Impatience

Do you believe that your (future or otherwise) children will haunt you in similar ways that you drove your parents mad? Adam and I talk about that sometimes. I am determined that my children are going to be so demanding and impatient because that is exactly how I am.

As I previously mentioned, we used CC rewards on two different cards to get gift cards. Adam's Sports Authority is already here and it's an actual gift card so he can have merchandise in hand as soon as he's willing to go there. My amazon card? NOT HERE YET. I'm going insane. I've needed a heart rate monitor for about a year or so now but I'm too cheap. I also will have to wait for shipping and as I mentioned, I'm too cheap to do anything but the free super saver shipping that takes twice as long.

Ok, rant off.

Lately, I've been finding that I'll glance down at my watch now and then during workouts (even, gasp, yoga, so much for the mental benefits). I imagine that I was just getting bored with my routine and classes and needed a new challenge or two. Hot yoga has been one of them but at the hot yoga studio I signed up for an introductory set of private lessons on the Pilates reformer machines so I can take group classes if I want. They are a little more expensive but we save a lot of money by using the YMCA as our private gym so I figure I can handle it.

When my hour was over, I could have cried. I definitely checked to make sure that she wasn't gypping me out of some time because it felt that fast. I don't think I've ever had a 1:1 workout/instructor ratio before and HOLY MOLY I cannot wait for June and personal training sessions. It was the best ever! And the reformer machines? Awesome, awesome, awesome!

Credit Card Rewards

We did some redeeming of our credit card rewards last week and believe me, it was hard to convince the old man around here that we should but I prevailed.

He obviously needs to replace his entire golf club set, golf bag and the oodles of things he kept in said golf bag (a nice windbreaker pullover, etc.). So I used my card rewards to get him a gift card to Sports Authority. Combining that with the $25 off of $100 purchase coupons they come out with frequently, he'll be able to get a lot for a little.

We also got an amazon.com gift card from our joint card rewards because that is the best price that I've seen for the Polar F6 heart rate monitor, which is what I have decided I need for my latest fitness purchase. I am so impatiently waiting for that stupid certificate to get here so I can buy it. Which brings up a huge pet peeve... it's a gift certificate for amazon.com, which basically means it's going to come with a little code that I can enter on their website. Why do they feel the need to waste the postage (and my time) to mail that to me? An email wouldn't have worked? Grr.

At any rate, I'll be rocking this on my wrist soon enough and I am SO intrigued to see how many calories I'm burning.

P.S. There will be some money left on the amazon card so Adam is replacing his prized hokie bird golf club cover. And I am still royally pissed at the dude who stole the clubs.

25 Days

We got an email yesterday from Avon Walk... only 25 days until it's here! I'm excited but I'm not going to lie, a little freaked out.

I'm a researcher, I looked up and had an idea of the marathon course about six months before the race. The Avon Walk is slightly more, well, loose in their planning. I don't think they have the actual course decided yet. I don't even know where it starts or ends. They keep saying that they will send a detailed email as the walk gets closer but I have this innate need to have a better understanding of what I'm up against. I must continue to suppress my Type A obsessions and get over it.

In other related news, I had my serious legs class with Mondale yesterday for the first time in three weeks and oh the pain!! I know I am making serious strides but I still have a long way to go. I would just like to be able to do the three minutes of jumping jacks with 8 lb dumbells!!!

Competition and Challenges

I've decided that there is no way I'd ever be able to go to the personal trainer alone. Not that I'm afraid of working out by myself, it's purely from a competitive perspective. I have an innate need for someone else to compare myself to and work towards being better than. Is that a bad thing? Depending on circumstance, I suppose, but it also is extremely motivating! I hope that we'll be able to start personal training in June after my Avon Walk is over. Because I want to go with Adam to have someone to "compete" against (and presumably discover that I am not as strong as a man and never will be), we'll be paying for two personal training sessions at once. Awesome for the body and not for the wallet.

I have so many stupid wants (a body bugg, thanks to Biggest Loser; new running shoes; new summer clothing and shoes) that I need to quit thinking about and researching to death so I'm going to challenge myself by doing a month of not buying anything (within reason).

For me this is going to mean:

-only groceries will be purchased
-no alcoholic beverages purchased (making an exception when we have company in town in May)
-no takeout/to go food, pizza-I will miss you
-no clothes, shoes, etc.
-minimal to no purchases earmarked for the wedding

It's only until May 26th but it's going to be insanely mega-hard to do! If I can manage, I think I will definitely have saved enough for quite a few of those personal training sessions!

(the reason why I say minimal purchases for the wedding is because we might have to start looking at plane tickets and jump on them if the fares are inexpensive!)

Gym, Tan, Laundry

Shout out to Jersey Shore (which I do not watch and have never seen, actually)!

GYM: I've been really enjoying my renaissance at the gym. After a couple of lazy weeks at the beginning of March, I've been back and really hitting it. I worked out with Adam today and it was nice to see how far I've come in a relatively short time! We were talking on the way home and I think my ultimate goal is just to be always able to say, "I'm in the best shape of my life!". I thought I was after the marathon, but I know I am in WAY better condition now. If I did marathon training again this summer, I probably could shave about 45 minutes off last year's time. We ran into my favorite gym instructor (and hopefully soon to be personal trainer), Mondale, and I had a brief discussion with him about protein powders. I'm just concerned about my protein intake, or lack thereof, with my aggressive workout schedule. He recommended a powder that I can put in my green monster smoothies and we got some after our workout. I felt like such a mega-tool walking down the street with a huge jug of protein stuff. I promise, I'm not becoming a meathead though!

TAN: We actually had nice weather this week and I did a ton of Avon Walk training outside. Which is awesome, except for the awesome tan that I end up with. Last year I had a total farmers tan and watch tan lines because of all my running on the lakeshore path and it seems I'm doomed for that fate again. Plus, when I run, I find my legs never get tanned to match my arms. I'm not going to lie, I was about 10 seconds away from walking into a tanning salon but for some reason, I didn't want to. I ended up at Walgreen's instead and accidentally bought real self-tanner instead of that tanning lotion that I've used in the past. SELF TANNER IS SCARY. Then I started having all these crazy thoughts about how I was actually dying my skin with chemicals and how could that be any worse than fake'n'baking? I'm in a wedding next weekend in a strapless dress so I guess I'll keep on with the self-tanner and see what happens. It's pretty funny because it makes me insanely glittery when I put it on!

LAUNDRY: I have extra laundry to do this week because we are finally PACKING AWAY OUR WINTER CLOTHES! So happy and thankful for that! There were days that I thought we'd never get here but it is so glorious to sit in the living room with all the windows open. I love it! The really craptastic part is that we keep the off-season clothes in our storage locker in the basement. We went downstairs to retrieve our summer stuff and discovered our lock had been cut and Adam's golf clubs (hopefully that's all) were stolen. I WAS SO MAD because we are 99% sure it was a former tenant that came back to vandalize and burglarize after he was booted out of his property by the bank. What a jerk!

WORK OUT!

I discovered recently that I am just not a huge fan of being a "gym rat". Meaning that I am not one of those awesome people that can go and spend 30 minutes on the treadmill/elliptical, 30 minutes on the bike, 30 minutes on the weight machines and then doing public crunches on the mat or with the ball (the public crunches part is my personal nightmare, for some reason I just feel like a total freak). If I had a dedicated gym buddy, all of that might be tolerable but still not my idea of fun. Luckily, at the Y we have a really great group class schedule, which was one of the reasons that I wanted to join.

So, I made a commitment to myself, which was facilitated by my recent rental of my own personal locker at the gym, to start going to more classes. Like I mentioned last week, my latest obsession is yoga but I am trying to mix it up a little more.

This is an example of how my "perfect" week at the gym would play out:

Monday: Ultimate Toning, followed by Yoga
Tuesday: my usual Ultimate Power (aka destroying myself) with Mondale, followed by Abs
Wednesday: Vinyassa Yoga, followed by Mat Pilates
Thursday: Off Day
Friday: a few minutes on the bike, followed by Hatha Yoga (because Adam is taking classes for his big test on Friday nights)
Saturday: Off Day
Sunday: Turbo Kick, followed by Yoga

I'll probably lose some of the classes as warmer weather rolls in. I really miss my jam sessions with my iPod on the Lakeshore path. And I'll probably switch to a Spin class closer to the summer to get my booty ready to be in the saddle for the triathlon in August. Last week, I missed a couple of those classes but I know that my hard work at the gym helped me with my big WW weight loss.

(and before you start to think that is a pretty ambitious schedule, it is, but you have to remember my body was used to doing about 26 miles a week and yoga is seriously such an awesome workout that you don't even feel like you're working out, until you wake up the next morning and realize you're sore)

WW and Biggest Loser Tuesday...

I am so happy that Biggest Loser is back on, although none of the contestants have so far grabbed my heartstrings the way Abby did or played the game to annoy like Tracey did. They lost mad weight last week though!

On my own weight loss (and I promise, I am faithfully documenting in pictures every week, I'm just not at a point where I'd like to show them yet), things are still going ok, just slowing down a bit. Which is totally normal for this point. Christmas was harder than I thought it was going be and I broke down more than I wanted to and being sick helped in the weight loss efforts but not in the "right" way. I know I was losing lots of muscle weight instead of fat weight. I got totally rocked at my Tuesday class at the gym today :(

Weekends are tough when it comes to sticking to "the plan" but I do really well on most weekday by making and packing lunches and cooking point friendly dinners. I thought I had found an illusive 1 Point oatmeal and today I re-did the math and found out that each packet is actually 3 Points, which really made me sad since I bought two boxes last week. Blast! So even though the eating continues to be a big battle for me, I know I'm making progress and making better choices at restaurants. Most of all, I am feeling better about myself every time I get dressed and clothing fits!

I went to a yoga class yesterday and I seriously cannot recommend it enough. I'm usually so exhausted on Wednesdays but I am bound and determined to go to class tomorrow evening just because it was so relaxing. My upper body is sore and there were a couple of things that I wasn't able to do as well as I wanted but overall, the class felt so good and was an hour well spent. I hadn't been to yoga in years and I don't remember it being as great as yesterday. So, I think I'll be a yogi for the time being, at least until the weather is nice enough for outdoor activities. If you go to a gym that offers it, consider going.

Muffin Top

I had one of those horrifying lightbulb moments this weekend. And by one of those moments, I mean several. Starting with eating that second plate of almost exclusively carbs on Thanksgiving and ending with buying jeans in what is an unholy size yesterday. The new jeans were primarily because I looked in the mirror on Saturday night while putting on makeup and since I wasn't doing the "traditional full-length mirror pose" of sucking in to look good, I saw it. I had/have a HUGE MUFFIN TOP! and I was in jeans that I thought fit me pretty well when I was in one of my fatter phases about 2 years ago. As much as I'd like to attempt to justify this, I don't really believe that jeans slowly shrink over time of washing and drying them. I think, in fact, that I have actually been expanding over time. OH and I broke the belt loop on another pair of jeans on Friday when I was yanking them over my slightly larger bum (maybe because of all those muscles?) and the new muffin top. I'm having some wardrobe malfunctions that are just not acceptable, ok?

Generally, I try to eat healthy but I know my portion sizes need work. Well, portion sizes and the fact that I routinely eat a couple (or few) meals a week at bars. And while bar food may be the most wonderful food taste-wise, it's generally fried and has little to no nutritional value. Ug. Luckily, I like a few vegtables and currently have a mega-obsession with Subway's veggie delite. I know that if I make a few swaps, I can work on this muffin top problem. The problem is that I feel like I am constantly fighting this battle with myself of about 15 flex pounds that are constantly creeping back on. My biggest problem is that the easiest way for me to lose weight is to never work out and just not eat very much which is an unhealthy and not very successful for the long term way to lose weight. SO... I blogged about it weeks ago and after seeing myself in that mirror I realize that I must take action and that action is going to be Weight Watchers.

It sucks but I feel like I need a way to better control my weight. I enjoy going to the gym and working out, I just don't enjoy the way that I constantly feel starvation when I do. And it's unhealthy to yo-yo about with 15 lbs. I would like to lose them and begin to believe that they are gone forever. So, here's your chance to hold me to it. I want to do this and I want to feel like I gave it a good effort and really enjoy looking back at the upcoming onslaught of wedding year photos. And I got a new digital camera as an early birthday present so I'd like to feel really good about the way I look in the new pictures.

My own personal Jillian Michaels

I bought the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred DVD on sale from Amazon about a month ago and have yet to use it, although I have lots of fabulous excuses like the marathon, my IT band, post-marathon recovery, etc. But this week, I seriously can't use it. I have met the male version of Jillian and his name is Mondale. And my body is going to need about a week to recover from his beatdown.

Let me set the scene for you. After a lengthy process (about six months) of gym searching (but who needs a gym in Chicago's summer?), we finally settled on the YMCA. I was leaning that way after reading lots about it on yelp.com and it's only about a 10 minute walk from here. I also read about a particular class instructor, Mondale, and how awesome his classes were. Now, it took me a long time to attend the first one. There is something a tiny bit intimidating about group exercise and I'm not sure I've ever been to a class without a friend. I was acutely feeling the loss of having gym buddies, which never affected me at our old gym because I always went with either Adam, his brother, or at a completely off-peak time when there were only 2 or 3 other people there. The Y, not so much, there are always quite a few people milling around.

I finally bite the bullet and quit being a little pansy and decide that my first group class would be Mondale's Ultimate Toning for Lower Body. I figure I just ran a marathon so my lower body is in pretty good shape. On the way to the aerobics studio, I see this guy trainer in the hallway yelling at a woman who was relatively fit. It was eerily similar to a scene from the Biggest Loser. This dude was kicking her ass and she was saying things like, "No, I can't do it any more!" and getting really whiny. It reminded me of Jillian and Amanda's dramatic treadmill scene and I even told him that he was going all Jillian Michaels on her and he just laughed at me. Probably because he saw me going upstairs to the studio and knew the pain I was about to face.

I get to the studio like a good little student 15 minutes before class. No one was there yet so I just sat down with my water bottle (THANK GOODNESS I HAD THAT!) on the floor and waited. The first lady walks in, takes one look at me, and says, "Oh honey, is this your first time? You're going to need some equipment." We went all around the room grabbing a step aerobics thing, a couple sets of free dumbbells, a big barbell and a padded weighted bar. Maybe that was it, frankly, I can't remember all the stuff we got our butts kicked with. The room fills up and we wait for Mondale.

Turns out he's the Jillian Michaels I saw beating down the woman in the hallway. Nice. He turns on the music and we start by doing about 500 lunges. My ass was kicked by just that and then he wanted us to do another 10 million lunges only with the various weights and using the stepper. My legs were shaking so bad and Mondale would come over and yell various things at me such as, "Rookie, get your legs UP" or "LOWER, LOWER, bend your knee". I'm about 99% sure (and I can say this now that it's the day after and I'm sorer than after the marathon) that I've never used about half of the muscles that I worked yesterday. When Adam was asking me last night about what we did, I really couldn't remember all the things. I just remembered that they hurt. The 45 minutes of class are like a black hole in my memory, probably because my brain couldn't be bothered to use it's memory function while it was concentrating on mere survival.

I've never felt like I was going to puke or pass out during a workout before. At one point, I had to sit down and drink some water because I just couldn't do it. WHAT? I just ran a marathon! I thought, despite my injury, that I was in pretty decent shape! Apparently not. As the 45 minutes of Lower Body wore on, people started dropping like flies. A couple of people packed it in and left. No one, not even the skinny badasses, could finish the work out completely. It was truly insane. I was completely embarrassed of my performance or lack thereof. I can't wait to redeem myself next week. My original plan was to go to his early a.m. class tomorrow but there's no way. I'll be lucky if I can walk to the gym tomorrow.

I am proud of the fact that I stayed the whole time and didn't die. I even stayed for his ab workout afterward but I kinda halfassed it because my legs were like jello. I have a LOT of work to do. The best thing was that all the regular girls in the class (and there were no men in the lower body class, WIMPS!) said that if I keep going, I'll get results really quick. It was nice too because I felt a little bit of camaraderie with my classmates. Maybe I'll end up with some gym buddies after all!

I've been a bad, bad girl...

The Wii Fit officially hates me. I haven't done a weigh-in in over 10 days. My mysterious illness and a visit from Dad and Mikey have seriously thrown my routine. After this weekend, I think I also need detox both from alcohol and bad food. My stomach is very angry with me.

I have to get back on the fitness train now because I have the Soldier Field 10 miler this weekend. I can't wait, you get to finish on the field that the Bears play on and have your name in lights on the jumbotron. They also promise nice Adidas shirts.

As soon as I get pictures ready, I will post about the Cubs game we went to on Saturday. It was awesome, the Cubbies won and the weather was absolutely perfect. I love Wrigley.

Chicago has officially given birth to spring and soon we'll be into full-force summer. It's a blast to walk down the street because nearly every bar and restaurant is open and you can sit in the window and people watch. I love it because it's as nice as eating outside but you also get that fun bar feel and can watch sports games on TV.

After my friend Tracee gets married the first weekend in June, I'm going to officially start a marathon training program. I'm still in the research phase but I will probably end up doing one from Runner's World. That will be the 16 week mark until my race!! YIKES!! :) I am also going to get back into my tracking on Gyminee. I've been very neglectful lately but I figure you have to have the "bad" weeks now and then to give yourself something to work toward. I hope everyone had just as much fun on their weekend as I did!

My new favorite website

I think I previously mentioned it but I have had some relatively inexplicable weight gain lately. As far as I can tell, it seems like I've increased my caloric intake to offset my constant working out. Or possibly because I have a fabulous boyfriend and I'm letting myself go? :)

I don't feel like my eating habits have changed all that much, in fact I eat infinitely better than I ever did in college and high school, but I do have some work to do to get back into some of my favorite summer clothes. Anyway, one of my flying partners recommended this cool website, www.gyminee.com . I was already keeping a makeshift food journal but Gyminee gives you the USDA nutrition info and lots of people have added restaurant and grocery store brand food items. It makes it really easy for me to see what's going into my body every day. You can also track your workouts and weight progression on Gyminee. If you join, let me know and we can be "gym buddies", haha. I need people to yell at me when I have days like Friday (lunch: nachos at Q'Doba, dinner: bleu cheeseburger at a bar, not very nutritionally sound!).