Weigh-in Week 177: I’m running a 10K!

Well weigh-in didn’t go as planned. I was up 0.9lbs for a new total of 160.9lbs with a total loss of  90.7lbs.

I’m very late on this post, mostly because this week has been a bit crazy for me. The main reason is that last weekend I learned that my 10K race was tomorrow – Sept. 22nd and NOT the 29th as I had thought all along!! EEEK! Thank goodness my friend mentioned it – she’s running the half. I ran my practice 10K last weekend and the new news totally messed with my mind. My run was hard and I even got a stitch in my side which I never get anymore. Oooph.

I think I’m ready for tomorrow. I mean I will be able to run it, it’s just a matter of if I’ll be able to run it in the time I want. Right now my main goal is to beat last year’s time  of 1:02:10.

I think this post will be short and sweet as I have to get to bed and make sure I’m up nice and early so I have time to digest my oatmeal and drink my coffee. I’ll report back after the race!

Here is the course this year. It has some hills, but they’ve broken up the one big one we had 2 years ago. The rain is falling right now, which is nice as it’s cutting the humidity. All this makes for hopefully a favourable race. Here goes nothing!

Weigh-In Week 157: Race Weekend!

Weighed-in yesterday and I was down 0.9lbs. Yahoo! New weight is 152.0lbs for a total loss of 99.6lbs. Happy for the loss, it could have been larger, but I ended up working out a lot this past weekend and I find those weeks I don’t lose as much – perhaps water retention.

This weekend we have incredible weather here and it was a glorious weekend for bootcamps in the park (led by a friend of mine) and my 5K race!! I’ve done this race now 3 years in a row and this is the first year we had gorgeous weather. It was wonderful and made for a great run!

Do you recall my goal of getting in under 30mins?? Well I did it! I ran the 5K in 27:50. WOOHOO!!! I am thrilled 🙂

And check out what the receptionist at WW gave me – three 5K charms! One for every year I’ve run the race. I can’t believe how far I’ve come over the last 3 years. Never before would I have thought I’d be this person. This person who runs races, who goes to bootcamp on the weekend, who craves to move and be active. I’m amazed. My life has changed so much. Sometimes I get caught up in how far I still have to go, how long it’s going to take me and I forget how far I’ve come.

Check out my morning at the race. I had such an amazing time!

Has summer arrived for you yet? Are you out and about these days?

Weigh-In Week 156: And the Game Continues

Well, well, well…I am up 2.9lbs for a new weight of 152.9lbs and a total loss of 98.7lbs. Wait, haven’t we seen this before?? Hmmm…I think so – about 4 weeks ago, and before that 8 weeks ago, and before that…well you get it don’t you. That’s right. The pattern continues.

I guess I could say I’m annoyed or frustrated, but to be honest, I’m also pretty proud of myself for still weighing-in each Tuesday before work and even though it’s still up and down…at least with all my current challenges, it’s not all up up up. My plan this week to eat mindfully and cleanly. I found out that at work the caterer always has some plain grilled chicken breasts available. Yes! This is an ultimate win for me. Seriously I could eat chicken every day.

On another win for me this week non-scale related is new running shoes! I ordered them a couple weeks ago and they finally arrived!! For the record I wear New Balance 860s with Sole Moldable insoles. I have low arches so these offer support, stability, and fit my foot. With the insoles you put them in the oven to heat them up and then put them in your shoes and stand in them for a bit. They cool and harden to the shape of you foot. I find regular arches to be too high and painful for me and I have found this combination works best for me.

Check them out just out of the box:

Look how clean they look next to my year-old ones!

I can’t wait to try them out! I don’t usually have to break them in much so we’ll see how I’m doing with them this week and then I’ll decide if I want to wear the new ones for the race on Sunday – oh yeah, I mentioned I have a race coming up right? My yearly 5K that I’m hoping to run in under 30mins. It’s already been a long week for me and it’s only Tuesday….I have to say I’m looking forward to the weekend. I will do a pre-race post for Saturday and hopefully a post-race post as well.  Off to bed I go as have a long day ahead…

I Did It! A10K Personal Best

Woohoo! Ran the race this morning with a time of 1:02:10! That’s 5m36s FASTER than my time last year. I am thrilled, I may have been 10 minutes over the average for the race, I may have come in 958th place out of 1101, but it’s a personal best for me and that makes me proud. I can’t even begin to imagine where I was 2 years ago. I could barely walk up that mountain to get home let alone run longer than a block without wheezing. But here I am, I’ve run my fourth race, my second 10K.  Never would I have imagined myself here 2 years ago.

I won’t lie, this was a tough race – mentally speaking. 2K in and I wanted to quit. I don’t know why. It just seemed so difficult to go on. I think I was scared. Scared I wouldn’t beat my time from last year and thus feel like a failure. I didn’t even publicize or promote this race on facebook as I had in the past. I was worried I has set myself up for failure. How silly is that? Even if I didn’t beat my time – I still RAN 10 KILOMETERS!!! I kept myself going, I never slowed to a walk, I kept going. I figured, so what if it takes me longer. I will not give up. I will not quit.  Quitting is not an option because once you do it the first time, the second time becomes much easier.

I found this image on another blog and it really hit home to me. It’s takes a while to realize this, but it is oh so true:

“It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.” – George Sheehan

Also – did you see my bib number in the post below – 1492. Um, anyone else have  “In 1492, Columbus sailed the  ocean blue…” tune going through their heads?? If not, you’re welcome for it now! :p

An Autumnal 10K Race

Tomorrow (or today if you’re reading this on Sunday) is my second ever 10k race. Eek! I think I’m ready for it. I’m more concerned about the cool weather we’ve been having. It’s forecasted to be only 5 degrees with light rain. I don’t mind running in the rain, but to be honest I don’t really like racing in the rain.

I picked up my bib this afternoon so it’s official. No getting out of it!

The race route is 3 laps around a park in the city. Now, I get bored when running laps so I’m counting on the adrenaline to take through this. I’m hoping to beat my time from last year- 1:07:46 and my secret hope to get under 1:05. This is our route:

Alright, this was short and sweet – off I go to get a good night’s sleep. Despite the cool weather and the laps, I actually am looking forward to it. I’ll be sure to tweet my time as I won’t be able to get to write a post until late Sunday night.   Hope you’re all having a great weekend so far! Share your running stories, I love reading them 🙂

 

5K in 30:40!

Woohoo!! My official time was 30:40!!! That’s 30 minutes and 40 seconds. I beat my time from last year by exactly 5 minutes. 🙂 This year I came in 605th place – hehehe! I feel pretty darn amazing right about now.

Here’s my new medal to add to the collection!

The run was tough, I won’t lie. There’s a bridge and nasty gust of wind near the end that just didn’t help me along. But I will say that I ran the whole way, sometimes slower than I’d like, but I didn’t slow to a walk at all. Pretty darn proud of that one. I’m pretty happy with my progress over the last 3 weeks of getting back into shape, perhaps in February my time would have been faster, but I’m thrilled with this – especially that it starts with a 30 and not a 31! Yay! Now I go back to running for pleasure instead of training. It’ll be nice…until my next race! 🙂

Race Day Approaches!

Oh it’s coming up! Tomorrow, Sunday, morning at 8:30am eastern time to be exact. EEEE!!!

I am ready, but perhaps not as ready as I was back in February. I’ve tried hard to get back into form these last 3 weeks and I’m feeling confident I can beat my time from last year (35:41) but I’m not sure I can do it under 30mins. I will try my best, that’s all I can do. You can read about last year’s race here!

I got new shoes this week. New Balance 860s. I was going to get the stabilicore, but they didn’t have my size. I needed new shoes badly because my old ones were causing my feet to go numb at the 25 minute mark. Just look at the heels. I pronate like nobody’s business!

My well worn shoes – they lasted a year and 4 months. Probably longer than they should have, but there it is.

Here are my sparkly new shoes! And nice heels! They say shoes should last for approximately 80hrs of training. With my running of approx. 1.5-2hrs a week that’ll take me to about the first week of February 2013. However, that’s also for a 135lb woman. I just need to keep an eye on the shoes and how they’re making my feet feel.

And they currently have spiffy un-worn (is that a word?) heels!

As far as I can tell the route is the same as last years. It’s a bit odd for me to run as it follows the race track so it has much more spring than running on a sidewalk. I’m not as nervous because I know what to expect this year, but I know tomorrow morning I know I’ll be full of butterflies. Here’s the route:

Wish me luck! And please do share your stories if you race as well! 🙂

The Race!

Well the day has come and gone. I have officially run my first race. And it was fun! My official time was 35:56 and my real time was 35:40. I’m not sure what the difference is, but regardless that’s pretty darn good! It’s the fastest time I’ve ever done 🙂 I came in 605th place (hehehe!)

The weather was horrible though – it had been raining straight since Friday night and come Sunday morning there were puddles everywhere and it was still raining.

I left my apartment at 7:30 in the morning, the race was scheduled to begin at 8:30. Ideally it would only take 20 minutes to get there, but the metro (subway) on Sunday’s doesn’t come as often and I had to switch trains. I got there with my friend just after 8am. I had time to find a locker and change despite that it was packed, people everywhere! The 5K event was sold out and there were 1500 people registered for it. There was a 21K at 10am also (my friend was running in that one) and they had almost 2500 registered!

Here was my route:

I ran almost all of it. But I did have to walk twice to regroup. I ran too fast at the start from all the excitement and the people running faster around me so off I went, we also had a small bridge to cross right at the beginning and both of those things together contributed to not being able to properly pace myself so I walked for about 30-45sec to regroup just after the 1K mark I also had to regroup around 3K. But that’s okay.  Here are some photos from the start:

And we’re off!

And here I am in the blue hoodie! My friend got a pic of me as I ran past the start – (I’m the one the arrows are pointing at 😉 )

Woohoo!! Everyone who finished the race got this medal. I’ll be honest I love it! I’m such a sucker for stickers and medals and things like that.

And here’s some after pics:

And the most important station – the BAGELS!! It took me an hour to find them and I only found them once I sent my friend off on her 21K (which she did in just under 2 1/2 hours!!!) and they had apples and bananas and I’m happy to report I only ate one bagel! I could have easily scarfed down two, instead I had two small apples (macintosh). Not one right after the other, but a bit later on.

And that was my day! A race done. I still have trouble believing it. A year ago I NEVER would have thought I could have accomplished this. Now I’m thinking of signing up for another one in the fall. Just another 5K. I’d like to get better at this. If I can do it and keep getting better maybe I’ll think about a 10K next year (who is this person?!). The race I want to sign up for is the Oasis Montreal Marathon.  It’s September 25th. So it won’t be too hot, but hopefully it’ll be warmer/better weather then this race!

🙂