michelle sits on her ass and does nothing

Ugh, I've been so lazy lately, I've been thinking about renaming my poor neglected blog, "michelle sits on her ass and does nothing"...

However, this is about to change! I have two 10-k races coming up in May and I am hell-bent on getting a personal best on at least one of them. Hopefully it shouldn't be too hard, since my last recorded 10-k time is a pathetic (yet cool), 1:11:11.

What does a former runner turned couch potato do to get back into shape? For the last few weeks, I've been going out and doing 5k runs a couple of times per week to get back into the groove. Next up, I'm going to start to incorporate yoga and spinning into my week. I bought a 10-class hot yoga voucher from team buy a couple of months ago. I think it's time to give it a try. I need to make up a training calendar to put on my fridge. I like to put pretty stickers on the days where I successfully complete a workout :)

I suppose I should change up my diet a bit. I did enjoy eating processed foods and cheese with every meal...now I CRAVE junk food all of the time. My energy levels have become perpetually low and my mood sucks! time to go back to experimenting with healthier non-processed foods and superfoods! Although I did just replenish my snack drawer at work, maybe I'll start eating healthier once that's finished? It's just wrong to throw out delicious cookies!!! Besides, what's wrong with eating cookies (and chips) for breakfast, anyway?!??

Most importantly, I've refreshed my ipod with new running music. I did love listening to musicals while training for my last half-marathon, but it's starting to drive me crazy!! When the Phantom of the Opera comes on my ipod now, I need to restrain myself from throwing the damn thing down the street. I've gone back and loaded up my ipod with new Eminem. Yay for getting iTunes giftcards for Christmas! I LOVE running to Eminem. Till I Collapse by Em and Nate Dogg has been my favourite running song for years now. Not only to the beats match up nicely with my natural running cadence, but the combo of Slim yelling at me and his lyrics keep me going when I feel like dying. Since my blogging has become like my lifestyle (lazy), I'm going to sign off on this post with a few snippets from my most favourite running song:

'Cause sometimes you just feel tired,
Feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
And just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up
And not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.
......
Until the roof
The roof comes off
Until my legs
Give out from underneath me
I will not fall,
I will stand tall,
Feels like no one could beat me.

Update time

Wow, almost 3 months since my last post?!? My poor neglected blog!

Life became very hectic this summer, between working crazy hours during the day plus coaching during the evening and weekends - I didn't have much time for anything else. Well, that's all changed now - coaching is finished for now and summer hours at work has come to an end. No more summer hours means no more Fridays off, but I also no longer have to work 1.0 to 1.5 hours of overtime each day to get that day off. Due to massive burnout, I ended up taking the last 3 weeks off to recover and enjoy the rest of the summer. Here is a small list of things that I fully intend on, but may not actually end up posting about:

- Dragon boating
- Coaching
- My first 5 km race in 2 years
- Road trip to the East Coast!

I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't run at all since my 5 km race in August :( I just needed to take a little break from running. With training for two back-to-back half-marathons, coaching and the ankle injury, running stopped being fun and had become a bit of a chore. But I do miss it, so for now I'll just run for a bit just for the sake of running...and run whenever I want, for distances that I want and at a pace that I want, instead of feeling obligated to run on scheduled days for x kms at a set pace.

As for what to do next, I have a couple of plans that I've been mulling about in my head. Perhaps I will share them once they start their metamorphosis from caterpillar of thoughts into butterfly of actions.

Long time, no post!

My posting has dwindled down to a slow trickle these days. I used to compose most of my blog entries on my 20 km runs, but since my half-marathon, I haven't done anything longer than a 10 km! Coaching is on-going, it's time-consuming, but it's been a lot of fun - I've got a really good group. We meet 3x a week - one night is a seminar night followed by a run and the other nights are just practice runs. It's made me a bit nostalgic for my early days of running - back when everything was still fresh and new! (Haha, and back when reaching new distances did NOT involve hours of running!) I've been telling my group some of my old running stories and the different experiences I've had. Actually, now that I think about it - most of my energy has been going into talking about about running to my group and writing recap e-mails (of our weekly seminars) instead of writing blog posts.

There hasn't been much running going on with me right now. I've mostly been going out on practice runs with my group and I haven't had time to go out much on my own. After my last half-marathon, I was convinced that I was finished with half-marathons for the year...but I'm starting to miss having a half to work towards. I miss my weekly 20 kms and the focus that it gave me! :(

So, not much running around for me, but I have been doing stuff. Last weekend, I cashed in my groupon for Tree-top Trekking and went up to Horseshoe Valley with John. We were safely tethered up, with a safety harness around the waist and safety ropes - and we spent the morning on various obstacle courses up in the trees. We had to climb ladders and walk across various tightropes and unstable bridges. At one point there were two platforms and we had to swing from one side to another using a rope! I did fall at one point on one of the unstable bridges. The safety ropes stopped me from falling too far and I was able to pull myself back up. It was a little unnerving! The zip-lines were probably the most fun, although I had a hard time stopping myself from spinning around. I think I landed mostly backwards! I thought I was fairly fit, but my upper body was killing me for 3-4 days afterwards.

Next challenge - Dragon boat racing! My ancestors would be so proud of me!!

Different ways to run

Lately, I've been getting a little bored with my training schedule. It seems like every week is pretty much the same as the week before, except sometimes I'll add an extra hill repeat or an extra km of speed work. To help spice up my intervals, last Wednesday I had a little help from John. What did we do? Well, we went out and found a nice quiet pathway with a slight incline. John was on his rollerblades and I had brought along an old (large) shawl that I had picked up from my trip to Peru. We used it as a tether, so that the shawl was around my hips and John was holding onto the ends, and then I pulled him around on his roller blades. This is the John's eye view of the ordeal.

OMG, it was SO hard - we were going an incline and I could feel every single muscle burning. After awhile, I got a little tired of dragging him up hills, so we decided to try out running on a flat surface, which was easier, but still tiring. After one of the pulls, I was standing off to the side of the path trying to catch my breath, I heard a pack of runners coming and a "hi Michelle!" - I had forgotten that Wednesday nights are also run club nights. How embarrassing - I'm pretty sure we looked a little ridiculous!

On Sunday, I went back to my parent's place for Mother's Day. They've been watching a highly spirited cocker spaniel named Caesar for the last few months. I've been really wanting to take him out for a run since he seems to have an endless amounts of energy and finally did so on Sunday. We started off at a good pace, but then there was a lot of this on the way to the park:

and then there was more of this when we were at the park:



Then he lay down for awhile. Since I didn't have the heart to drag him around, we went back home and then there was a lot of this:



Poor little guy, I think I tired him out, he was actually quiet for the rest of the night!

Warming up for 2012

It appears that Mother Nature is also training, she seems to have amped up the insane weather patterns, in preparation for the end of 2012 when she will kill us all. Today there were 80 km/h winds along with rain, snow, hail and flash white-outs. Ever the cautious runner, I decided to take my workout indoors today and use the dreaded treadmill for a two hour workout which tested my sanity to the limit. Since I despise the treadmill, I decided to do intervals - 30 mins on the treadmill, 30 mins on the seated bike, 30 mins on the treadmill and then 30 mins on the spinning bike. Mother Nature is both a cruel and spiteful mistress, as the weather cleared up when I was an hour into my workout. The beautiful sunshine was taunting me, while I tried to complete the workout that just would not end.

Thoughts from poor me stuck running/biking without actually getting anywhere for 2 hours:
- OMG, I HATE THE TREADMILL!!
- OMG, I HATE STATIONARY BIKES!!
- I hate the way the treadmill at the gym ends fairly abruptly at the end of the workout. Would it not make sense to have a taper period at the end, so the person doesn't go from running full speed to a dead stop within 10 seconds? For me, I get a little dizzy after running on the treadmill, so I like to spend a minute walking before hopping off
- I get motion sickness from reading too much closed-captioning on the TVs when running on the treadmill. No TV makes the mind-numbing boredom even worse.
- That being said, I was so happy for NHL playoffs! I ended up watching 2 periods of the Caps/Rangers game. I could ignore the CC and just watch the boys playing hockey.
- I didn't realize how young Ovechkin is.
- I don't like the Rangers but I just can't help cheering against the Capitals
- There was a guy wearing cargo shorts and a Hilfiger skull cap on an elliptical. He was really cut, so I guess he knew what he was doing, but I couldn't help but judge him anyway.
- Why the hell is Donald Trump thinking about running for president?
- I feel bad for the poor little rodents stuck with nothing to do except running in those wheels stuck to the side of their cage.
- Having mutiple slices of pepperoni pizza and gulps of delicious coke a half hour before a workout is a bad idea. Felt so sick for the first hour of the workout.

The green smoothie challenge is still going on. We've had our first disaster - celery, parsley, lemon, tomato and onion. YUCK! I think I'm happy with sticking to the fruity green smoothies for now...

10.0 km plus a few other things

Not so random thoughts.

Sunday:
- I love running in the rain, but not in thunderstorms. I cut it short since the thunder and lightning scared me. On the plus side, that was probably the fastest 10k I've run in awhile (possibly ever)
- I wore my Lululemon capris for the first time (I bought them on-sale last year just before it got really cold). They are a much tighter fit than my other capris. I glanced at my reflection in a bus shelter when I was speeding by...my freakishly muscular calves are getting even more freakish :'(
- After the storm cleared out, it was the nicest day ever!
- Had a lovely workout in the park with Jamette & Katherine. 6k run + "breaks" for drills = good times :)
- Pushing a jogging stroller while running is harder than I thought. My arms + shoulders were killing me the next day.
- All workouts should end with a smoothie run!

Green smoothies:
- I finished reading Green for Life last night. The book was very interesting and made some good points regarding nutrition and healthy eating. Plus, there are tons of yummy green smoothie recipes at the end! However, I remain skeptical about the last 1/3 of the book which was filled with stories about people being miraculously cured of various ailments (including cancer) from drinking green smoothies. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed the book and I'm now onto reading the Green Smoothie Revolution
- John and I are on Day 4 of the Green Smoothie Challenge (30 days of smoothies). The first few days were interesting... Without getting too graphic, I had to skip hills yesterday because my poor little stomach was feeling WRONG. But today I'm finally feeling back to normal and did my hill repeats (9!) and took a yoga class.
- So far we've enjoyed: strawberry/kale, salad mix/blueberries/mangoes, red leaf lettuce/celery/bananas/mangoes, baby greens/blueberries/strawberries/banana

Schedule for the upcoming week:
Weekend - 20+ km run
Monday - Steady run and/or Cardio-weight training class
Tuesday - Rest! (Rush concert!)
Wednesday - 10 hill repeats. Last week of hills
Thursday - Cardio-weight training and/or yoga
Friday - Rest
Weekend - 20+ km run

7 weeks left to go!

There are 7 weeks left before my next half-marathon! .... Umm, should I be worried that "slacking off" is my blog tag with the most entries?

This week, I've somewhat stayed on schedule:

Tuesday - Cross-training (reverse workout): completed! I kept my hand weights at 5 lbs each and resistance tube at medium and increased my body bar weight to 12lbs. I only felt a little bit like puking + passing out this time around.

Wednesday - 2.5km light run to warm-up + 7 hill repeats: completed! I always feel like I'm not going to make it when I approach the top 1/3 of the hill, but by the time I make it to the top and then head back down for my next repeat, I am fine again. My arms and shoulders are usually sore after doing hills, when the lower body starts to get fatigued, my upper body tends to pick up the slack. Ahhh, teamwork at its finest.

I spotted my dear friend Robin(s) on my Wednesday run. Yes, those little tiny blobs are robins. :) Yeay, spring is finally here!


Thursday - Cross-training: ... Skipped my work-outs and my eating plan was derailed, due to baby celebrations. I ended up having spicy salmon rolls + salmon pizza for lunch, a huge piece of delicious tuxedo cake (marble cake with chocolate/vanilla mousse and cream cheese frosting covered with tiny delicious dark/milk/white chocolate curls...omg, just thinking about it is activating my salivary glands) and then out for lovely dinner with the girls. I was feeling a bit guilty about not eating any fruits/veggies all day, so I had a greek salad + garlic bread. Hey! Life is all about balance - a girl can't just workout all of the time.

Friday - Rest + more sushi tonight :)

Notes: I wasn't feeling as sore on Wednesday as I did last week. I think my body is starting to adapt to weight training again. Unlike last weekend, where I was just not in the mood to run, this weekend I'm actually looking forward to my 2ok. I have 1 tiny pack of chews and 1 random gel kicking around, so I'll be seeing how the gel/chew combo works for me.

20.01 km

LOL - map my run is very accurate with their mapping!

My 20k run this weekend turned into more of a 10k run + 10k walk. I'm not sure what happened, I think my heart just wasn't into it, which lead to my brain telling my body to stop running. Once my brain starts working against me, it's usually game over. Although it was tempting to hop on one of the many buses that passed me or to just take a shortcut home, I still did the full distance anyway. The weird thing is that my time was only a little bit slower than my chilly half marathon time...I find it a little disturbing since I was running for most of the race. So either I was running a very fast 10k and just couldn't hold my pace or I only run slightly faster than I walk. My first 5k was about 5 minutes faster than usual, but I'm not sure what time I passed the 10k mark. I'm not going to panic too much about having a crappy run, there are still 6 weeks left before my half-marathon. Next weekend there will be a fresh new run for me to enjoy.

I gave gels another try this past weekend - I had GU Strawberry Banana. I didn't really understand what people meant when they said that they didn't like the feeling of all the gels sloshing around in their stomach during their runs - I thought, well, how different can it possibly be than having water on your runs? I was fine for the first gel, but after the second one, I could really feel everything moving around in there. It felt really weird - almost like my stomach was a waterbed! Also, I don't like the banana flavour very much, it reminds me too much of banana-flavoured antibiotics from my childhood. (Actually I thought that I had picked up the regular strawberry gels at the store - so it was my own fault for buying the wrong flavour.) I'm out of gels for now, so I'm going back to chews next weekend.

Riding a bike and being mean

I'm still feeling a little icky, so instead of going out for a run, not being able to finish my run and getting stranded a number of km's away from home, I decided to work out at the gym. I ended up doing a little 6.5 mile ride on the hill interval setting - that counts right? Since working out inside is BORING and I was too far away to read the closed captioning on the TVs, I couldn't help but check out what my fellow gym-goers were doing. There was one girl working out wearing black socks and white leather ballet flats with flowers - OK, her shoes were totally cute, but they were not good workout shoes! First of all, there is NO support in those shoes and most importantly, do you really want to wreck a cute pair of flats with stanky gym feet? Another girl was working out and wearing socks with old navy plastic flip-flops. *sigh* a fashion faux pas and another case of bad workout footwear. Also, when you are running on a treadmill, you don't need to slam your foot down as hard as you possibly can. Dude - I get it, you're working out hard, but its really annoying to listen to and its not good for your poor little feet.

In other news, I went to the grocery store and we are loaded up with fresh fruit, veggies and whole-grain carbs. Ahhh, fibrous delights!

May the Halls be with you

LOL, I didn't notice this yesterday, but even my throat lozenges are telling me to get off the couch and stop watching TV. But I looooove TV.... :(

Minor setbacks

It's only been two days into my full training schedule and it's already been majorly derailed due to sickness. I thought I just had a little cold, but yesterday it got worse - so I've been lying around on the couch for the past two days, coughing and sniffling into John's blankets and pillows and living off of homemade veggie soup, throat lozenges and Buckley's cold meds. On the bright side, I'm now caught up on my soaps [who knew it was so easy to become your own evil twin?] and after a 6 hour afternoon nap today, I'm feeling back to normal and OMG!! I FEEL SO AWAKE!!! I'M NEVER GOING TO SLEEP AGAIN!!!!!!! I'm also starving since I haven't eaten much for the past few days - tonight we shall dine on baked teriyaki chicken, garlicky brocolli and brown rice.

There will be no running for me tonight, I'll take it easy and watch trashy reality TV on MTV instead. I promise, tomorrow I'll be back on track with the training schedule.