It's never as bad as you think it will be

I swore that after my triathlons last summer that I would keep swimming in order to get faster. Oops. I can count on 2 fingers the number of times I have been in the pool for a workout since August.

The whole open water ocean swimming thing was terrifying.

I just keep talking myself out of it. Somehow it seemed too daunting to get myself to the Y with all my swim stuff and get in the pool. I always had an excuse. I didn't have time. I had a cold. My arms were tired from lifting. They were all bull.

This morning I finally did it. I got in the pool and swam almost a mile. And you know what?? I ENJOYED IT. I felt light and effortless and nothing hurt, very unlike my running lately. I felt like I could feel everything in my body releasing. The time flew by.

This is not the pool I swam in. I wish. This is a much nicer pool.

Once again I realized that it is never as bad as you think it will be. I waste way too much time and energy psyching myself out.

Is there something that you have trouble making yourself do?

The Day I Turned my Garmin Off

I officially have my first cold of the season. Sunday I woke up with a scratchy throat and by Sunday night I had it all- swollen throat, stuffy nose, body aches, and chills. Yesterday I went to the gym in the morning. It was a waste. I felt dizzy and weak all of kickboxing. After I got home I gave myself permission to be a giant sloth. I spent the whole day on my couch with my laptop. It's amazing how much work you can get done with you are too exhausted to get off the couch.

my home for the day

 This morning I woke up feeling quite a bit better. Sore throat was gone, no more chills, and I had a lot more energy. I decided to go for a slow easy run to loosen up my sinus congestion. (and because I can't take days off). The only problem is that I have a hard time making myself run slow (slow for me. My fast is most people's slow). Whenever I look at my garmin and see a pace around 10 min/miles or slower, I feel like a lazy bum and force myself to run faster. I also hate running anything less than 6 miles so I always make myself run loops around my neighborhood until I hit the magic number.

I wore my Garmin as usual, but when I stopped  minutes into my run to adjust my ipod and forgot to turn it back on, I didn't stress like I normally would. I knew I didn't have any speed in me today and I probably should run a little shorter than normal. So, I ran with my Garmin off.

The Garmin was just a giant, clunky watch this morning.

It felt strange to finish a run and have no idea how long or how far I ran. I am a data junkie and love entering my runs into my training log. On the the other hand, I had no guilt about how slowly I ran when I checked my stats at the end.

Do you always run with a watch? Do you look at your pace while you are running? Do you feel strange if you don't know how far you ran?

I Don't Eat That

Since Saturday I have not had any sugar (added sugar, natural sugars in things like fruit are okay) or wheat. It is been surprisingly easy given how completely out of control my eating was and how many times I have failed at this before.

What is different? One thing is that I am using a technique I read about a few months in the LA Times  and have heard mentioned several times since. I have started saying "I don't eat that" instead of "I can't eat that."

Sounds a little silly, but it helps. A study at the University of Houston found that saying "I don't" was nearly three times as effective as saying "no" and about eight times more effective than saying "I can't."

Why?  "With 'I don't' you're choosing words that signal empowerment and determination rather than ones that signal deprivation," says Vanessa Patrick, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Houston. It is true. I don't feel deprived or like this is something being forced upon me. I feel like I'm in charge.

We went ice skating, out to dinner, and then to watch the light show at LL Bean last night. There were opportunities to cheat during each activity- cookies and cocoa skating, lots of pasta on the menu at dinner, and a stop at DQ for the BF to get a blizzard before the light show. But I just didn't even let myself think about having wheat or sugar. It wasn't a possibility in my mind, so it was easy to say no. "I don't eat that."

That's what this whole experiment is about, returning control to my eating. I don't want to feel like food is controlling me anymore.

Pre Holiday Diet Clean Up

I am not usually one to endorse cleanses or crash diets. I think that restricting entire food groups from your diet, unless you have a medical, ethical, religious, reason to do is generally a bad idea. I have been down the road of overly restricting my food and it did not make me a happy or healthy person.

Not my best look ever.

 BUT. The moderation thing is just not working for me. I suddenly can't eat one cookie without eating 10 cookies. Fine if this just happens occasionally, I mean life is here to enjoy and live. But it is happening all the time. More importantly, I am not getting pleasure out of what I am eating. I'm just shoveling it in mindlessly and then going back for more. I am tired of waking up feeling guilty and with a food hang-over. Tired of feeling like I need to go kill it running or at the gym for hours to atone, even though my body is tired. I am tired of feeling like food controls me.

I basically ate this whole container of cookies this week

I am stuck in an endless cycle of eating lots of sweets and carbs which just makes me crave more. So for just one week I am going to give up sugar and wheat. It is not that extreme and it's just a week. I don't want to ruin the entire holiday season, but I can do a week just to break this cycle. So that when I do have a few holiday treats, I will really enjoy them.

But I need your help. PLEASE help keep me accountable this week. It is all too easy to cave all by yourself. So check in on me. Ask me how I'm doing. If I know I have to report to someone it will be so much harder to give up. 

Cutest Dog Ever

The BF has been working doubles this week so I have been watching his dog Dixie. She has completely won me over to the small dog side.

How can you not love this?

We always had big dogs when I was growing up, Newfoundlands, St. Bernards, and golden retrievers. So I tend to prefer big, slobbery, sweet dogs. But it is convenient that you can just pick up a small dog when they aren't listening. And a nice warm dog in your lap is pretty darn nice. Dixie made the round of laps last night. My Mom, Aunt, and cousin were all over for the night.

"helping" Lindsay make some jewelery.

 It is great to have a companion when I am working at home alone all day. It also forces me to take a break and go for a walk in the afternoon. I would however love it if she stopped eating cat poop every time I took her out.

Are you a dog person or a cat person? Big dogs or little dogs?

Vitamin Deficiency

I finally went for a much overdue physical a few weeks ago and got my test results back last week. I am anemic, which is not surprising since I don't eat much meat (and hardly any red meat). My bone density also isn't great, which is also not surprising since my grandmother had osteoporosis (and my Mom probably does too, if she would get tested).

So when I went to CVS to grab some new vitamins, I decided to try the kind with extra minerals.

However, it turns out my stomach is not a fan of the extra minerals. I have taken them the past 4 days and every time I get super nauseous 10-15 mins after I take them. Yesterday I even threw up :( I always take them after eating so I have some food in my stomach, but that doesn't seem to be helping. I HATE feeling sick to my stomach more than anything, so this does not make me happy.

Any suggestions? Do you take a multivitamin?

The training gods hate me

Apparently I angered the training gods by daring to commit to a training plan. As soon as I did, my hip took a turn for the worse. Then this morning, when I was supposed to go do my first track session, I woke up to this.

 Normally I am a huge fan of snow. But this wasn't nice fluffy skiing snow, it was a slippery icy mix that totally coated the road. I had 2 friends that slid off the road last night.

 

I also had a cookie hangover. I had my mom and friends over yesterday for a massive cookie baking fest. We spent a solid hours baking hundreds on cookies. That added up to sampling a lot of dough, cookies, and hiding the mistakes in our bellies. Oooof. 

But I decided to head out anyway. I couldn't bring myself to bail on my first speed work session. The roads were pretty bad, I was sliding all over the place. Luckily the rubber sticky surface provided enough traction, even under the snow.

My training place said to "take half the time of your goal pace per mile and subtract 15 seconds," to determine my pace for the 800's. Since I am aiming for a 2 hour half, my pace needs to be around 9:10 min/mile, so my training 800's should be done in about 4:20.

I ran 3:55, 3:55, 3:55, and 3:51. Crushed it!!