Saturday, June 30, 2012

Long Time No See

I apologize for my absence lately! In my last post I told you that I was signed up to run my first 5k!
Well the Saturday before Father’s Day I got to Shelby Farms an hour before race-time and was so nervous I wasn’t sure if I would keep my breakfast down. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden my nerves just kicked into overdrive about not finishing the race.
I was pretty well-prepared for my first 5k. I used the 5k Runner (free) app on my iphone along the “mapmyrun” app to keep track of my workouts. I started using the app toward the end of March and finished the training about 2 weeks before the Civitan 5k. I think I felt a little extra pressure to finish and do well having announced it to my whole family that I was doing this and of course mentioning it here on the blog.
There are several reasons why I set out to run a 5k. First of all, after going to a few dr. apts. About my high cholesterol my doc recommended that I lose some weight. The newlywed fifteen nine had officially kicked in post honeymoon. Instead of taking medicine for my high-cholesterol my doctor recommended that I change up my diet, drop coke, and start exercising. I insisted that there was no way I could go without coke until after graduate school exams were over. I also had zero time left in the day to exercise working 40hours/week and taking 12 hours of graduate level course-work.
So, the first week after finals while grocery shopping, what did I do? Ha, I put coke in the shopping cart! Of course Brian silently removed it and replaced it with a pack of Coke Zero and so the change began. Coke Zero is seriously the only diet drink product that has been able to get me off my traditional coke! I used to drink seriously at least 3-4 of those per day in graduate school and I was much worse during high school, drinking about a 2 liter a day (no exaggeration there). I NEVER drank water! Now I try and drink 2-3 of my camelback water bottles/day. I’m down to one coke zero and one cup of coffee/day. My challenge now is to only have one or the other per day and eventually eliminate the coke zero.
So after making that grand change, my sister-in-law was hosting a 5k for her church (Miles for Mercy 5k). The week of this race is the week I started my 5k training. I figured if I could walk that whole thing then I could run it! 3.1 miles isn’t that long… right?
The first few weeks of training were pretty rough… and I was wondering why I was making myself do this…After about 3 weeks, I began to look forward to jogging in the afternoon. I probably did not start losing actual pounds until about 5-6 weeks into training. This was the most frustrating part for me. I was working so hard and not losing a single pound! I could tell things were fitting me differently… but my doctor recommended that I lose about 17 pounds! Something wasn’t working! Then miraculously the weight started coming off! As of today I think I have lost 15 pounds! It’s not so obvious that I have lost that much weight since I’m so tall but that’s ok.  Only a few people have even noticed I lost weight (a few co-workers and of course my husband). But that’s ok, I just can’t wait to go back to the doctor in October and have them weigh me and re-check my cholesterol!
So, back to the Civitan 5k. My cousin’s wife, Carrie was also training for a 5k (she used the couch to 5k app). We finished the training about a week apart and decided to run our first race together. We were both so proud to have finished our first race. I think a few of our family members didn’t think we would really finish, but we did it! I set a goal for myself to complete the 5k in 38 minutes or less. I finished it in 35 minutes! I was so proud of myself! My GPS did say I actually went 3.33 miles… but I think that was from weaving around the crowd once we hit the narrow trail at Shelby Farms.
The average time for female participants was just over 42 minutes. For my age group I placed 8 out of 13 runners. There were 161 female runners and I came in at #79. So I would say I’m pretty average and I’m pretty happy about that!

Another goal I set for myself was to weigh exactly what I weighed on my wedding day! I am only 3 pounds away from that weight and I’m super pumped! I have slacked a little bit on my training since I ran my 5k… I had a summer cold last week that seriously left me completely out of commission to do any exercise! But I ran this morning for the first time in 13 days and I’m sore but so happy to get back into it! Hopefully an upcoming vacation won’t completely derail my progress so far!

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