dfenton

This summer has been hot and miserable here in MD and life has certainly taken priority over my training goals. Now those things have settled down to a manageable level I looked at my calendar and realized that October is right around the corner!!! Considering in the month of October I have Run For Your Lives, Baltimore Half Marathon and Tough Mudder (all scheduled a week apart) I realized that I need to get my butt moving! So the next two Challenges my focus will be TOUCH MUDDER training!! Since that is the one race that will just be the icing on the cake of my overall transition into a healthier life. Main Quest – Complete Tough Mudder – October 19th Side Quests: 80% Paleo Diet Log 75 Miles Log 18 Body Weight Training sessions Life Quest: Pay $900 towards my consolidation loanMotivation: Looking good naked

It's a fun night where you get to look spiffy. Enjoy the bad dancing and just try to photo bomb as many people as possiable.

Okay so this is technically my second challage although I stopped posting the last two weeks of the last challange and never closed out my frist one. So here we go Challange 2 ACCEPTED! Goals: 1) Reach 160 pounds - Today I am 165.5 pounds but I've reached the point in my weight loss where every pound comes off really slowly so a pound a week is do able while still remaining challanging. 2) Track my food 7 days a week. This will help support goal 1 but I have become very lazy in tracking what I'm eating, especially when I decided I'm going to just eat and not care about what I'm eating. This is a habit I really want to break. Sub goal to this is tracking my drinking calories (from booze or soda's) seperatly so I can get an idea at how much my weekend drinking with friends really adds up too. 3) Beactive/workout at least one day out of every weekend. During the week I'm pretty good at working out or just moving (I have a pt job that requires me to walk and clean offices for 3 hours a night 3 days a week, and the other two days I'm either running or at the gym). The weekends though I feel like I become a lazy blob, which is the excat opposite of what I want to happen. So if I spend the day walking that counts but if it's mainly a low key weekend then I need to get some type of workout in. 4) Reduce my overall debt by $630.00. There you have it! Goals are set and my mind is back in the game.

Today for dinner I made Buffalo (meat) Corn Tortilla's spicy tacos A little cheese and tomatoes to top it off. So good. First time trying Buffalo meat and Corn Tortilla's (I'm a very picky eater) So happy with how they turned out.

You can seriously do a half marathon no problem, in fact most training programs only have you run up to 10 miles in your training sessions. The adrenaline of race day is was propels you through those last 3 miles! Great job!!

Sunday March 5th I completed the Fredrick Half Marathon in 2:29 which kicked my pervious PR of 2:36 ass! I still can’t believe that I hit a new PR with this race, not only is the course exhausting from the constant up and down, the main hills are all at the last half of the course. Also my boyfriend received a major pay raise at work so we celebrated a little to much Saturday night, I seriously only got about 1.5 – 2 hours of sleep. Which caused me to get a late start to my morning, so no breakfast and I barely made it in time for the start (I was one of the last people to cross the starting line). Then the wardrobe issues occurred, I bought new Dri-Fit pants and this was my first time trying them out, apparently they don’t stay up on their own until you start sweating so the first ½ mile of the race I was essentially holding my pants up. Then my new sunglasses, started cutting my nose L and my headphone broke. Despite all of this craziness I killed my PR and I am still on cloud 9.

Goal 1 COMPLETE – Sunday I finished the Frederick Half Marathon in 2:29:36!! I really had zero business running this fast, I was out for the count the rest of the day but the adrenaline of the day carried me over that finish line not only under my goal of sub 2:45 but also beat my pervious personal record by 7 minutes!! Goal 2 – I had a total deficit of 3,784 calories (that is my (BMR * 7 + calories burned) – Calories consumed over the past 7 days. This week I reached 164 and I am on track to still make my goal of 160. Saturday and Sunday I defiantly did not eat healthy but the half marathon defiantly saved me calorie wise. I feel great and when I do eat bad I really don’t enjoy fried foods anymore so that’s a plus. Goal 3 – This week my strength training was nonexistent, everything revolved around my half marathon. Goal 4 – Okay I had a bad week, when in the Sport Authority picking up my bib I broke down and bought a bunch of new workout gear, my intention is to pay off the card as soon as my first pt pay check comes in. We received a 20% coupon and there was a clearance sale going on so I couldn’t come back once I received the first check so I broke down bought the gear before I had the cash in my checking. Last week went really well I can’t express how happy I am to have made a new personal record for my half marathon time; Fredrick is a pretty tough race since the hills are all located in the second half of the course. This week I don’t foresee anything to crazy, I have a 5k Color Run on Saturday that should be a lot of fun, so I just need to find some time to strength train now that I don’t have another half marathon until October, (I have a 10 miler in June but my base is strong enough that I can shift my attention to strength vs running).

While yes BMI is to genertic and you shouldn't live or die by the number it's so great to know that you are no longer a obese statisctic any longer! Great job!!

Give yourself 2 days rest and really focus on the diet portion of what you're doing. Then when you workout again set your last time around as the goal and just give yourself a little more breathing time in between excersices. Great job on taking the first steps this is the hardest part! The results are so worth the effort though!

Oh I'm totally all over this one! Perfect week for me as I have a half marathon on Sunday

Week 2 Progress Report: Goal 1 – I ended up tweaking my knee while watching my friend’s dog, 30 minutes before I was going to complete my long run, so long run was off the table this week. I did complete a 4 mile run in 44 minutes even; including my warm up and cool down. Sunday is the big race day! Goal 2 – Overall I did a great job adding cheese into my diet and it has switched things up just enough to keep me interested in my weekly meals. Due to peer pressure and needing a break I did go off my diet Friday night – Sunday but I still counted my calories and this week I had a total deficit of 1,396 calories (that is my (BMR * 7 + calories burned) – Calories consumed over the past 7 days. This week I reached 165 and I am on track to still make my goal of 160. Goal 3 – While my only dedicated strength day was through pole, I have been periodically doing push-ups whenever I have some down time. While I have already been able to do 5 pushups without going to my knees they are not nearly as deep or as clean as I want them to be so I know I’m going to up my goal to 10 and work on making them good solid pushups. Goal 4 – Credit Cards have been put away and savings has stayed at the same level this entire week. This week I start my pt job, which will mess up my training but will also give me extra funds to not only avoid charging to my credit cards but will also help me pay those suckers down! This past week I took more break days then I planned to take, and I didn’t complete my long run (since I am very nervous about hurting my knees again) but that’s okay it’s in the past and I’m faced with a brand new week that holds its own challenges. Today is my first day at my new part time job; I’ll be cleaning offices at night Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday’s. It’s good money, easy work that keeps me on my feet instead of on the couch, and won’t interfere with my day job or my weekends. The challenges this will present are I have lost those nights for potential intense training days, but I’ll be walking and lifting for 3 hours so it’s defiantly burning more calories than just going home and watching TV. The other challenge will be making sure I have a filling dinner packed and ready to take to work, it has to be something that can be heated quickly as well because I have 30 minutes to change, eat and drive to the other building before I have to start working on my new job. Temptation to go to a drive through will defiantly be there. Also switching my stomach to having early dinner and not needing to snack all night will be a challenge. So goals for this week, make it through my first week of night work without running to taco bell after I get out of work, and let my body rest so that I am in top shape for my race on Sunday!

Thanks JediNickD for the support. I can pretty much knock out about 10 knee pushups with perfect form without to much wobbling. I can do 5 regular pushups but I can't get nearly as deep as I would like too. So my goal in the next 6 weeks is to make sure that my regular pushups are full pushups and not 3/4's pushups.

Okay Here I am finally posting my Progress Photos for this 6 week Challange: The first image is where I started right before the challange and the next one is where I am at today.

I will be checking out the Druid camp. Part of being well rounded is forcing yourself to do things that you may not like but in the end are good for you. So my challange is to do yoga for my strength training this week. It'll be good for me to stretch everything out and get in touch with my minds eye.

Week 1 Progress Report: Goal 1 – This week I was able to get two runs completed a 5 mile run and a 10 mile run both averaging a 12 minute mile. Although after each run I was pretty gassed. This is on target for my goal of a half marathon in under 2:45 since I would need to average a 12:30 mile pace to meet my goal. The test for this goal is coming up shortly because my half marathon is May 5th!! Goal 2 – This week I kept my diet pretty clean, and mostly Paleo (except for the weeks). I’ve decided that I am going to allow full fat cheeses back into my diet as I don’t have any lactose issues and I’ll be able to cut back on my dried cranberries (which have a little added sugar) by replacing them with cheese in my salads. Over all though while I’m switching to a less processed diet as well as avoiding wheat and legumes I’m still a calorie counter at heart, so the progress for this week was a total deficate of 3,626 calories (that is my (BMR * 7 + calories burned) – Calories consumed over the past 6 days (I started a day late to the challenge). So every all I’m on track to make my 160 goal. Goal 3 – I did not work on my push-ups this week. My only strength training this week turned out to be my pole class. My arm strength is really improving I was able to climb to the top and hold myself so that both my legs were off to the side of the pole and I was able to push my body out to exaggerate the movement. I never thought I would be that strong. My issue isn’t with the holding though it’s more of the range of motion while keeping the strength. I can hold easily but staying strong and moving from one position to another is tough for me. Goal 4 – Credit cards stayed away and I spent way less this weekend than I was planning. I do need to get an interview outfit this week but I have budgeted out so that I won’t be tempted to use those cards J This next week should be smooth sailing, I don't have any large social commitments to mess up my diet, although I am still craving Taco Bell I have no idea why but it's the one place that I keep obsessing over, and I even used my long run this week to allow myself the splurge. All in all this should be a good week to eat clean, work out 5 days and not have to many outside factors get in my way. I was a little bit of a slacker on my photo taking L I will post my before pictures from April 1st and my progress pictures from April 30th. I know this challenge started the 15th but I have just started to find my paleo/primal balance in April so I want to really track my progress this way.