Fat Woman With A Band

Today I did my first workout in almost three weeks. All I can say is OWEE!

I did a 10.2km walk with my half-marathon training group. I walked with a couple of women with whom I keep the same pace. We each exclaimed that we felt we were walking slowly, and not at our usual speed. Each of the others had done quite a bit of walking yesterday and last week. I had done nothing.

The curious thing was that though we felt we were walking slowly, we actually did quite a good pace and finished in just over an hour and a half. That’s a bit slower pace than I would want for the half-marathon, but not as slow as I felt I was going.

I was most definitely pooped afterwards though, and very stiff. The two weeks of very light walking didn’t keep my fitness level up. Oh, well. I have nine weeks to race day. And I know I’ll be able to improve my speed.

As for the food bit … always the most difficult aspect of my wellness. I could have done a lot better making food choices while I was away, but at the same time I could have done a whole lot worse. The unusual blip for me though, was this – I had an alcoholic beverage, and sometimes two, everyday for two weeks. I have never, ever done that. I didn’t regret it for a moment, and I haven’t had one since I returned. It was just a curiousity for me.

Getting back on my path, and getting back to the gym tomorrow morning. Oy! I can feel the pain already.

Confession time. I’ve blown off my workouts lately. I don’t even need an excuse to to stop doing the “right” thing, I just stop.

I need to figure out how to turn the robot part of me on so that I’ll continue to do my morning workouts, and make the correct food choices. I’m doing the half-marathon walking training partly because there’s a group involved, so I haven’t blown that activity off. I know that it may seem that if I just worked with a trainer again for the morning workouts I’d go, but I don’t think so. At least I’m not ready to find another trainer.

Sometimes the exercise feels like work I don’t like. And sometimes it feels like work I do like. I feel so much better in my body when I incorporate the activity and the correct food choices. Yet, somehow, I can sabotage myself and not do the activities and make the right choices.

Complain, complain.

Let’s look on the bright side … o.k. I’m off on another trip in the next couple of days. Exeter-Yeovil-London-Paris-Barcelona, with most of the time in Yeovil and Barcelona. I’m very much looking forward to it. I’ll be able to continue my walking for sure, and I’ll actually have a good excuse for neglecting the gym workouts.

I know the button to turn on the correct responses is somewhere in me.

I’m starting week 2 of the “walking a half-marathon” training. It all seems do-able, happily. Basically a whole bunch of walking, with some uphill walking to build strength, and then fast walking to build speed.

The hard part – I’m thinking doing the uphill walking will be hard – begins the week I’m in Barcelona. Darn. I’ll try to do it on my own the weekend after I get back, and then do it with the group from then on. I’m also thinking that even if I missed one of these hard sessions, no biggie. What might be a little difficult while away is any big walks to keep my weekly mileage up. Again, I’ll do what I can, and not stress about it.

The training is given by The Running Room/The Walking Room. There are about 20 people in the group – all women. Some women have already done a half-marathon, or a full marathon. They’re doing the training again, well, for the training I suppose. We meet three times a week, and then are expected to do some walking on our own to make sure we get the mileage in that our coach has outlined for the week.

We were asked to set some goals for ourselves. I have two easy ones – at least easy to think of, that is. The first is to finish the half-marathon in 3 hours. The second is lose 20lbs by the end of the year. Easy to say – hard to do. I’m more confident in finishing the half-marathon in 3 hours, then in the weight loss. Maybe the former will help the latter. I hope so.

I know that I need to keep my activity level up, so committing to the training is important. Exercise seems to be the key for any weight loss for me, even more than the eating.

Got to go put my walking shoes on to begin week 2.

Please read.

Weighing the Evidence on Exercise.

This week marks the end of training with Jackie. Very, very sad.

Jackie is off on her summer adventure on May 2nd, and when she returns in September she won’t be doing personal training.

It’s been an amazing time with her. I know that my fitness has improved since I began training with her in July. I’ve improved my stamina, my strength, lost weight, and lost inches. Of course, I still have lots of room for improvement.

Some sessions were depressingly difficult, where I felt I just couldn’t do what was asked in the way the exercise needed to be done. Jackie was always encouraging, always positive, always up beat. I’m not sure I ever got the “high” that some exercisers get, but the sense of accomplishment after completing a morning’s routine was huge.

Jackie has given me enough routines and ideas to keep me going for a long time. It’ll be really different doing them by myself, particularly staying motivated. I’m going to try, as I don’t want to lose the benefits I already accrued.

Thanks Jackie – you’re the best!

The word for me the last couple of weeks is “procrastinate.”

There’s tax stuff to do, there’s a FitBit to set up, and there’s some paperwork I need to get to. I haven’t done a darn thing.

I did, however, do another 10km walk and I’m happy to say I shaved six minutes off my time. My goal is to shave another six minutes, and then start to lengthen my long walks. I want to be able to do the 21km in less than 3hrs and 40min.

There are two experiences I have while I’m walking. One I can remedy fairly easily, and the other is tedious. I’ve found now that I have the energy to do the walk, that is I don’t seem to run out of steam before the end. But what I do find is that I get bored, and I just want to finish so I can do the next thing. This, I recognize, is my usual issue of not being in the moment. So with the walking I’ve been listening to podcasts like CBC’s Norah Young and Spark, NPR’s Terry Gross and Fresh Air, CBC’s Shelagh Rogers and The Next Chapter, NYT’s Freakonomics, TVOntario’s Jesse Brown and Search Engine, Spacing Radio, and various others. This definitely helps a lot.

The second experience is physical. I always seem to have something wrong – my hip hurts, my Achilles hurts, my foot hurts. Always something ‘effing thing. And always on my right side. It’s not a huge 10/10 of pain, usually a 2/10 or 3/10. I’d just prefer not to have it at all. I bought some compression tights on Friday and tried them out yesterday to see if they’d help with the right side pain. It could have been one of the reasons I managed to shave six minutes off my time. After walking, and this morning, my Achilles is 3/10. Not good. More stretching required.

I’ll get to my tasks this week. Really. Really. Really. Sh*t.

I wish I was saying last five pounds to lose. I’m not.

I’m saying the last five weeks of training with Jackie begins tomorrow. I’m doing four workouts a week – Day 1 and 3 work on the same body parts, and Day 2 and 4 work on the other body parts. For example, last week I worked on my legs on Monday and Wednesday, and on my arms on Tuesday and Thursday. I also participated in aquafit on Tuesday and Thursday, and did a little bit of walking on Monday and Friday.

This week I’ll be working my upper body on Monday and Wednesday, and legs on Tuesday and Thursday. I’ll be doing aquafit also, and walking. I’m hoping that we’ll have less rain this week so it’ll be more fun to walk.

The last exercise topic for this post is about the Scotiabank Marathon. I’ve signed up for the half-marathon. That’s 21 kilometers on Sunday, September 26. I know that I can walk it, but what I don’t know is if I can walk it while the course is officially open, that is 3 hours and 40 minutes. So the goal isn’t just to walk but to finish in that time.

I’m going to be doing as many training walks as I can, not all the same length as the half-marathon. For example, a walk from my place to the intersection of Bloor and Yonge is 10 kilometers. I’ll going to try to do that this week and get a time measurement. I think I can do that in just over 2 hours. Not bad, but not good enough. I have about six months to improve on that.

I’m finding easier to concentrate on the exercise part of my life rather than the diet part. I admit that I’m not doing as well as I should. I have to find the push to start cooking more at home again. I’m thinking about it a lot, I just haven’t done anything about it. Yet.

I’ve been pondering what to do next, that is what to do when I’ve reached my goal weight with this exercise regimen. I need to think about what kind of exercise I’ll do to help keep my weight in check, and not be “soul-sucking” using Jackie’s words.

I’ve been pondering doing a half-marathon walk. I know I can do the walk, but whether I can do it in a quasi-competitive way is another thing. Also, I wonder how you train for that, and then which marathon would I do? I think I’ll percolate on this for a bit. One of my first thoughts about this is that I’d need to train by walking – no duh! – but winter is just about to begin for us and I seriously dislilke winter weather and walking on the icy, snowy, slushy, yucky streets. Treadmill? That kinda invokes the soul-sucking analogy for me.

Anyway, as I say, I’ll percolate on this for a bit.

The weight loss is trickling along, just about what’s to be expected. I have about 29 pounds to go ’til goal. I really hope that it won’t take 29 weeks to do that, but it’s feeling like it might. Now THAT feels soul-sucking.

Carrying on.

Often when we’re learning something new we think of the process as following a steadily climbing curve, which at some point begins to decrease – the bell curve. As time increases our learning may get more difficult to begin with and then begin to drop off as we’ve “learned it all.”

In the past week I’ve been thinking of my progress curve as it relates to fitness. I don’t feel my progress has followed a standard bell shaped learning curve. Rather it feels like improving my fitness level can best be shown as a series of steps. It feels like I just arrived on the top of one of these steps or the tread after a very, very long riser.

Though my workouts haven’t been easy, I feel like I’m recovering faster between sets of exercises, and I’m able to get to the next exercise a bit faster. It’s not consistent, but I feel I’m making progress.

Also on my regular walking route around my place I used to do it in about 1 1/2 hours, with the last 30 minutes a bit of a struggle. I walked this route the last couple of days – I powered my way through it in about 1 hour and 10 minutes. I was able to sustain a faster pace, and I wasn’t dragging my butt at the end.

And I lost another two pounds. A grand week, all in all.

I’m into my third week with Jackie, a personal trainer. I’ve had four sessions with her, and did three sessions by myself last week as I was away. I finish out this week with another session by myself.

The most obvious signs of the workouts, so far, are my skinned knees. After the first session I had skinned elbows and I still can’t do the exercise that caused the boo-boo because my wound hasn’t healed. I got the skinned knees today as I did three sets of push-ups on the carpet rather than the mat.

I also got a two new workout shirts and a pair of shorts. I’m such a jock-wannabee.

I’m pretty much doing some activity six mornings out of seven. I’m grateful I don’t have to work full-time as I don’t know how I’d do all this stuff if I was employed.

I’m also grateful it’s just a couple of skinned knees.