I'm late!

It's not surprising that I am late on this post.  Only three posts into Wedding Wednesdays and I'm late.  I have had lots going on and I've also been under the weather.  Wah-wah-wah. 

This past weekend was full of parties and lots and lots of eating.  I did not exercise AT ALL and quite frankly, gave myself a free pass to eat whatever I wanted.  On Saturday, I threw a hula party for my daughter and her friends.  Clearly it was a ton of fun...

Hula Dancing is exercise, right?

There was pizza, macaroons, fruit and chocolate cake and I made sure to sample everything (several times).  Plus, that evening, Alex and I headed up to National Harbor to celebrate my 30th birthday with some of my friends.  We went to a dueling piano bar and ate bar food and indulged in some liquid calories.

I wonder why Julia never smiles normally in pics...

On Sunday, we went to the pool and went to the movies and saw Brave.  I am not afraid to admit that I had an entire box of mozzarella sticks while at the movies and did not share with anyone.  They were delicious.  It has been nearly a million years since I had mozzarella sticks and I forgot how delightful they are.

Anyway, despite the indulgences of the weekend, I am down to 182.0 lbs!  Now I just need to get over this nasty cold and start running again :)  Five pounds down!  The goal for this week is to exercise three times and hopefully break the 180 barrier.

Wedding Wednesday #2

This past weekend, I went down to South Carolina to visit my sister.  It's always a lot of fun going down there because there is always beach action involved.  I have been pretty lazy about the pics so now I will overload you.

I guess I should have taken my mom's camera and downloaded some pics from it, then maybe I would have pictures of myself to post.  Or maybe I should be saying you're welcome!

While I was in South Carolina, my dad and I managed to get out for a run one morning.  South Carolina is sooo much different than northern Virginia.  I have plenty of hill training when I run near my home but in South Carolina it's all flat and easy running.  We only went four miles though since my feet have been bothering me ever since the half marathon I ran a couple weeks ago.

This morning, I took it easy and went to a sunrise yoga session in celebration of the summer solstice.   It has been a long time since I last did yoga, but it was wonderful!  I really love yoga and should try to do it more often.  When I came home, I made myself a delicious breakfast.  I made some eggs and was looking for some veggies to throw in when I found a bag of chopped up zucchini, tomatoes and onions and decided to throw them in.  Once I tossed them in, I realized they also had slices of cucumber...

I was very concerned that I had ruined my breakfast but it actually wasn't that bad (read:  I ate every single bite).

Anyway, I have been tracking my calories (with more resolve than before) and I was pleasantly surprised this morning :)  I was very good and didn't peek at the scale all week.  This morning I weighed in at 184.6 pounds.  Almost five pounds.....Good Start!

Do you have to rely on others to include you in pictures or are you master of the FB shot?

Welcome to Wedding Wednesdays

You probably heard me say once or twice that I am getting married this year.  Even though I am trying to focus on being more active and making healthier choices in what I eat, I still know that I have a lot of weight to lose and will get smaller as time goes on.  With that in mind, I bought a wedding dress in a couple sizes smaller than I currently am....

With only 17 weeks left until the big day, I need to start getting SERIOUS!  I have no idea what that means yet but it's going to start with a workout bright and early tomorrow morning :) 

Each Wednesday I will check in with my progress towards the goal.  I have the horrible habit of weighing myself every day so I will cut it down to just Wednesdays to weigh myself.  I know it's not all about the number on the scale but as of right now, it's still a good indicator of moving in the right direction.  I will also keep you up to date on my some of my measurements too.

Starting Stats
 187 lbs
41.5" bust
41" waist
45.5" hips

On your mark.  Get set.  GO!

A for Effort??

Oh, the New Year Resolution.  How quickly you are made and even more quickly forgotten.   Since we are halfway into the year, I thought it would be a great time to revisit my goals and my lack of progress on them.

My 2012 goals (as of January 2012)

• Run, walk, and/or crawl 1000 miles (approximately 20 miles a week)
• Walk 100 miles with Julia (approximately 2 miles a week)
• Get married!
• Run a half marathon under 2:22:00
• Bring my bowling average up to 120 (haha, baby steps)
• Prepare meatless dinners on Mondays
• Continue to decrease body fat (down to 22%)
• Stay positive by writing in five things I am thankful for every day

So let's take a look...For the first half of 2012, I have run 140 miles.  That leaves me with 29 weeks to run 860 miles.  It's only thirty miles a week or 4.3 miles a day :)  Well geez, if I wasn't having issues with running twenty miles a week then thirty should be cake : /  Julia and I are at ten miles for our goal of 100.  It's probably not as far as we should be but I think this goal is still manageable. 

Get married?  Still in the works...130 days left to go....

haha, I love these

Half marathon under 2:22:00?  CHECK!

My bowling average sadly did not improve much and in fact, I'm not even sure what it was when the league ended.  My best guess would be somewhere near 114.  Oh well.



What is that girl doing?

Meatless Mondays can be filed away under failed goals, however, it's because I have not been successful in this goal that I am still getting married in October.  Let's face it, Alex is a strict carnivore.  There will be no revision of this goal, it will simply be tossed out.

Body fat down to 22%  Fail.  I'm pretty sure being on track for running 1000 miles in a year would have helped me achieve this goal as well.  Did I mention that I still have a wedding dress that doesn't fit?  Yep.

Writing my five things a day that I am grateful for has been semi-successful.  I will admit that it doesn't happen every day but I have certainly tried.  I do love the idea of focusing on the good in life rather than the negative.  It's tough to do but it's worth the effort.

I'm going to adjust my running goal to 500 miles for the year so I will have to run 17.3 miles a week for the rest of the year.  I'm also going to keep writing five things that I am thankful for each day.  The goal I would like to add is fitting into my wedding dress....

What goals have you accomplished so far this year?

Karma Got Me

So it really served me right when I showed up in my purple shirt hoping to blend in with the Team in Training runners....

And everyone else at the run was wearing orange for Team Challenge.

They were not running for Team in Training

Hi, Team Challenge!  I see you like to wear orange shirts...

Instead of blending in with the masses of purple that I expected to see, I stood out like a sore thumb in the sea of orange that ruled this race.  I have to admit that this serves me right for pretending to be a part of a charitable group in hopes of hearing a few people cheering me on. 

Despite my foiled wardrobe plan, I had a really great race.....once the race actually started....  Apparently there were transportation problems with shuttles from the hotels so the race actually started about 40 minutes late.  I'm pretty surprised that it started so late since last year they had the same problem.  I guess the race organizers didn't learn anything from their inaugural race and I wouldn't hold my breath for the problem being solved next year either.

Once we actually started running, the run felt really good.  My dad and I ran the first two miles together and then I told him he could go ahead without me.  The weather was a perfect fifty something degrees with an occasional breeze.  The course also had a significant portion that was shaded with trees, which made the run even more enjoyable. 

Me and My Favorite Running Partner

I finished the race in 2:17:04 chip time, which would have been faster had I known that the race was going to start 40 minutes late because I would have used the port-o-potty one last time and would have eliminated the bathroom break at mile two.  I paused my Garmin for the potty break and my finish time was 2:15:03.  I'm pretty sure that's frowned upon in the running community but I don't care.  In case you don't remember, my goal for this race was 2:22:00 so I beat that time by a five minutes!

I'm pretty proud of myself!  In comparison to my first half marathon time of 3:22:27, I have improved by over an hour :)  To top of my elation, I got some pretty nice finishers gifts as well.

Riedell Wine Glass.  Fancy!

I love getting a technical shirt instead of the regular cotton ones but I have to admit, this one is pretty ugly.  What $100 for this shirt.  I also really like the medal that we received.  It is a bottle stopper AND has a corkscrew on it!!  My one complaint is the medal weighed about fifty pounds and while walking around with my nice wine glass, it hit the glass once or twice and I was pretty sure the glass was done for.  Thankfully, the glass held up to the beating but maybe the race organizers should rethink that combo.

What has been your favorite race swag?