I’ve been training for a 10K over the past 5 weeks or so.  It is way too hot in ATL right now to sign up for any organized races. Most races don’t start until 8AM and that is just too late to start running.  My last race started at 7AM and even at that early hour it was 75 degrees and humid as all get out.  I decided to abandon all outdoor running for the summer season after that experience.

That presented a little problem when it came to my 10K day.  I run on the treadmill, but I don’t like it.  It isn’t natural.  My gait feels forced.  I’m either going too slow or too fast and I can’t seem to regulate myself in a natural way.  It just sucks but I deal with it because it is better than sweating like crazy in the hot and humid temps.  That said, the treadmill just wouldn’t do for race day so I ventured back outside.  The Silver Comet Trail opens at the sunrise and I planned to be there bright and early.  I don’t mind running in the early morning dark in my neighborhood, but I’m not running in the dark on tree-covered trail where a woman got snatched up and killed 5 years ago.  Sunrise it is.

It’s 6:30AM and the temperature gauge in my car reads 80 degrees already.  It is moist feeling outside.  Sigh.  I’m committed though.  I’m trained and I feel prepared and I’m ready to do this.  I get started with my usual .3 mile/5 minute warmup.  When I hit the .3 mile marker on the trail, I set my Polar watch for the race and I’m off!

I went into the race with a 1:04 base goal.  I was 100% sure I could do this.  My stretch goal was 1:02 and my reach goal was 1:00.  I figured with a little pushing, I could do the stretch goal and wrap up the race with 10 min miles.  My plan was to hold a 10 min mile pace for the first 4 miles and then just run without holding back for the last 2.2 miles.

Of course, I started too fast.  First mile done in 9:45.  Slow down!  Second mile done in 9:52.  Slow down more!  I think I stopped sweating it at this point because I found my running groove.  I miss running outside!  I swear a 9:52 on the treadmill feels so much harder than a 9:52 outdoors.  That’s why I was finding it hard to slow myself down.  The faster pace outdoors feels about the same as the slow pace indoors.  I know people say running outdoors is harder but that just isn’t the case for me.  Maybe because I have short legs?

Anyway, I focused on keeping my time in the 10:00 min/mile range and found my groove.  It is still hot and I’m sweating like crazy, but I feel strong.  I got to my turnaround point where your cross the street before the 4.2 mile Floyd Road stop.  That was 3.5 miles in for me.  I’m feeling a little tired at this point (the heat!), but I made a vow with myself to not walk until I’d done at least 4 miles of running.

The 4 mile mark came and went and “You Can’t Stop The Beat” from Hairspray came on.  Instead of taking my earned walk break, I felt good and kept running.  I abandoned my pace restrictions and just ran according to how I felt.  I didn’t stop running until Mile 5!  I had planned to take a .10 mile walk break, but I chugged some water, took a .05 mile break and kept it moving.  I slowed down again a little later taking another .05 mile break.  It was getting harder to focus and I really wanted to stop.  I played my head games and told myself I could walk again once Kelis’ “Milkshake” went off.  At that point, I only had .5 miles to go and Destiny’s Child was singing “Sexy Daddy” which is perfect for running so I really couldn’t stop!

I finished strong with no clue about my overall time.  I purposely keep my watch on the mileage and pace screen so that I don’t see the overall time and get discouraged.  I checked my watch and literally jumped up and down to see my overall time of 1:00:08.  I nearly hit my impossible to reach stretch goal!  My overall pace for the race was a 9:40 min/mile.  I couldn’t believe it!

**Whoomp there it is!  I rocked it out even in the hot weather!  I will continue to get faster and become a better runner than I was pre-pregnancy (once I lose some more weight LOL).  It is totally possible.

**I get tired of seeing “Woot!” all the time on fitness sites so I’m going back old school LOL.. Woot.com is a deal of the day website, you know?

Krissy, mother of the oh-so-adorable Jasmine, tagged me in a post.  I don’t always do these things, but what the heck.  Here’s 7 things about myself that people may not know.

• I have two tattoos.  I don’t regret either one, but I don’t plan to get any more.
• I don’t like romantic comedies/chick flicks.  I will usually go see stuff like Brown Sugar (loved it!) or Just Wright (not so good!) out of a desire to support blacks in film.  However, I really can’t tolerate that genre of moves that made Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan screen queens.  Not for me.
• I don’t drink hot drinks – not coffee, not tea, not hot chocolate, nothing hot.  Drinks are for quenching thirst (or getting toasted LOL).  Neither of those goals requires a half-hour worth of sipping.  FWIW, I don’t like milkshakes either.  Drinks shouldn’t be thick or hot.
• I was seriously considering having a child solo if I didn’t get married by 35-ish. I considered joining one of those Single Mom By Choice groups and everything.  Thank God The Mister came along!
• I used to twirl flags in the marching band in high school.  I went on to do Winter Guard (indoor flags) in the off-season.  Some may call it lame (The Mister sure does!).  I had a blast.  What do I know though?  I was a total nerd.
• Speaking of nerds, I was the chief nerd!  I was my high school valedictorian.  Then I got to college and nearly everyone was valedictorian and so smart and I suddenly felt stupid.
• I’m the only woman in my immediate family without a Master’s Degree.  I feel like something of an underachiever.  However, I don’t really need it for my current work as a software engineer.  In my field, people pay more for experience than head knowledge once you get past entry level.  I had sworn I’d get one by 30 but I’m 33 now and what had happened was…

I don’t do the tagging thing, but if you are reading this and want to answer the questions – consider yourself tagged.  Be sure to link to your post so I can check it out!

Kettlebell Swings

Photographer Brittany Wade was kind enough to allow me to be a model for a day for my Precision Nutrition photo shoot.  These are two of my favorite pictures.

On an unrelated note, can I say that I am thrilled to have gone from having hair that stopped at my ears to having the ponytail in the first picture!  Thumbs up to a solid hair care routine and the ever reliable slickback bun LOL.  In spite of years of sweaty workouts, my hair has thrived.

• I have so much stuff I want to write about, but I can’t seem to gather my thoughts.  Bullet points are all I have for now.
• I can’t stop eating these chickpeas.  So addictive!
• I’m up to a 5 mile long run and scheduled to take it to 5.5 miles this weekend.  Bring on that 10K!  My legs still feel strong.
• I was watching that old “Hip Hop Abs” infomercial at the gym this morning.  It was so annoying!  To imply that you can get a six-pack by “tilt-tuck-tightening” your abs is ridiculous!  There is no magic exercise that will give you a visible six pack.  The lack of a six pack also says nothing about your core strength.  That layer of fat covering up the muscle is the problem.  No one has control over where fat loss occurs so you can hip hop abs it all you want and you still might not have a six pack.
• Plus, you know they are leaving out the diet portion of their lose 6 inches in 6 days claim.  I bet there is an extreme low-carb plan attached to the early program days that causes the weight loss.  Ugh!  That commercial really annoyed me.
• Disco Diva pointed out another local obstacle race coming up in September.  I’m not too sure about this one.  We do everything they show for obstacles (except for the wall climb) in CrossFit regularly.  We also do exercise according to the Tabata protocol (20 secs work, 10 secs rest, 8 rounds) regularly.  I know I CAN do it.  I’m just not sure I want to do that outside in the heat in early September and pay $60 for it.
• Baby boy took a few steps yesterday afternoon!  He is getting to be such a handful now that he is more mobile.  Lord help me when he really starts walking!  I can hardly control him when he is just cruising and army crawling.
• I went to a Cupcake Smackdown (congratulations Barista!) on Sunday.  If you want to be put off sugar for a while – attend something similar!
• I started the 100 pushups plan last week.  I missed Day 3 and I can’t seem to muster up the strength to make it up today.  Could it be the 60 pullups that I did on Monday?  My arms feel like they are going to fall off!

Work In Progress

All Done! 'Fro gone!

See...I really do smile! Please excuse Mommy's hair!

The ‘fro is gone for now!  Grandma visited over the Fourth and braided Lewis’ hair over a three day period (!).  I’m sad because I have neither the time nor skill to duplicate this but I love the results.  Thank God for grandmothers!

I won the Biggest Loser contest at my office!  I ended up losing a little over 12% of my body weight over the contest period.  I can’t seem to remember when we started but it has been about 4-5 months.  Not too shabby!

My week of strict eating paid off with a scale loss of 3.8lbs.  I doubt that I really lost that much during one week but that was what the scale said during contest weigh in.  I was down from 181 the week before to 177.2.  My home scale reading that morning (the one I count) said 174.5!

I finally feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel here.  Even if I do not quite reach my intermediate goal of 155 by Sept 12th, it will be just around the corner.  I’ve lost 60lbs since having the baby.  60lbs!  When I went back to work in late October, I had only lost about 18lbs so having the baby didn’t do that much for me.  The next 42 pounds came off due to hard work.  I drag my butt out of bed 5-6 mornings a week for intense exercise and watch my diet very closely more often than I do not.

I’m proud of myself because it isn’t easy.  It simply isn’t.  Trying to lose 80+ pounds has taken a totally different level of mental and physical effort than trying to shed 10-15 pounds.  I falter – constantly.  I keep on getting back up too.

One of my Lean Eating lessons from last week really hit home for me.  I hope you get something out of it too if you are struggling with weight loss.

“Always something” is better than “all-or-nothing.”

The “all-or-nothing” approach, which is how most of us approach change, at least initially, is the opposite of the habit-based approach. The habit-based approach can be easily summed up as “always something.”

There is always something you can do.

Sure, it will be less than everything you can do, but you can’t really do everything, can you? Not for long anyway, and most of us would prefer to change for good, not just for a few weeks or months…Do “something” for long enough, and anything is possible.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame!

Not sure if ice cream is age appropriate but he looooved it!

No clue what we were doing here...I just think he looks cute!

This is sooo not wordless LOL!

Lewis went to his first baseball game last Sunday.  We were seated in style in a nice cool box suite courtesy of my company (the only way to go!).  We quickly learned that venturing outside the box to our stadium seats was not a great idea.  Lewis burst into tears everytime the crowd cheered.  The sudden noise scared the mess out of him.  Methinks we need to get out more.

Lewis was a hit with my co-workers!  They hadn’t seen him since he was about 5 weeks old and I was still on maternity leave.  He actually allowed one of my co-workers to hold him for an extended period of time.  Good times!

Cue the music from that corny 80’s (?) song!

This is a big week for me.  Our office Biggest Loser contest is coming to a close on Friday and what was once a blowout with me in the far lead has become a close contest.  I’m at a loss of 9.77% and my next closest competitor is at 8.65% which is too close for comfort!  $300 is on the line and I am claiming that money as mine.  Not an ounce of off plan food will cross my lips between now and Friday AM….not a candy corn, not a 1/4 cup of rice.  I mean it!

My Precision Nutrition program is coming to a close as well.  One of our assignements at the beginning was to set up a photo shoot to show off of transformations.  Well, the time has come.  Is my transformation complete?  No.  Does my body look a whole lot better despite losing only about 20lbs?  Yes!  I naturally want to look as good as possible for the shoot even though I’m not going the bikini photo route.  So I have yet another reason to be 100% compliant with my nutrition this week.

I was totally slack last week – maybe I was slightly rebelling because I knew there could be no messing around this week?  My company celebrated a huge milestone with a suite at the Braves game on Sunday.  The hospitality crew bought in every sinful baseball food you could imagine and I partook in almost everything!  They set out hotdogs, burger sliders, nachos, pizza, ice cream sundaes, a dessert tray, beer, wine – no expense was spared and there was nothing healthy around.

That was yesterday though and today is a new day.  I’m off to a good start so far and I plan to continue doing good works.  Here’s to winning the jackpot Friday and doing  my “Top Model” thing on Sunday.  I’m “smizing” as I type this LOL.

Don’t be a bad mommy like me!  Take that crib mobile DOWN when your kid starts to push up and get mobile.  We are slowly transitioning to the crib (co-sleeping turns bad when your baby has the nerve to not want to sleep on his back anymore!), so I wasn’t very diligent about childproofing it.  Lewis though it would be great fun to stand under the mobile and pull on the toys.  Bye Bye mobile!

Now I’m back up to a 4 mile max run and I need to move past that.  I’m not doing any more real summer races because it is just too freaking hot.  I still need to run and I need to have something to train towards – otherwise I get slack.  So I’m running my own 10K!  The date is set for June 24th or June 25th.  Since The Mister and I alternate a “personal day off” from baby duty on the weekends, I don’t quite know right now if I’m “off” on that Saturday or Sunday LOL.

This will be a real 10K, just on the treadmill at the gym.  I might even plan out a “course” with elevation challenges to make it more fun.  Hmm…should I make my own finishers T-Shirt?  Maybe a medal?

I’m trying the training plan here once again.  I’m going to start with Week 4 since I ran a 4 mile race last week.  The end of this plan will dove-tail nicely with the beginning of my half-marathon training and allow me to ramp up to the long run mileage required for that plan.

06/21-06/27: 3M, 2M, 4M
06/28-07/04: 3M, 2M, 4.5M
07/05-07/11: 3M, 2M, 5M
07/12-07/18: 3M, 2M, 5.5M
07/19-07/25: 3M, 2M, 6.2M

Since the Hal Higdon training plan is pretty free form and I do have the goal of getting faster, I am using the McMillian Running Calculator to determine my best training paces.  I am going to do a steady-state run, a tempo run and a weekly long run and attempt to stick to the prescribed paces.  I think this will really help me build up to the distance.  I have an issue with wanting to run all out for all training runs.

My last race was the 4M at 41:07, but the heat drastically affects your performance.  I’m going to estimate that it caused me to run 20 seconds slower per mile, so that under ideal conditions, I would have run about a 40:30 min race.  Plugging that number into the calculator predicts that I can run a 1:04 10K and gives me training paces of 10:56-11:15 (steady), 10:29-10:56 (tempo) and 12:02-12:32 (long).

5 Weeks to 10K even though I sort of feel like I could just bust it out right now if I were being chased.  It wouldn’t be pretty though!  I know the half marathon training is going to be challenging though, so I’m going to take this opportunity to properly build up distance before crunch time.