Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Working on finding my pace again

Yesterday's run was difficult. I was tired to begin with, and I could feel it as soon as I stepped on the treadmill. It was just about all I could do to keep myself running for the full 20 minutes. I even had to drop my pace a few times to give myself time to recover.

After getting off the treadmill, I did some stretching, a short stint of ab work, and my new short strength routine. I've been doing a mini circuit of hammer curl/shoulder presses, then french presses, then squats. I had been doing three rounds with 10lb. weights for the arms, doing sets of 15 reps, however I closest weight I could find was 12.7lbs, so I scaled back to doing 8 reps on the arms (still 15 on the squats), and I could barely do the last set.

I'm really hoping to get to the gym more often this week, to start to build up some more positive momentum. I want to get back to where I'm going to the gym more often than not. I want to start improving my fitness again, instead of either spinning my wheels or backsliding.

I want to do the 100 push-up and 100 sit-up challenges. I want to get myself back to training for a 5k. I want to start working on being able to do pull-ups again. So many things I want to work towards.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Every day needs to be little better

Last week was marginally more successful than the week before. I managed to get to the gym a grand total of....twice.

I am completely fed up with myself. Lately, I've been unable to prioritize my time correctly, wasting a lot of my time because of poor planning and bad decisions. This weekend was a total wash, and we had a very full weekend planned. Staying out too late Friday and having one too many drinks wiped out our whole weekend.

I've finally reached the point where my lack of focus and dedication has gotten to me. Changes must be made, and commitments stuck to.

I want my groove back!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The importance of routine

I am determined to make this a good week. It got off to a good start, I spent a good chunk of yesterday walking (about two hours all told) and I ate relatively healthy. It wasn't a stellar day, but it was far from a bad day.

I have a couple of uninterrupted weeks here to get myself back into my groove. A lot of my problems with my level of fitness lately have stemmed from a lack of groove. I have recently realized just how important it is to me to have that routine in place. The less stable my routine, the less likely I am to get myself to the gym. Lately my routine has been very far from stable, and it's resulted in very little gym time.

We're heading into the "Holiday Season", our starts early with Birthdays in October, I know my schedule will be far from stable for a long time. Traveling often becomes mandatory this time of year for us. But for the next couple of weeks, I can settle into my routine for a bit, maybe long enough that when all the travel hits again I'll be able to continue the routine around it.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Weddings mean dresses, and dresses mean I must run.

I haven't been sleeping well lately. Between a bout of seasonal allergies (which I apparently developed in the last two years) and random emotional situations, my average bed time has been 2am so far this week. Last week I was hitting bedtime at 1am due to a deadline for some work I'm doing. I guess technically that's close to 7 hours a night, but I feel completely drained.

This weekend I am attending my cousins wedding, which, as the invitation states, is "black tie optional"...so dresses are mandatory. I do not own many dresses, and none that fit/are fancy enough for "black tie optional." So yesterday I did something that most women profess to love, which is to me an exercise is pain, frustration, and humiliation. I went dress shopping.

This was the preamble for my going to the gym yesterday. I was tired, nay exhausted, a touch stressed, and very not in love with my body.

I ran, even though I felt like a lumbering behemoth. I ran, even though I was sure my running shirt was too tight and was showing the world every bulge I try to hide. I ran, even though every minute I wanted to get off the treadmill and go home. I didn't run particularly fast, or for an amazing amount of time or distance. I ran at a steady 5.2 mph for 20 minutes. (With a five minute warm up and five minute cool down that don't count because I wasn't running.)

I wussed out on the strength portion of my work out, I did ab work but nothing else. I was just too tired. But I ran. I ran yesterday and I'm planning on running today (I do have to wear that dress Saturday after all.)

I may not be completely back on track with this whole fitness thing, but I ran. And I'm holding on to that.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Fall means Football (and wings)

Well so much for my triumphant return last week. I got buried under some rush rush rush work, and spent the majority of my week inside in front of my computer. The pile of work ended up precluding a few gym sessions, and by the end of the week I found myself having only one gym session on record. Not good.

The bonus to living in NYC is that because of the nature of the city, you end up walking a lot. I think the amount of walking I did this week/weekend may have made up for one missed gym session. So I'm counting it as I went to the gym twice last week. Still pathetic. I really hope I can get my act together this week.

In other news it is now fall, and more importantly Football season. Once a week I am now obligated to journey with my fellow faithful to a bar and grill in Brooklyn and sit with fellow refugee's from our homeland and eat our native food while we watch our local warriors compete for pride and glory.

My native land is Western NY state, and my home team is Buffalo. So Football season is usually a time of many Buffalo wings, and much heartache. Ahh heartburn and heartache, the feelings of fall.

This means that I need to get the rest of my diet under control to allow for the wings.

Because wings are a must.

The Bills will not win if I do not eat wings.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Trying to find my way back on track.

This week has started out alright, I managed a solid run yesterday, along with a decent strength set. I stepped it up a bit too much during the run, however, and started to burn out half way through. Today I am pleasantly sore and feel like I actually did something yesterday.

One of my biggest problems with training is a lack of patience. When I start a run, I feel like I'm not working hard enough, so I step it up too much, and leave myself nothing in the tank for the end of the run. It's very hard for me to gauge how fast I should be running at the start of a run.

Most of my time right now is spent sitting in front of a computer. I'm spending about 90% of my time in this chair right now, so it's very hard for me to make myself sit back down to check blogs and grow my online presence. My zest for being part of the blogging community is being co-opted by my desire to get up from the computer and do something. So apologies for not commenting enough on everyone's blogs. I'm still reading, if sporadically.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Appologies and excuses

I'm really sorry I haven't been updating. Getting back to my normal routine has been impossible in this past week. Technical and health problems have kept me from the gym and from settling into any sort of routine.

My computer (which is also my work machine) has been having continual problems for the past few weeks. I was finally able to get enough help to diagnose the problem as a failing Hard Drive. The drive has been ordered and now requires me to sit at home and wait for the UPS guy to deliver it.

Yesterday, I woke up feeling like a truck had hit me. I was achy and my sinuses were in overdrive. I thought at first it was allergies, but over the day it progressed and I'm sure now I have some sort of cold or flu. It seems to be passing, so I'm hoping to get back to normal life by tomorrow.

Once the new drive is installed and I no longer feel like my head is stuffed full up with snot, things should go back to normal. I'm hoping that next week I'll be able to make a better showing at the gym, and also return to full presence on the internet. I have a lot of comments to respond to, and I need to get back to reading everyone's blogs again, I'll need the inspiration when I'm huffing through what used to be an easy workout next week!

Tracking Transformation: Where I stand now