Half marathon - check!

Susan and I completed the Kirkland Mother's Day half marathon, and all went better than expected!  I had heard the hills on this half were killer, so I was expecting to be really hurting.  I did do a fair amount of hill training and for the most part I didn't mind them too much.  I walked the really steep ones, and the rest were a nice rolling up and down.

I had planned to come in around 3 hours, and beat that at 2:48.  I think that's not half bad for my first half!  I could have pushed harder, but I didn't want to risk injury or even just hobbling around sore for days.  As it was, I felt pretty wiped the rest of the day, and somewhat sore the day after.

Some notable things:

•  I was very nauseous for the rest of the day.  This has never happened to me after a run before.  Maybe it was dehydration?  I drank a cup at every water stop, maybe I need to carry some too.  Will definitely research this more if I ever sign up for another half.
• Towards the end I decided to try the Gu gel shot.  It was disgusting and a sticky mess, blech!!!  Why did I do that for the first time on a race?!  From now on I'm definitely sticking with the blocks.  They are actually pretty tasty.  Maybe the gel had something to do with the nausea.
• Running sometimes takes me to a weird emotional place.  I kept thinking about a friend from my days at UW.  She died a few years back, complications from anorexia I believe.  We lost touch long before that, and I regret not keeping in contact with her.  I choked up a bit thinking about how I missed her.
• I made a pit stop at mile 10 and my energy dropped off a cliff after that.  I knew I could finish the next 3 miles but it became much more of a slog after that point.
• The last mile or so it hurt just as much to walk as it did to run, so that gave me a little motivation to rock it out till the end.
• It was pretty quiet at the finish line.  I kept imagining all the cheering and celebration that would be going on.  I was somewhere in the last 1/6th of runners, so I guess they'd all packed up and left by then.
• Training is over, yay!!! At times training was really cool and it was gratifying to be able to go on longer runs and feel great, and other times it felt like a huge burden.
• Now that I have run the longest distance I ever care to, I want to spend some time focusing on speed.  For most of my runs I just take a leisurely pace and enjoy it.  I think it would do me some good to try track workouts or intervals and see what I can accomplish.

Game over!

My first round of Game On ended this last Monday.  Our team didn't win, so I'm out $100.  I'm ok with that though, I lost 5 pounds and have finally gotten back on the calorie counting bandwagon, which I know works well for me to lose weight.  That's more than enough to count it as a win in my book!  I also found a few recipes for making healthy food ahead of time.  Why have I not done this before?!  Having a bunch of cooked chicken breasts and sweet potatoes doesn't really take that much prep time, but it's very versatile for cooking a quick weeknight dinner, or throwing together a work lunch.  In general, I'm fine eating the same thing over and over.  As long as I'm not hungry, it's all good!

A new round is starting next Monday, and this time there's a lot more people from work playing, so it would definitely make things more interesting.  I want to join, but need to think about a fitness challenge.  Each week you get a 20% bonus for losing 1% of your body weight, which for me is very challenging.  However, if you are close to goal weight you can opt to do a fitness challenge instead.  Since I'm signed up for doing the Mother's Day half marathon and I should be on week 2 of my training plan, but have not really been following it, maybe my challenge should be to do all the training runs.  I am only hesitant though because I don't want to set myself up for injury by over training.  I have struggled with plantar faciitis years aga, and tendonitis in my hips when I tried to start back up after Tilda was born, and it sucks!!!

Game On!

Yesterday I started a competitive diet called Game On with some coworkers and their group of friends.  The idea is to give a point value to eating healthy and other good habits and keep score that way versus just pounds.  Contestants are split into teams, and the team with the most points at the end takes the winnings to split equally among members.  The buy in is $100, so it's a fair amount to lose, but not so much that it really hurts.  Just enough  to keep motivated (hopefully!).  Every day people post on the group FB board with recipes, tips, workout advice...all kinds of goodness.  So far I am really liking it!

I am also starting my food tracking again, with goal intake at 1800 calories.  That's what has worked for me in the past to lose weight, so I think that combined with additional support from my fellow Game On-er's I will finally get those last few pounds off!

One other fun feature of the game is picking a good habit you want to start, and a bad habit you want to stop to track.  It's really tough to pick something that you can do every single day for 5 weeks!  After much hemming and hawing I went with:

Good: Read at least 15 minutes a day.
Bad: Stop leaving the living room all cluttered at night, pick up baby toys before going to bed.

They are small changes but both are easily accomplished, and help me feel better about my day.  And it contributes to my goal of reading one book a month.

Now off to eat and log another snack  ...game on!!