peace + love + cupcakes
Oh yeah, I also am trying to lose weight with Weight Watchers & hope to one day be able to call myself a runner.
You may have noticed that I the past two days I didn’t update on my exercise status. That’s because there wasn’t any. I was supposed to have walked 2.75 miles on Friday and done an hour of cardio yesterday to prepare for my 5k today. I was in a bad place mentally on Friday and after walking about a mile at a slow ass pace, I gave up and went home. I will talk more about that in a later post.
Yesterday I just didn’t feel like working out. I knew that I was going to do a 5k today and I knew that I had to do it. After 5 weeks of following the plan, I couldn’t just not do it. I got up early this morning and drove into SF. When I first started walking, I felt out of breath and my heart started beating really fast. I’ve never had that happen. I couldn’t catch my breath. I had to stop for a few minutes to try to control my breathing. After I calmed down some, I started walking again and started speeding up.
For as much as I hate the voice on my Runkeeper, I am glad that I was listening to her today. I have it set to give me a status every 5 minutes and when I saw that I was falling behind, I knew I needed to do something so that I would beat my previous time. So what did I do?
I started to jog.
Ok let’s stop for a minute and read that back because even I can’t believe it.
I jogged today. The only way I would ever jog/run is if I had someone or something chasing me. But today for some reason, I was inspired to jog. I looked around to see if anyone was around me and I jogged for a couple of seconds. Then I would walk. And then I would look around again and jog for a longer period of time. I couldn’t believe it. If I wasn’t so self conscious about people seeing me working out, I would have probably jogged sonner. I was not as fast as an out of shape Kenyan runner but I was jogging. Holy shit!
My goal was to beat my previous time of 57:50. My time today was 54:54 which is almost a 3 minute improvement in about 6 weeks. When I looked at my Runkeeper app I realized that last time I didn’t walk 3.1 miles since I took a short cut by accident. But since I was trying to beat that time in the exact route, I followed it and walked for 3.01 miles.
I am relieved that these 5 weeks paid off. I think if I hadn’t had that bit of a freak out at the beginning, I could’ve probably had a shorter time. But I am happy with the end result. I am going to do the 5k Your Way plan again for the next five weeks and my goal will be to improve my time for each walk. Since I used Runkeeper, I will be able to compare each day’s activity. I have a 5k that I am participating in on September 16th so I need to continue walking so I don’t lose my momentum. It will also help me reach my goal for September of working out 1,000 minutes.
Dude, I jogged today. Like whoa!
I f*cking did it yo! I beat my time by close to 3 minutes.
And I even jogged a bit. Yeah, you read that right. I jogged. Need some Gatorade now. More later…
After 5 weeks, I’m about to see if my hard work has paid Going to walk a 5K & hope my time has improved.
Check you later!
Started off September by working out & eating well. Let’s keep it going!
I’m somewhat nervous about this weekend. I’m going back to the 5k Do Life route at Golden Gate Park & I really hope to beat my time from the end of July.
W5D2 done. 554 burned.
Food wise I did so much better today.
Gonna eat dinner & watch Project Runway. Make it work!
Yesterday when I went to work out, I was feeling very motivated. Maybe I still had some endorphins left over from my tattoo. But as I started walking, I felt strong. When I finished & looked at my Runkeeper app to see my stats, I was shocked at my pace. What was it? A little bit of background first…
Back in September 2010 when I first started WW, there were times when my back would hurt from walking even a block. Now that I really think about it, it was a pretty sad way of living. I started out working out doing the 1 mile Walk Away the Pounds DVD. It’s 20 minutes of low impact cardio. At first, I couldn’t even finish it. As time went by, I was able to complete it without feeling like I was dying. Then I moved on to the 2 mile, then 3 and 4 mile. The 4 mile is basically one hour of cardio.
I started getting bored with the DVDs and since I lived so close to the Golden Gate Bridge, I decided to walk it. Whenever we had family, this was something that I always avoided. I always dropped them off and picked them up on the other side. I remember the first time I walked it it took me close to 30 minutes to walk a mile. It’s embarrassing to even say it but it’s true. I was so out of breath and my heart felt like it was beating so fast. I was constantly stopping. However, I started to walk more and it started to get easier. I wasn’t feeling so out of shape and a mile didn’t seem like that long of a distance.
I was looking at some of my Runkeeper history and back in April I was walking a 22 minute mile. So slow but for someone who walked the mile in 30 minutes that’s an improvement right?
Well, yesterday my app said that my pace was 17:01 miles per minute. Say what? Again to most this is slow but for me it’s a HUGE improvement. I couldn’t believe it. At first I thought my app was incorrect. I did pause the app during the walk to take a picture so I thought maybe that had something to do with it.
I went back today to the same location and walked trying to see if I could replicate yesterday’s results. My pace was 18 minutes today however I think I would’ve walked faster if it wasn’t for the heat. Where I walk is right next to the water so I had a jacket with me. After my walk today, I looked like a bright red sweaty tomato. I had to stop my brisk walk after 40 minutes because I felt like I was going to pass out. The heat was too much and I got to the point where my mouth was dry and I felt sick. But I did it and completed W5D1.
But that means that my app was right yesterday. In the right conditions, I can walk a 17 minute mile. For me, that’s something to celebrate. I decided that I would do the 5k Your Way plan again and try to beat my previous time from the past 5 weeks.
Whoa-oa-oa! I feel good, I knew that I would, now
I feel good, I knew that I would, now…
Weighed in this morning and I lost 3.4 pounds. Yeah! Total so far is 65.6 pounds. Woot woot!
W4D5 completed last night with a 40 minute brisk walk.
Schedule for week 5:
Day 1 - rest/cross training (will commit to an hour of cardio)
Day 2 - walk 40 continuous minutes
Day 3 - rest day but I will be doing at least 30 minutes of cardio
Day 3 - rest/cross training (will commit to an hour of cardio)
Day 4 - walk 2.75 miles
Day 5 - rest/cross training (will commit to an hour of cardio)
Day 6 - walk 5k and see if time has improved from previous 5k
Day 7 - rest day but I will be doing at least 30 minutes of cardio
I can’t believe that I am at the end of the last week of the 5k Your Way plan. I need to figure out what I am going to do next. Part me of thinks I should follow the 5k plan again and on the days that I have to walk I should try to beat my previous time. Or I thought of following this 10k walking plan although it is a bit ambitious.
What do you think? Should I work on my speed first or concentrate on endurance?
W4D4 done. 724 calories burned.
I didn’t get a chance to walk today. Why? That will be explained in the next post :)
I did manage to get 45 minutes of cardio (plus the mile walk this morning) so it was an ok day workout wise.
Total OT: Dangerous Minds is on CMT.
I had every intention of working out early this morning. I ended up staying up until 4am. I blame my Kindle. I got up at 8:30am & got ready to go on a brisk walk. I got a mile into it and I felt tired. I felt weak. I felt like I could barely make it back home. I felt like a zombie. Or what I imagine a zombie would feel like.
I told myself I could either finish my walking plan for the day or I could stop & try it again tonight. If I stopped, I would start over. I couldn’t use the distance that I walked this morning for my total tally of the day.
I basically took a 1 mile stroll this morning. That means I gotta work out tonight.
Lesson of the day: sleep is important.
Even though it’s already Saturday, I just finished my Friday workout. I slept in today and the day just got away from me. I came back from dropping my mom off at the airport & decided to do 45 minutes of cardio. That means W4D3 is done.
Tomorrow I’m getting up early and going on a brisk walk. Will be driving into San Francisco to have lunch with a friend and then getting a tattoo consultation (and maybe a tattoo). Talk about doing life :)