GrumpysMonkey

Hiring a trainer was one of the best things I’ve done for myself in 2010. Heck, I think it would rank among the top 100 good things I’ve ever done for myself.  It’s not because I’ve necessarily reached my fitness or health goals. If I’d done that, I’d be a size 4, have six pack abs, and be a sub 5:30 marathoner and a sub 2:30 half marathoner. I’m none of those things.

I’m still a 3 hour half-marathoner, and a 6:30 full marathoner. While I can fit into a pair of size 6 pants, I think I’m really about a size 8, which admittedly, is a lot better than the size 10/12 that I was a year ago. And while I can actually see some definition in my abs now, I think at best you could call it a soft 2 pack.

No, the reason I’m so thrilled with my decision to hire a trainer, is that I now regularly outdo my previous accomplishments, something that makes life fun, and interesting, and gives me a high like no other (well, to be honest, I’ve never been chemically high, so I can’t really make that claim, but it’s a good sentence, so let’s just go with it).

Some of the things I’ve been able to do:

• Hold plank for 4 minutes. When I started trying to do planks, I could go for maybe 30 seconds. Now? 4 minutes.
• Hold side planks for over a minute and move from side to front planks one armed. The first time I tried a side plank, I used the wall for support and fell down after 3 seconds. Now, I’m holding them for longer and incorporating movement.
• Kneel on a balance ball. When I first tried this exercise, it was hands and knees on a balance ball. The first time, my trainer had to hold the ball and even then I barely made 30 seconds. By the next week I was balancing on two knees and one hand for 2 minutes. Today, I straightened up and balanced on just my knees for one minute. I could have gone longer had my knees not been sweating!

Some of you probably look at that list and think “well, that’s ok” and others probably think “holy shit that’s hard”. I actually look at the list both ways. I’m proud of my accomplishments. I’m proud that I keep pushing myself harder, to work out longer, to lift heavier weights, and to go faster. But I also realize that there’s so much more my body can do. I’m at the age that I can actually picture a day when my body won’t be able to do these things, and while I hope it’s 30 or 40 years down the road, I can appreciate that it is coming. I’d love to be 65 years old and still running marathons, but there’s no guarantee that’ll happen. I do know that the more I do now, the better my chances are to be healthier and fitter longer.

Another accomplishment? I haven’t skipped a workout in at least 24 days. I build in a rest day every Sunday, but other than that, it’s been six days of working out every week for almost the whole month of August. (I have a hole in my training log for August 6th, so I might have skipped then, or I might just have forgotten to write it down).

I love my family. I love my friends. I love having houseguests and showing people around my city. I love introducing friends and family to our favorite restaurants, farmers markets, and sights.

But we’ve been hosting first my parents and then my friend M for a week now. We just dropped M back at the airport. So for the first time in a week, we’re sitting on the couch in our pjs, watching TV, and eating random vegetables and things out of the fridge (rather than an actual meal).

I’m going to sleep well tonight. And then in a week or two, I’ll be ready for house guests again.

Now that we’ve made it through the first half marathon of the year and we’re working on training for the second, we’re also spending a lot more time working out. We try to hit the gym three times a week and then run three days a week. We’re lifting heavier weights, doing more focused workouts, and in general, trying to raise our fitness a few levels.

But OMG am I tired. I’m starting to think that maybe we need to sleep more with all of this working out. I try to get 7.5 hours of sleep because that used to be what my body needed and if I tried to have more on a consistent basis, I’d end up with insomnia. But now I’m experimenting with 8 hours.

On the positive side, we’re seeing payoffs from the working out and other than midafternoon when I get totally exhausted on workout days, we’re feeling good and running is going well.

I ended up buying a pair of jeans yesterday that were TWO sizes smaller than the ones I’m currently wearing AND I bought a bikini for the first time ever. I still have a ways to go to meet my goals, but I know I’m getting there.

Next race is in October.

What a difference 24 hours can make. Today, although I am dehydrated, I feel otherwise totally normal. So this is what normal feels like. Nothing much to say here, other than I’m fine (I know both sets of parents read this blog and as parents are wont to do, they’d worry if nothing was posted in a few days after posting about a bad fever).

Though I’m still marveling about how yesterday’s fever robbed me of all memory of the feeling of normalcy. Glad to have it back today. I can’t wait to go for a run tomorrow now.

I’ve got something going on. I suspect it may be food poisoning, but it’s also possible it’s some sort of 24-48 hr flu. Fever, digestive crap. Nothing else. No sneezing, no sore throat, etc. Came on very suddenly, hoping it leaves the same way. I’ll be fine, I’m just temporarily miserable. It’s amazing how even the slightest fever can just sap all energy.

But what has struck me this time, more than any other illness I’ve ever had is the feeling that I’ll never be well again and that I’ve never been well before. This fever has apparently stolen my memory of what it was like to feel good, even though I know as recently as yesterday morning I was feeling great, had a great workout, etc. Tuesday I had a fantastic run, Monday I had a stellar core/strength workout. I just find it funny. I know that tomorrow (or worst case Saturday) when I’m back to normal, this sick feeling will be what’s a distant memory, but for now, feeling healthy is something I just can’t identify with at all.

At least overall I haven’t been sick in well over a year, if not two years, so I’ve still got a good track record going. Hopefully this will be the last illness for at least another 2-3 years.

It’s been a long year for us. Just long. We could use some good things to happen soon. Just sayin’. So when we found out that a friend/mentor was opening her own restaurant on Orcas Island, we decided that we had to take a trip. So on Thursday, we took one night and went to Orcas Island.

Orcas is one of the San Juan Islands. There are several, but honestly I don’t have time to go look up how many of them there actually are. Busy week ahead and I’ve got at least 3 blog posts to write on Cook Local. So for now, we’ll just say that Orcas is one of the islands, and it’s very pretty.

We’ll have a detailed post on Allium (the restaurant) over on Cook Local tomorrow or Tuesday, and I do hope you’ll read it. The dinner we had there was simply one of the best we’ve ever had. Here’s a slideshow of the photos we took and while you can view them within this blog post, I urge you to click over to Flickr (just click on any of the photos) to see the descriptions. Unfortunately I can’t see a way to show the descriptions in this slideshow on the blog. Otherwise you’ll just be looking at a lot of photos of food without knowing what the food even is.

More blogging soon, I hope. I really don’t mean to ignore this blog, I just don’t have the time any more.

If you are eating dinner in a group, and certain members of the group do not order alcohol (or anything to drink) and other members order multiple drinks (even if they are relatively inexpensive drinks), you do not split the bill evenly among the group.

There really is no good way for those who didn’t order alcohol to speak up in this situation either. Any sort of vocalization comes across as being cheap. Which, to be fair, is often what the non-alcohol drinkers are trying to do… save money. As one who is supremely concerned with saving money these days, I purposely didn’t drink tonight to save money. John did not drink either. But unfortunately, those for whom money isn’t a huge issue often don’t see this as a big deal. Granted, tonight the extra share only came to about $10, but for us, every $10 is important right now.

<sigh>  I should have had a drink.

This year, I’ve made a concerted effort to focus on fitness. I’ve been working with a trainer, we’ve been running a lot, and I’ve been doing a lot of little things like short easy exercises at my desk or on otherwise rest days to build up the muscles I need to support the running.

All of those efforts are actually starting to pay off. I was doing an abdominal exercise today where I had to spot myself in the mirror to make sure my form wasn’t out of whack and what I saw surprised me. I looked thin. I’m not saying I looked skinny, or that I don’t still need to lose 15 pounds, because that’s definitely not the case. I’ve still got a ways to go, but for one of the first times (there was one other time about 2 weeks ago), I felt thin. I felt like I was making progress and that all the hard work I’ve put in both at the gym and at home have really started to pay off.

We ran 16 miles last Sunday. If it weren’t for my two toes that are still very painful from blisters, I could have run another 5-10 miles yesterday. I’m recovering faster and better than I ever have before. There’s still a lot of hard work ahead, but this is going to be a great year for our running and I’m finally going to be able to buy those size 8 jeans.

It’s 1:30pm. I’ve just now managed to put shoes on for the first time today. (as opposed to flip flops). There’s a rite of passage that many runners go through. It’s not pretty, and I won’t really go into it other than to say that I’ve now experienced it three times and I’m sure it won’t be the last. But it makes it very hard to wear shoes.

But we ran 16 miles yesterday and did our first sub 3 half marathon distance pretty easily. Three or four more long runs and it’ll be time for the marathon.

It’s 50 days until John and I run our second marathon. We’re training hard, which of course takes a lot of time, so if we’ve been a bit flaky lately, or you don’t see us very much, that’s why. I’m working with a trainer at the gym on core strength, which has been amazing. It’s not cheap, and thank goodness for the Outlook book royalties which paid for the last three sessions I just booked, because we’re really trying to buckle down right now and save as much as we can.

I’ve also had to buy a second pair of VFFs. I’m wearing VFFs as my only shoes from now until the marathon (with short exceptions for nice dinners out or gardening) to strengthen my feet. Since you don’t wear VFFs with socks (or at least I don’t, some people can) and since I work out in them daily… they are a little… well… let’s just say they are less than fresh. I wash them at least once a week, but putting on damp shoes after a long workout is kind of icky. Outlook paid for that too actually.

We’re hoping to run 15-16 miles this weekend, and then we’re running in the Beat the Bridge race the week after. Then it’s an 18-20 mile run, a 5 mile run the next Sunday, and then ideally, a 22-23 mile run the weekend after. Along with all this running, we’ve got other workouts, I’ve got work, and we’ve got SIFF (the Seattle International Film Festival). We’re crazy. I know.