Sickly

Over the last few weeks, our house has had our share (plus some) of the sicklies! I was having some gastritis issues first, then we got hit with a stomach virus! :-( The little man got that first, then passed it to me. I feel like I have been run over by a freight train.

This would be why I have been absent the past little bit. I hope to be getting back to normal by sometime this week and therefore back to exercising! But hey, stomach issues are a good way to lose weight quickly :-P Not exactly the healthy way though....oh well!

I will post more once I'm back up and running (literally and figuratively, haha). Hope everyone else out in bloggy world is doing well :-)

Parties, Cake and Speed Work

Today has been a great day. I got to spend the day with family and great friends.

The hubby got to stay home today for a change, so we enjoyed some family time. Little man decided he did NOT want to sleep in today, so we were up and at 'em pretty early. ;-) That gave us lots of time to watch cartoons play and have fun. Then little man and daddy went and had some guy time, and I went with my mother-in-law to a baby shower.

We had a great time hanging out with family and friends, and celebrating a good friend and her new baby boy! He is so precious, and his big sister was so excited to help open presents. We are just so excited that their sweet family has grown again. And of course, the party included lots of goodies, and cake :-) BTW- it was the cutest cake ever and it would have been evil to not have some.....and it was SO worth it!

Since I didn't eat so healthy today (possible understatement of the year), I decided I needed to make up for it with some serious exercise. When I got home, little man and daddy were still out doing "man things" (their words, not mine, lol!) so I headed out for a run.

I recently saw on (I think) the Runner's World website about a "100 Step Fartlek" that is supposed to help decrease your mile time. Since I can always use some help in that area, I decided to try it. Also, to be quite honest, I have been getting a bit bored/frustrated with just a normal run. Here's how it works (disclaimer: please know that I did not think this up on my own, I got it from somewhere on the web, and I think it was Runner's World....or Pinterest....haha):

10 minute warm-up
10 steps hard running (counting each time the right foot hits the ground, or the left foot, just use only one to make sure you get the full number of steps and not half)
10 steps easy running
20 steps hard running
20 steps easy running
and repeat, increasing each time by 10 until you reach 100
5 minute cool down
The instructions also included that one you master this, you can then continue after the 100 and start over backwards. So you would start with 100 steps hard running, 100 steps easy running, 90 steps...all the way back down to 10 before the cool down.

I thought I might try to do the increasing and then the decreasing steps too, but I got to 100 and knew that was it for me! Lol!! I am still proud that I made it all the way to 100! Here's what my Garmin said after the run:

 

 

I know that my overall pace wasn't all that great (10:44 min/mi), but look at that max pace!! 6:18!!! That's the best I've ever had. Previously, my best had been roughly 8:30 or something like that. Wow! That made this run one of the most fun in a long time. I think I'll have to do runs like this more often.

After my run, I did 3 circuits of my strength training routine, and a short yoga sequence (14 minutes). Whew! Momma was one tired girl.

I'm not even going to tell you what I ate today....it was just not great, and we'll leave it at that :-P But hey, hubby made dinner, so I'm not complaining one bit about that!! ;-)

How do you deal with going off target on eating? Do you make up for it with exercise or do you let it slide? Also, what's your favorite run routine?

House Cleaning and Sports Playing

Whew! What a day....

This was me today. It was time for house cleaning!! After running some errands first thing this morning, me and little man (but mostly me) spent the day cleaning the house. Picking up, scrubbing, vacuuming, mopping, dusting, putting up clothes, straightening up and all that good stuff.

According to one of my favorite calorie-burn calculators, I most likely burned upwards of 400-500 calories today! Which is a good thing, because I have no energy left to exercise :-)

We took a break from cleaning to go outside and play football and basketball with our friends in the cul-de-sac.

My little man is on the left, with his friend and his friend's dad.

Of course, I helped to chase the ball around when it got away from him, so got some more activity in with that.

How about food?
Breakfast: Fiber One Nutty Clusters & Almonds cereal
No morning snack since we got up late and therefore ate breakfast late :-)
Lunch: Subway 6" bacon, egg and cheese flat bread sandwich., Dr. Pepper
Afternoon snack: hummus and pretzel crisps
Dinner: rotisserie chicken and potato casserole (yum! My favorite!!)

How did your Saturday go?

New Reading Material & A Walk/Run

Hallelujah!!! It's Friday :-)

The thing I'm most excited about today is my new reading material...

YYEEEESSSSS!!! I love getting new issues of Runner's World! It's my favorite magazine. If you couldn't already tell. Hehehe....

It inspired me so much, I decided I needed to go for a run today. And I haven't even opened the magazine yet! Lol!!

I hit the road with a new mommy friend who is trying to get back into jogging. We had a great time getting some exercise, girl time, and chatting! We did a walk/run for 2 miles, then she headed home and I did another mile of running.

Average speed for all 3 miles together was 12:54. Which is not bad for 2 miles that included lots of walking, and considering the heat that we had today (what happened to the nice fall weather we've had the last week or two?!?!).

Mile 1: 13:28 - maybe about half to three-quarters of this mile was running.

Mile 2: 15:08 - I think only about a quarter to half of the time running in this mile.

Mile 3: 10:04 - I only took a very short walk break during this mile, so almost all running.

It felt so great to get some outside activity, even if it wasn't much. At least I still burned close to 300 calories!

So how does that balance with my eating today? Well....
Breakfast: Cinnamon Life cereal, Coca-Cola (don't judge me :-)...needed caffeine)
Morning snack: cheese cubes (forgot to pack my grapes today...)
Lunch: about 3/4 of a Chick-fil-a sandwich (with extra pickles!), about 3/4 of an order of fries, and a sweet tea
Afternoon snack: small piece of cookie cake (a friends birthday celebration at work today, and it was totally worth it-so good!)
Dinner: Taco salad - a few chips, ground beef with taco seasoning, and cheese

I'm not sure yet what I plan to do this weekend. I should probably work up a training plan sometime soon so I have something to follow. I've been thinking about doing that for a while but I just haven't done it yet. I think it would be good so that I have a goal and something concrete to do instead of just going to do some exercise each day. In fact, I think I'll work on that tomorrow :-)

What are you planning to do this weekend? If you're celebrating the Labor Day holiday, are you planning on having a splurge day or having a healthy celebration? I'm hoping to do a little of both!

My Little Helper

I had a little helper today to workout with. Little man decided it would be fun to workout with mommy! It was so funny :-)

Not sure why he's doing a headstand, because I definitely wasn't doing any of those!

When I was doing jumping jacks, he was standing beside me jumping up and down just as fast as he could go. And when I was doing push ups he came over and stood on my hands! Silly boy!!

My workout consisted of 30 minutes on the elliptical:

Then 3 sets of my strength circuit. I'm fixing to do a 35 minute set of yoga to relax the day away.

For food today, I was pretty good. Except for all the caffeine....
Breakfast: Cinnamon Life cereal, cup of cappuccino
Morning snack: cheese cubes, cup of cappuccino (I forgot to eat my snack on time so didn't have my full snack so that I wouldn't be too full for lunch)
Lunch: hamburger, cheese, pickles, bun (leftover from our yummy dinner last night)
Afternoon snack: skipped.....I brought Greek yogurt but when I went to get it, it was expired so I definitely threw that away
Dinner: small piece of lasagna, 2 pieces of bread....I mostly wanted the bread, lol!

I was so tired today that I couldn't make it without gallons of some caffeine. Luckily my little man made my workout easy to get through once I got home from work!

Now I'm off to do my yoga and put little man (who is now grumpy little man) to bed!

Is anyone else as excited for Friday as me? :-)

Happy Hump Day

Yay for being halfway to Friday!

I didn't have a whole lot of time for exercise today. Little man decided that he didn't want to take a nap today, so he was a pill this afternoon. But still the cutest little pill :-)

As little time as I had, I was able to squeeze in 20 minutes on the elliptical. I had planned to do 30, but sometimes life just happens, ya know?

I was going to do a set of yoga after dinner, but I think I'm going to settle for BED! Lol!! I'm sure I could use the exercise, especially considering the lunch I had, but I'm more tired so I'm choosing that. :-)

My food choices today were mostly good, except for lunch.
Breakfast: Cinnamon Life cereal
Morning Snack: grapes and cheese (obviously this is one of my fave snacks in the whole world...if you couldn't already tell)
Lunch: Calabash shrimp with cocktail sauce and french fries (Showmars!), oh and sweet tea ;-)
Dinner: hamburger, cheese, pickles and bun

I'll admit that I had a super craving for some shrimp, so I may not have eaten the healthiest lunch. Shrimp is very healthy, but the fact that it was fried probably negated the health-factor a bit haha! I did have a side of fries, but I only ate about a quarter of what they gave me. And I had actually ended up eating lunch pretty late in the afternoon, so it lasted me till dinner and I didn't have to eat an afternoon snack.

I'm working on a post for later this week about healthy snacks, so make sure to pass on any ideas you think should be included!

What are your fitness plans for the remainder of the week?

Crazy Day

Today has been a crazy kind of day for me. For some reason, I kept thinking all day that it was Wednesday......but it's only Tuesday. :-/

The day was a great day on the health and fitness front though :-) And I successfully stayed off Pinterest, lol! Well, I didn't Pin anything....so that still counts! (I just needed a little motivation to kick my butt in gear when I got home)

I did 20 minutes on the elliptical:

(Side note: not totally sure why the picture always turns out super dark)

Then after cardio, I did 3 sets of my current strength training circuit. It's a whole body workout that I partially got from a pre-made routine and partially made up on my own. It's currently hand written, so I'll try to get it into some sort of table format to be able to post.

Tonight was bath night for the little man so I got him all cleaned up and ready for bed, then did a short yoga sequence. I use an app on my iPad that has music and vocal instructions that makes it really nice. The routine I used today was about 14 minutes long.

I think I did pretty good eating healthy today too.
Breakfast: Cinnamon Life cereal
Morning snack: grapes and cheese
Lunch: leftover smoked pork and quinoa, and edamame
Afternoon snack: black cherry Greek yogurt with 2 packets of Splenda and a handful of Cheerios. Oh, and um...2 Hershey Kisses. :-) A girl's gotta have a chocolate fix okay?! Don't judge me..... :-)
Dinner: Lasagna (leftover from dinner Saturday!)

My hip flexor is doing better, it doesn't hurt hardly at all now except when I'm doing something that puts a strain on it. For example, in my strength circuit I'm supposed to do side lunges but those hurt the muscle so I go easy on those....gotta make sure I heal and don't injure myself worse than I already have!

How are your workouts going this week? Any new or exciting exercises you've tried?