Don't blink. Just run.

Where training meets fandom. And everything in between.

Face The Music Friday #43

Saturday – 9+ hours on my feet at Unleashed Open House + mowed lawn

Sunday – 6 miles

Monday – Train Reaxion (description below)

Tuesday – 2.5 miles

Wednesday – 1 hr kettlebell workshop + messed around on obstacles a bit

Thursday – 4 miles

Friday – Kayaking + mowing the lawn planned for today

 

Busy, busy week! No real rest day to speak of because I decided to mix up my routine a bit and try some of another trainer’s classes at Unleashed. They were AMAZING! Monday was a regularly scheduled class, but Wednesday was a small group class that he put on just for a few ambassadors who had expressed interest in taking one of his classes at the open house, but we really didn’t have time. Totally worth the quad and glute pain I’ve had since Monday! It certainly made my runs on Tuesday and Thursday interesting, to say the least.

As for the runs, half marathon training is going right along by the plan. I was supposed to do 4 miles on Tuesday as well, but between my muscle soreness and the 88% humidity, my body wasn’t having it. I also had some stomach issues with these stupid protein drinks we’re on from the nutritionist. I did tell him we’re not going to be using the powder anymore once it’s gone. It’s just too nasty and too expensive.

So this class on Monday was a sweat fest! Below is a description of the class. The first 2 columns were done 4 times through, 30 seconds on, 12 seconds off. The last 2 columns were done I think 3 times through, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. It was super intense and tough, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!

 

 

Before I can go on, I need to share this video. I know everyone and their mother has posted about her all over social media, but in case you missed it, Kacy Catanzaro became the first woman to ever finish an American Ninja Warrior qualifying round. She then put on this amazing performance and made it through the Finals! She’s going to Mt. Midoriyama!! It’s so exciting to watch! I love this show so much and now have a super chick to root for!

 

 

As for an update on the nutritionist plan, well, I hate it. I hated it on day one. I hate it on day 6. I feel like I’m always hungry unless I just literally put food in my mouth 5 minutes ago. I’m really tired in the morning without my coffee and then when it’s bedtime, I (and Tara) have to get up like 2-3 times to pee in the middle of the night, which never used to happen until this week. I also can’t sleep well past 2-4am and then I toss and turn quite a bit. As I mentioned before, when the protein powder is gone, we’ll resort to just eating real food again, which is kind of what I wanted in the first place. The one positive of the week is that I’ve lost 7.5 lb since Sunday. This is not that big of a deal because this has happened with me before when starting a new type of diet. It’s mostly just water weight that comes off in the very beginning. What will be interesting to see is how it progresses over the coming weeks when it levels out, and I introduce more actual food into my diet again. I’ll keep updating, at least weekly here, if not when something else arises.

 

 

Tara and I will be going kayaking today. She had all this week off so I took one day to hang out with her and I just happened to pick the right day! The weather should be gorgeous and I can’t wait to hit the water.

I went local with this week’s song pick. This is a Providence band and I just love their sound. This was the first song I ever heard of theirs played on the radio and I still love it to this day. At the time, they were simply “The Rice Cakes”, but now I guess they go by Roz and The Rice Cakes. Who knows. Anyway, enjoy Yellow Fields!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Face The Music Friday #26

Fitness this week:

Saturday – Special class at Unleashed

Sunday – 4.5 mile/1 hour Run

Rest of the week: Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

I’ve taken a lot of ibuprofen over the last week and, other than my chiro-advised stretching and rolling, I’ve just completely rested. It wasn’t until about Wednesday that I was even able to move without moaning (whether actually out loud or not). My hip is still fairly sore, but much, much better than early in the week.

 

 

 

 

I’m going to attempt my run on Sunday and see how it feels. From there, I plan on bringing back the strength training at least and going to my weekly class at Unleashed on Thursday night. I can’t even begin to describe the frustration level I’m at right now. I know it’s affecting my mood and my depression is rearing it’s ugly head more often than I’d like.

This weekend, I’m hoping to enjoy myself and have lots of fun. We’re heading up to MA tonight to spend the weekend with Julie and Dan for an early birthday celebration for Julie. April 1st is the actual day, but we won’t be able to see them next weekend. I think we’re going to head in to the aquarium in Boston, but other than that we don’t really have tangible plans. We generally wing it when we get together. I’m hoping it helps take my mind off this training B.S.

Before I get to this week’s song, I wanted to share a fun article Tara wrote on her blog: You *might* be married to a runner if…

And now for my song of the week – a nice angry selection to match my mood right now – Bodies by Drowning Pool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Face The Music Friday #22

Fitness this week:

Saturday – Shoulder/Leg – all 3 sets of 12-15  & 45 min shoveling
Machine Shoulder Press – 25 lb, Barbell Incline Shoulder Raise – 20 lb, Dumbbell Shoulder Shrug – 25 lb, Barbell Squat – 85 lb, Barbell Standing Calf Raise – 75 lb, Farmer’s Walk (50 steps) – 40 lb, Abductor – 160 lb, Adductor – 160 lb
 

Sunday – Migraine – Unscheduled rest day

Monday – Unscheduled rest day

Tuesday – 40 min Run/Walk & 30 min shoveling

Wednesday – Unscheduled rest day

Thursday – 50 min Run/Walk & 1 hr Unleashed obstacle class

Friday – Normal rest day

As you can see, I sucked this week in terms of motivation. Tara had the week off since it was school vacation and I found it very difficult to get out of bed on strength days. Oddly enough, on running days it was easy. Running is getting better with minimal pain afterwards so I’m hopeful it will continue on that route while I keep up with my stretching from the chiro and weekly visits with her. It feels so good to be able to do it again. And an update on the new shoes – they’re breaking in pretty well. I still get that slight hotspot over that same toe but not as bad.

I think my reluctance to go do my strength exercises could be because it’s time for a switch-up. I feel bored with them. When I’m doing them, I’m not…but then I think about it and I think I need a new routine soon.

Last night’s class at Unleashed was crazy. For the first time, Kevin had us do the obstacles after getting fatigued (instead of rotating station to station or mixing things up). For instance, he had us do box jumps and then go over and climb the walls. Of course, in my case, it’s more like do the jumps, attempt the wall, fall off the wall and then roll under the wall, the next wall and then bear crawl under the third wall. I did get higher though, so my progress continues there. I’ve met some really nice people there, too, and decided to join the New England Spahtens Facebook group in hopes of meeting even more obstacle race lovers. Some of the friends I’ve made at Unleashed are members (including our trainer, Kevin) so I’m already one step ahead.

Tara and I had a nice anniversary on Tuesday. I took the day off at the last minute and went to Middletown to visit her grandmother, grandmother’s best friend and her aunt. We all went out to lunch at the Portsmouth Publick House which had really good food, but it took like an hour to get our lunch. This normally wouldn’t matter if a place was jamming, but the restaurant was literally half empty and we went during a massive snowstorm…so we don’t get it. So we got to spend some quality time with good people and good food and then come and shovel yet again. I give up, Winter – you win.

Today’s song, because I’m feeling so good about running and my class last night, is going to be another Imagine Dragons song.

On Top Of The World – Imagine Dragons

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Fun Weekend And My Next Adventure

One note: today begins my adventure into eating more to lose weight. Wish me luck! I also got back to the gym this morning and will get into my regular schedule again.

To prep for the week, I tried a recipe for Egg Muffins. I figured I would just make a bunch over the weekend and then pop one in the microwave each morning for added calories and protein. I followed the recipe to the letter, except for the sausage and they are about 130 calories per muffin and almost 13 g of protein! I used the fully cooked turkey sausage crumbles (Jimmy Dean maybe?). They came out really well and were SO easy to make. And it makes almost two weeks worth!

 

 

We also tried our first recipe out of the Runner’s World Cookbook I bought recently. It was the meat and grain burgers. We used ground turkey instead of beef, but otherwise followed the recipe. It was more like meatloaf and VERY crumbly. We didn’t bother with putting it on a bun once it was cooked – it wouldn’t have stayed that way anyway! They were HUGE! The recipe says it makes 6, but we could probably make them smaller next time and turn it into 8 servings if we wanted.

 

 

Let’s not leave out some fun. Saturday we hung out with some of my friends from work and we took them to their first froyo experience at Orange Leaf! They loved it, and who couldn’t??

 

And let’s not forget E.T. Tara is horrified by E.T. and didn’t like the movie growing up. When we were grocery shopping Friday night, we always pass by this toy grab machine on the way out. Well, it was like he was BEGGING her to love him. Please…LOVE ME! HAHAHA

 

 

Busy week ahead. I was supposed to have jury duty today and tomorrow, but today was cancelled due to the “snowstorm” – we got about a 1 inch dusting overnight and now the sun is out. What a waste. I still have to go tomorrow though. I have a road runner meeting tomorrow night, chiro appt on Wednesday, taxes on Thursday night and the dentist on Saturday! Phew! Got a race on Sunday, too…can’t wait! I’ll try to keep up with reading everybody’s blogs, but there may be a bit of radio silence from me. Hope everyone has an awesome week!

 

 

 

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Face The Music Friday #20

Fitness this week: shoveling snow. LOTS of snow.

I didn’t go to the gym. I didn’t do any workouts at home. I did nothing other than shovel for about 2.5 hours total on 2 different days this week. My body and mind are tired. I didn’t get to sit down and have dinner before 8pm on any single night this week due to either the snow or random errands. Am I sorry? Nope. I needed the rest (as little extra as I got).

 

 

Many of you have seen my Diet S.O.S. post. I’ve decided I’m going to go for it. I’ve used some tips from Yankee Girl and am going to try doing a TDEE method instead. Several calculators have me anywhere from 2450-2550 calories for my TDEE so I’m going to aim for somewhere around 2000-2200. We’ll see how that goes. I’m getting a new food scale delivered tomorrow. We’re going to get more small containers so we can portion things out over the weekend for the week, so we don’t need to think about it during the work week.

In other news, I skipped my obstacle class last night because my back was killing me from – you guessed it – the shoveling. I didn’t want to overdo it. And next week I won’t be going because we’re getting our taxes done. I hope I don’t lose any progress I’ve made on the obstacles, but I can’t stress over it too much. I’m also bummed because my chiro cancelled my appt this week due to…yep…the snow. Now I need to wait until next week to go.

 

 

On a good news front, I got a voicemail last night that said my jury duty on Monday was postponed until Tuesday due to…more snow. I’m hoping that maybe we’ll get a snow day from work on Monday (highly unlikely) and then I’ll have jury duty on Tuesday. It was supposed to be jury duty on Mon and Tues but now I’m not sure if it will be Tues/Wed. I’ve never had it before so I don’t know how it works. At least I won’t be at work!

 

 

For my song this week, this is one of my faves songs from one of my most recent favorite movies, Pitch Perfect. I watch it probably once a month! I also have a slight celeb crush on Anna Kendrick.

Anna Kendrick – Cups

 

 

And how can I resist putting in a scene from the movie??? I can’t, so here you go!

 

 

 

 

 

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Diet S.O.S.

I’m beyond frustrated.

I like to pretend I know what I’m doing, but really, I have no clue. The interwebs are full of too many differing opinions and it’s making my head spin.

I’m pretty much at my wit’s end and really don’t know what to do to shake things up and get off this plateau I’ve been on, yo-yoing around the same 5-10 lb area for the last 5 months!!

I’ve got my workouts down, that’s the easy part. I CAN NOT figure out what I’m doing wrong with my diet. I’ve mixed things up some more so I’m not eating the same things every day (I’m a creature of habit). I have good ratios of protein/fat/carbs. I’m eating at different times now (when I can). I increased my calorie intake by being all “scientific” and using 3 different websites to calculate my BMR and then subtract 500 calories a day for weight loss of 1 lb a week, but that’s not helping either. By the way, it’s much easier to eat each day adding in more calories than what MyFitnessPal was telling me to eat.

 

 

 

I’m afraid of testing new things, like working on a TDEE calculation or something like that, like one of my fave bloggers, Yankee Girl Gets Fit. She’s dedicated so much time and effort on it. I’m afraid to try something like that out and have nothing change…then I’d be back at square one with all that time wasted.

I can’t really afford to go to a dietitian and my worry is that they would tell me do the things I’m already doing.

Anybody want to help me out? I’m willing to listen to anything and everything at this point. If you know what you’re talking about, that’s even better! Send your friends, coworkers, family and even your pets if they can type – though I won’t eat dog bones. Any and all are welcome to help!

 

 

 

29 Comments »

Face The Music Friday #18

Fitness this week:

Saturday – Shoulder/Leg – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 3 mile run for Meg’s Miles
Machine Shoulder Press – 15 lb, Barbell Incline Shoulder Raise – 20 lb, Dumbbell Shoulder Shrug – 25 lb, Barbell Squat – 75 lb, Barbell Standing Calf Raise – 75 lb, Farmer’s Walk (50 steps) – 40 lb, Abductor – 150 lb, Adductor – 150 lb

Sunday – Extra rest day (doubled up workouts on Saturday)

Monday – Chest/Tricep – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 15 min Yoga
Dumbbell bench press – 15lb, Machine Fly – 70 lb, Dumbbell decline bench press – 15lb, Push-ups – 10, 8, 5 (no knees), Cable rope pushdown – 25 lb, “The Monster” – 20 lb, Machine assisted dip – 100 lb

Tuesday – Run/Walk 35 min

Wednesday – Shoveled snow for over an hour

Thursday – 35 min run/walk, 1 hr Obstacle Class @ Unleashed

Friday – rest

Another great week! I missed my workouts on Wednesday due to the snow we got (I think maybe 8 inches). I had to shovel everything out myself in the morning before work because poor Tara was up sick most of the night, then I shoveled some more when I got home to clean up what the plows had snuck back in. After all that business I didn’t feel like weights or yoga so I counted that as a workout. A well deserved title, if you ask me!

 

 

Not a whole lot going on this week other than my awesome chiropractor appointment. I am having a hard time typing today because of my obstacle class last night. It was a doozy and I was sweating buckets. Considering that when we first walked in the gym I had to keep my jacket on because it was so cold in there, I’d say I worked pretty hard.

The gym was fairly empty when I got there around 6:15. There was the normal kettlebell class going on, plus the Ultimate Conditioning class that’s always right before ours. Normally by this time, people start filtering in for the OCF class but I was the only one other than a guy who was already there before me. Then my coworker/teammate got there, plus one other girl. After Ultimate Conditioning ended and a few of them joined us, there ended up being a total of 6 people in the class – pretty low (typically we’ve had around a dozen on a Thursday night).

Since we had so few people, he mixed it up a bit on us. Kevin normally sets up stations for however many people are there and we just rotate through them for the hour long class. Last night, he set up kind of a mini obstacle course. He laid the plyoboxes and steps out in a jagged line so we hopped from one to the next across the gym this time. At the end of the plyoboxes was a TRX station that we needed to climb across on the monkey bars and then work our way back and back across the plyoboxes. After that was sled #1 that we pulled one way and pushed the other (instead of high push one way, low push the other) and then sled #2 that we pulled with the rope. Small walls were next, followed by large wall with rope then monkey bars.

We cycled through them once for about 2 minutes per station, then we cycled through a second time for about a minute per station and then we started doing what I like to refer to as “hell”. He had us all come over to the turf in the middle and start doing burpees, then one at a time he sent us through each obstacle rapid cycle (you did the first, moved right into the second and continued on). When person #1 got to the end of obstacle #1, he sent person #2. Unfortunately, we were the last two so we did a good amount of burpees waiting our turn to go! Once we’d all gone around once, he had us do it a second time. On these quick fire rounds, since I can’t do the walls, he had us attempt them, but then Spartan roll under the first two and military crawl under the last one (which I kind of enjoyed LOL).

So after all that torture, we’re done right? It’s time to cool down and stretch? Nope. How about you all take a 45 lb bumper plate, hold it straight up over your head and walk a lap around the gym. Sounds great. Oh wait, there’s more? Yes – let’s do 3 more minutes of burpees! Holy hell!! After that we finally got to stretch and call it a night. What a hell of a workout!

 

 

I am proud to say, however, that I’m SO close to conquering the first (6 ft) wall. I got even higher last night than I have before and even so close that I could have done the leg swing to get up and over, but I didn’t have that “oomph” to push my leg off the wall and upwards. I also figured out how I hurt my shoulder last week (and again last night) – the monkey bars. I can’t hang very well, so monkey bars are another weakness of mine, but when I attempted them for the first time last week, I think the weight of my body on a dead hang from one shoulder trying to swing to the next bar was too much. I improvised and just hung there to build up my grip strength and Kevin had me practice trying to flex just a little bit so not all of my weight is just on my shoulders, so I’ll keep practicing that.

For today’s little ditty to end my post, I chose one I just heard in the gym for the first time like two weeks ago. I normally have my headphones in at all times working out so I block out the same ol’ same ol’ that Planet Fitness plays over and over. However, they have TVs and speakers in the locker room as well, so when I took out my headphones this song was playing and I thought it was incredibly catchy so I came home and downloaded it. I have no idea when it came out, but it’s definitely a new favorite for me! Just try not to tap your toe…

Janelle Monae – Tightrope

 

 

 

 

 

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Face The Music Friday #17

Fitness this week:

Saturday – Shoulder/Leg – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 30 min Yoga
Machine Shoulder Press – 15 lb, Barbell Incline Shoulder Raise – 20 lb, Dumbbell Shoulder Shrug – 25 lb, Barbell Squat – 65 lb, Barbell Standing Calf Raise – 65 lb, Farmer’s Walk (50 steps) – 40 lb, Abductor – 150 lb, Adductor – 150 lb, Plank – 3 x 45 seconds

Sunday – Resolution 5K race & PT stretches

Monday – Chest/Tricep – all 3 sets of 12-15
Dumbbell bench press – 15lb, Machine Fly – 65 lb, Dumbbell decline bench press – 15lb, Push-ups – 8, 7, 5 (no knees), Cable rope pushdown – 25 lb, “The Monster” – 20 lb, Machine assisted dip – 100 lb

Tuesday – Unscheduled rest day – not feeling well

Wednesday – Back/Bicep – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 15 min Yoga
Machine assisted pull-up – 140 lb, “Good Mornings” – 30 lb, Cable seated row – 45 lb, Flexed Bicep Curl – 20 lb, Dumbbell Incline Bench Curl – 17.5 lb, Cable Standing One Arm Bicep Curl – 10 lb

Thursday – 35 min run/walk, 1 hr Obstacle Class @ Unleashed

Friday – rest

 

Or a blog in this case…

 

I call that a decent week! Kept up with my walk/run plan and it has moved up to 2 min run/2 min walk and I believe it will change again on Saturday. My plan for that day is to combine Saturday and Sunday’s workouts so that I can get in some #megsmiles on Saturday since that’s not a current normal running day on my schedule right now. I’ll then take Sunday as an extra rest day and just enjoy watching my Patriots play and maybe get some stuff done around the house.

Last night I had my third obstacle class at Unleashed and it was a doozy! I worked up a huge sweat and loved every minute of it. I love that each time I’ve done the class it’s a little different. The first time I think we had 11 obstacles, then last Thursday was 12 and last night was 13! And our warm-up was just running laps around the gym this time – no burpees! Yay!!

 

 

I think I did pretty well last night, at least with the wall. This time, I got high enough to see over it, but still can’t quite get my leg up over the top. I don’t have enough confidence or strength for that yet. At least it felt good to notice that progress as before I was just staring at the wood. I also climbed a bit higher on the rope ladder and cargo net, but until my grip strengthens some more I’m not comfortable going higher without a pad beneath me (and neither of those things has one under it).

As good as that felt, my left shoulder is definitely NOT feeling well today. It stiffened up a bit last night before bed, but I took some ibuprofen and figured rest might help but it feels worse this morning. I tried reaching higher to climb instead of closer to my body and I think I tweaked something by doing that, especially since it’s my left   shoulder that hurts which is my weaker side.

Last night, this is how the obstacles went (from where I started in the rotation): Rope wall climb (this is a 12 ft wall), the monkey rope (as I call it), Muscle up on Rings (go to around 6:30 in video), Kettlebell hoist, Cargo net climb, Rope ladder climb, Pull-ups (or in my case, hang from the bar for like 5 seconds at a time), Sandbag carry over plyoboxes, Sled push, Weight bag drag and pull, Sled pull and then my nemesis, the 6 ft wall. There is also an 8 ft wall that is part of that rotation with the 6 ft wall that if you get over one, you do the next, but please…I’m still working on the 6 ft wall.

Before we get to my musical selection for this week, here’s a quick registered race update for my #14in2014:

Race 1 done – Resolution 5K
Race 2 – Old Fashioned 5K – 2/16
Race 3 – St. Pat’s 5K – 3/8
Race 4 – Cox Rhode Races – 5/3
Race 5 – Goal race #1 – Tough Mudder – 5/31
Race 6 – Goal race #2 – Surftown Half Marathon – 9/14

This week I’m sharing a song that gets me pumped up whenever I hear it…even if I’m not working out.

Radioactive – Imagine Dragons

 

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Face The Music Friday #15

This is way late on Friday for my post, but snow storm Hercules had other ideas for my morning. Stupid snow. Anyway, not a ton of updates this week.

Julie and Dan came down NYE to hang out unexpectedly (well, maybe just for me and Dan). We all played 3D Mario on Dan’s new Wii U that he brought for us to check out and then when we were played out we read all of the cards from Tara’s jar of memories she’d been keeping throughout the year. We all took turns reading some of the cards and it was fun looking back at our 2013.

We slept in pretty late on New Year’s Day and, after some breakfast, I asked Dan to come to the gym with me to show me some stuff on my routine that I was either unfamiliar with or not sure we had the right things to use at my tiny Planet Fitness (which we didn’t on some of them). I am pretty confident to start this plan on Monday. Tomorrow will also be my first visit to the obstacle gym so I’m excited (and terrified) to go there.

One highlight of the week was when Dan was showing me my new routine and he was showing me some fancy barbell curl that I forget the name of. The dude on the bench next to us sees me curling the 40 lb barbell that Dan gave me (the 20 and 30 lb were both taken at the time) and literally said “that’s impressive”. Whether or not it is, I felt pretty badass. I’ve been flying pretty high off of that since Wednesday.

 

 

Fitness this week:

Saturday – Out and about all day

Sunday – Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

Monday – 45 min walk and yoga

Tuesday – 45 min walk and 10 min Arc Trainer

Wednesday – 30-45 min learning new weight routine and 30 min yoga

Thursday/Friday – shoveling out

 

Since it’s only appropriate with the 8-10 inches of the white stuff outside, here is the Red Hot Chili Peppers – Snow (Hey Oh). Everyone enjoy their weekend!

 

 

 

 

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