusty old MapMyRun.

Just be aware that the “current pace” isn’t as helpful as you might think…

Do you have a Garmin watch? What’s your experience been?

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Worth noting.

13 Aug

Even though I’m really enjoying my relaxing weekends, it really doesn’t bode well for the blog. I mean, you guys don’t want to hear about how much I didn’t do every single post. But here are a couple of things that are {somewhat} notable:

1) Watched the entire first season of Downton Abbey. I had heard how awesome this show was from fellow bloggers and friends so when I saw it in Redbox, I snagged it. And I really enjoyed it. Now I’m scheming on how to watch Season 2.

2) Watched Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime. It is one of my absolute favorite shows of all time. And I am so thankful that it’s on during the summer when Bones and NCIS aren’t. I don’t know how I would survive the summer without at least one weekly show that I die for.

 

3) Veered from my cleaner eating habits. I ate Taco Bell for dinner Friday, Chinese for dinner Saturday and McDonald’s for lunch Sunday. But enough’s enough. Back on the horse today.

4) I went on my first bike ride since the beginning of marathon training. Travis and I got caught in a downpour and hid under a tree. At first, it was an adventure. Then, when the tree got saturated and stopped protecting us, it was just kind of irritating. But it was fun to ride home through all the puddles!

5) Got really sad watching the men’s Olympic marathon. (Spoiler alert) Ryan Hall seems like a such a great, down-to-earth guy and I really respect the way he involves God in his training, so seeing him have to drop out so soon was really sad. It’s also sad that Abdi Abdirahman had to drop out, but I know less about him so it didn’t affect me as much. But YAY MEB KEFLEZIGHI!!! I was SO excited to see that he came back from being in something like 10th place to being 4th. I told Travis that if the course had been longer, I think Meb would’ve been able to come in 3rd. But alas, no medals for Americans in the marathon this year.

6) I got ambitious yesterday and deep-cleaned my bathroom. Even though I really dislike cleaning, I love things being clean. If I ever have extra income burning a hole in my pocket, I would consider hiring a maid. (And I’ve already suggested to Travis that when we try to sell our house, we have a cleaning service come clean the house for me.)

And that’s all that’s worth telling you about!

I realized last week that I haven’t posted my thoughts on my new Garmin yet so stay tuned for that sometime soon…

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Cleaning It Up…

6 Aug

Since I’ve cut back quite a bit on my activity levels (hello 4 rest days last week!) and I have a Labor Day weekend on the lake in Minnesota looming, I’ve decided that I need to clean up my eating habits a bit. Any runner knows that it’s a little too easy to justify eating a cookie here, some chocolate there, because “Hey, I just ran xx miles.” Well, I no longer have that excuse. (Though I did run a full 6.75 miles last week.)

There’s a reason why I said I’m cleaning up my eating “a bit.” I don’t know about you but when I read about a “clean diet” that includes protein brownies, or look at eating plans that specify every piece of food that can pass your lips, I get overwhelmed. I don’t want to have to figure out how to make my brownies healthy with brown rice flour, agave nectar and greek yogurt. I don’t want to weigh and measure every thing I eat. (Some people do, and more power to them.) For me, food freedom is where I’m happiest. I’m a big fan of Intuitive Eating, if you can’t tell.

So the main thing I’ve done to clean my eating habits up is to be mindful of what I eat. No eating food just because it’s there and it’s free. I can get into a habit at work of eating whatever someone brings in – donuts, cookies, cake, etc. – just because it’s available. But I want everything I eat to be intentional chosen – it should be either nutritious and filling, or amazingly delicious.

Balanced with that, I’m also focusing on getting the majority (like 95%) of my daily calories from actual good-for-me food. I’m not specifically focused on cutting out sugar, refined flour, saturated fat, sodium or what have you. I just want to get more bang for my buck.

The main result of these two ideas taken together has been a severe decrease in my consumption of ice cream, cookies, chocolate, wine, etc. And I’m down a couple of pounds. Maybe it’s because my appetite has decreased from not working out as much, or maybe this whole ‘clean eating’ thing actually works (note the sarcasm), but I’m not complaining.

Do you “eat clean”? What does it look like for you?

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Master Bedroom Update

1 Aug

This was a house project that I’ve been meaning to do for over a year. Our master bedroom used to have shelves on the walls, like in this picture:

But I was getting tired of the knick-knacks and then one of the shelves fell off the wall at least twice and ended up breaking. Time to replace them (12 months later).

I made my anniversary map project with the plan to hang it up in the master bedroom eventually. Last summer, I found a bunch of plain wooden frames at a garage sale for 25 cents each and this summer, I bought a can of off-white spray paint to redo them. With some other cute wall decorations on sale at Kohl’s and Hobby Lobby, it came together.

On the left side:

(Obviously, I still need to replace one picture but I haven’t been able to find a vertical picture for it yet.)

On the right side:

 

The ivory frames in this picture are the ones I spray-painted.

Also since the time when the first picture of this post was taken, we have painted 2 of the walls in our bedroom blue (because we replaced the windows) and installed dual rods, so that we could still have the sheer curtains but also have heavier ones to block out the light in the morning:

It felt good to get that project done! One down, 100 to go.

 

 

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Weekend Fun

30 Jul

Two weekends ago, my mom was in town and we had a girls’ weekend. It also happened to be our birthdays – hers on Friday and mine on Sunday. Friday night, we took my mom out for dinner at a inconspicuously delicious Italian place called Abrusci’s.

On Saturday, we drove up to Georgetown and rode the Georgetown Loop Railroad.

We got tickets for the parlor car, which included a drink and chips or cookie for free!

The whole trip only took an hour, which was the perfect amount of time to experience the railroad without getting bored.

The day we were up there, the Triple Bypass bike race was going on (so named because they go over three mountain passes). That just looked brutal. But part of me thought it looked kinda fun… I’m not sure I’ll ever be into biking enough to want to do something like that though.

After the train ride, we continued on to Frisco and ate lunch at the Butterhorn Bakery. I’ve officially declared this my mountain spot. Everything is delicious and portion sizes are huge.

After lunch, we continued driving through Glenwood Canyon and then headed down to Aspen. It was a very beautiful drive, although a little south of Glenwood, it started pouring. Cars going both directions were driving through massive puddles and I was a little freaked out. But we survived and made it to Aspen by about 4 pm.

We stayed at the Aspen Meadows Resort (got a good deal through Hotwire) and it was a nice hotel but I wasn’t overly impressed. They did have a free shuttle to downtown so we took advantage of that and did some shopping scoffing. Holy crap things are expensive in Aspen! I kind you not – the cheapest store there was J. Crew. My mom actually found a sweater that cost $1,000. We ate dinner at Jimmy’s Bar & Restaurant. I had quinoa-stuffed zucchini cannelloni. It was good, albeit interesting. My mom ordered meatloaf and it was really good. Best meatloaf I’ve ever had.

The whole experience made me realize how wealth is completely relative. I never feel poor in Denver and yet I go to Aspen and feel completely out of my league.

But Aspen does have the whole beauty of nature thing down and that definitely made this trip worth it. On our way back the next morning, we drove up Independence Pass. So awesome. The road near Aspen is so windy and narrow that you’d think it would freak me out (and it probably would if I wasn’t driving) but I loved it. The views near the top are nice too.

And with that, our short girls’ weekend was over. My mom was in town for a school nutrition conference and it started that afternoon so while she went to that, I took a nap and bummed and then Travis, me and her all went out to eat downtown at The Keg in LoDo. It was a good, l0w-key birthday. My mom stayed until Thursday, so we had lots of time to hang out and chat. It was so fun having her out here!

This past weekend, Travis was helping a friend fix their swamp cooler so I took the pooches for an overly ambitious hike at Chautauqua in Boulder. I was planning to take the Gregory Canyon Trial to Ranger Trail to Saddle Rock Trail, for a total of 3.5 “hard” miles (according to the map). Well, apparently hiking at sea level a month ago doesn’t equate to hiking now at altitude. It didn’t help that I got going late so by the time we got out there at 11, it was 85 degrees and sunny on a shadeless trail. (There were plenty of other crazies out there though.)

About 30 minutes up the trail, I was only about halfway to the end of Gregory Canyon. Both the pooches and I were dying so even though I felt pathetic, I turned around. This was my first real hike in Colorado this year (and it’s almost August!?), so I can’t be too surprised that this was the outcome, especially after doing nothing for a month.

Turning around ended up being a good call because I’m pretty sure Katy overheated. And I did what you’re not supposed to do – give her a bunch of water. She puked at least 4 times. Oops. (She is fully recovered now though.) Charlie refused to drink any water. She’s too smart for me.

Even though my hike was shorter than planned, it was still pretty and I enjoyed getting out there.

That night, Travis and I went out to eat at Bonefish Grill and then played mini golf with some friends from church. We ended the evening in the best way – frozen yogurt. Mmm…

Sunday (yesterday), we went to church and then spent the afternoon watching the Olympics (I also took an hour and a half nap). It is so awesome to have relaxing weekends (definitely worth fighting the urge to be productive). Both Travis and I had very busy springs (him with studying, me with training) and we are both just ready to do nothing for a while. Ahh…

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Back in the Groove

26 Jul

This past Monday marked one month since the marathon. In that time, I ran once (and it was not enjoyable), went on a couple of hikes in Alaska, and walked the dogs. But since I know that getting back into shape is a lot less enjoyable than just staying in shape, I decided it was time to get back in the groove of working out.

So here’s my rough plan-that’s-not-a-plan:

Cardio 3-4 days a week – with the idea of running, biking and swimming at least one day each

Strength 2 days a week

I have a stash of strength workouts from magazines and blogs that I’ll pick from for my strength workouts.

My main goal for working out now is to enjoy it. I cannot tell you how excited I am to go to the gym and read while working out. It’s definitely the thing that makes the time go by the fastest for me and I have so many books and magazines waiting to be read that I love being able to kill two birds with one stone. Being able to read while working out actually motivates me to go too. Oh and my work will reimburse both Travis and I $30 if we can prove that we go to the gym 8 times in a month. Win-Win-Win.

As for doing a triathlon or a bike race this year still, I’m not ruling anything out but I’m also not feeling very optimistic about those odds. I’m just playing everything by ear.

And for some reason, right now I’m really digging hiking so Travis and I are planning to go backpacking a weekend in August and another one in September. We missed the window for getting a backcountry permit in the Grand Canyon (applying now gets you a permit for December…no thanks) so that will have to wait. I’d also like to do some fun day hikes on our open weekends, and possibly a 14er too.

Overall though, we’re planning to focus more time on getting stuff done around the house, as well as starting to prepare for selling our house. We don’t plan on putting our house in the market anytime soon – moving involves a lot of variables, all of which are still up in the air, but my opinion is, if we’re going to do these things anyway, we might as well do them now when we can enjoy them instead of waiting until right before we sell our house!

After a big race, do you usually jump right back into your routine? Or do you do something else for a while?

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