Tuesday, July 21, 2009

More small steps

Yesterday my workouts consisted of AM Yoga, and helping a friend move. That counts right? An hour or so of carrying slightly heavy objects up and down stairs? We celebrated the successful finish of the move with Take out Margaritas and Pizza while relaxing in the park. Which I suppose cancels out any workout I got from the move, but was definitely worth it.

Today I'm starting my "detox" diet: fruits, veggies and egg whites. I'm loosening the rules slightly to include minimal amounts of caffeine and milk. I'd like to still be functional enough to work out this week thankyouverymuch and without my morning coffee I am useless until after noon.

Another small change I'm making this week is to wake up a tad earlier. My schedule has been slowly slipping later and later, and I miss that feeling of waking up and getting stuff done. I end up feeling lazy and a tad stressed from not accomplishing enough when I let myself sleep in, so I'm starting to nudge my schedule slightly each day.

What about you? Are you an early bird or do you prefer to stay up late?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Definitely counts as a workout!

I'm such an early bird. I like waking up early and accomplishing things early on in the day.

- Sagan

Christie said...

Hey Meg,

Anything that burns calories and has you sore later is considered cross training in my book.

To answer your question, I started out with Couch to 5k from day 1. But it looks like you're way beyond that. I was truly a couch potato. From there, I went to the One Hour Runner program. That consisted of 10 weeks of training, gradually going from 30min to 60min. At that point, I think I was able to run about 5mi in one stretch. Then after that, I started a half marathon training program. My intention wasn't to race, but to increase my mileage. I think I may have started with Smart Coach on Runner's World. But I completely disregard the speed, tempo, hills or whatever workouts RW (or any other plan) calls for. I just make sure I get the miles in. The more I run, the better I get at it (without all that additional stuff).

I don't know how often you run, but when I started out, I never ran two days in a row. I always had a rest day in between. I do better on fresh legs. Also, pacing is a big part of my running. A lot of us tend to start out too fast. So when I run, I ask myself, "Can I maintain this pace for another 5 or 6 miles?" If the answer is no, I pull back. I make a conscious effort to negative split or at least keep a consistent pace.

Anyway, I hope this helps somewhat. I hope you find a plan that works for you.

Yum Yucky said...

I'm an early bird for sure! But staying up late is slowly (and unfortunately) becoming necessary. Not enough hours in the day!

Tracking Transformation: Where I stand now