peace + love + cupcakes

That's what life should be all about...

Oh yeah, I also am trying to lose weight with Weight Watchers & hope to one day be able to call myself a runner.

The Cool Kids

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

This is gonna be a long post so get some tea & get comfortable :)

If you would’ve told me that I would be walking 8 consecutive miles in one day I would’ve laughed. I never thought that I would have the endurance for it. But today I did it. It was hard and there were several times when I just wanted to stop but I kept on going. Some random tidbits about my walk today:

I am so glad that I got my Race Epic shirt this week. It’s the only long sleeve shirt that I have that fits & I wore it. It was freezing walking on the Golden Gate Bridge and that shirt kept me warm.
GU’s Blueberry Pomegranate Roctane gel is disgusting. However, GU’s Chocolate Outrage is so freaking good.
Mile 4 was gruesome. I had a pain in my lower back and it made it a difficult mile.
Mile 7 was the hardest mentally. I kept doubting whether or not I would finish my workout today.
This is just my experience but male runners are much friendlier than female runners. I try to make eye contact with anyone that I pass and men just seemed to be more friendly.

I had set Runkeeper to track my pace at 18 minutes per mile. According to the training guide I am following, today’s walk was supposed to be “continuous comfortable walking” and I was supposed to walk “somewhat faster.”

In total this week, I walked 18.2 miles which is the most I’ve ever walked in a week. It’s incredible to me that week after week I keep upping my mileage. My friend said it best to me this Friday when she said “you are becoming this whole different person” and she is right. I am not the same person I was 6 months ago. I am more determined and a bit more fearless. I also gotta give props to Tim. Check out his blog if you don’t follow him. He’s about to hit his goal weight this week and he trained with me on this walk even though he lives across the pond. He decided to show me up by walking 10.5 miles & getting chased by a horse. Definitely check him out!

One of our tasks for this week’s Do Life Challenge was to do two random acts of kindness. I decided to do the following:

I know how much I have gotten out of the fitblr community & healthy living blogs. I get support from them and the people who I follow & who follow me, who know exactly what I am going through because they’ve been there. It’s a great group of people who have the same goal in mind. What I decided to do was to reach out to those people who I follow on Tumblr who haven’t posted in a more than 3 weeks. I sent out a message to 12 of them reaching out. Perhaps they have been struggling with their journey or been to busy to update. But I wanted to let them know that I was here to support them.
I love, love, love Girl Scout cookies. But before I started on Weight Watchers I could probably eat a whole box of Thin Mints in a day. My friend’s daughter is a girl scout & I wanted to support her efforts but didn’t want the temptation. So…. I ended up ordering a couple of boxes and when my friend’s daughter gets them, she will be donating them to a women’s shelter near her house.

It’s not often that I look forward to weigh in but I stayed on tracked this week and worked hard at the gym so I am anxious to see how much I lost. One thing I need to improve on is my water intake. I had set a goal of drinking 5 gallons this week and I am about a gallon short. I still drank more water than I have in the past few weeks so that’s a win for me.

Overall, I think I did my best this week. I look forward to the challenges that next week brings & I am ready to take them on.