Thursday, January 07, 2010

Couch to 5K, Take Deux!

Yep, I'm back in the saddle, folks.

I was doing well with all my exercise from June through early October, but once H1N1 hit our house I just splatted. Exercise? Huh? Moderation in eating? What?

Yeah. Ugly.

Weighing in at 168 still. I've dipped down, but clearly I've managed to spike right back up.

My one-year anniversary over at Spark People (I'm AmandaJCD there if anyone else from the blogosphere would like to friend me!) is on January 19th, so basically it's looking like I have 2 weeks to lose 8 pounds so I won't weigh MORE than I did when I started. UGH!

Okay, if some of the weight I'm holding onto is water there is a slim chance I can drop the 8, because I might as well have been eating from a literal trough the past month or so. But the likelihood is that I'll be over 160 still in a couple of weeks.

I'm annoyed.

But as I said, I'm back up with C25K, which should be entertaining. This time I'm going a bit different route. My sister-in-law and I have both signed up to do this through our local running shop, and we had our first session this past Tuesday.

Let me tell you, making my first serious physical activity in three months a run? Likely not the best move ever made. Yesterday I think I'd have been happy if I could just have amputated everything below my ribcage. I thought I'd be fine because I have a sedentary job. Well, I learned yesterday it's more of a "sedentary" job, quotation mark usage required. By "sedentary" I mean "sedentary except when I have to get up to deliver a phone message, file, hunt someone down for the phone, figure out someone left without telling me, write them a message, take it to their desk, come back to my desk, get up to make copies, deliver copies, make it almost back to my desk and then hear the dulcet tones of The Anonymous Architect bellowing my name across the suite..."

Ouch.

Sitting hurts. Standing hurts. Walking hurts. Stairs are especially high on the "yipe-o-meter". This is even an improvement over yesterday, when I was audibly whimpering. Oy.

And I'm clearly insane because I'm planning to do the second night tonight. In spite of everything I'm excited about this, in a masochistic kind of way.

The setup is that we meet once a week for the first run of a cycle (3 day cycles just like last time), and do the other two on our own. And the increments are different from the C25K I did last year as well -- for that one, the first week is run 1 minute, walk 90 seconds, repeat for 20 minutes. For this particular fitness instructor's group, we had several options the first night: walk 1, run 1; walk 3, run 1; or walk 5, run 1. My SIL and I went with the second group, figuring we didn't want to totally flake but we also knew we weren't up to alternating minutes quite yet.

Now the sheet we have for the rest of the week gives three options too, although those are a bit more tight: run 1, walk 1; run 1, walk 2; and run 1 walk 3. Day 2 it's for 20 minutes, and day 3 it's for 25.

I figure I'll again hit the middle group which means amping it up a bit to the walking 2 minutes and running 1. Eh, we'll see how it goes. I think I'll keep up the timing but slow my running if need be.

Now to tackle the food. I'm on track today so far. But that's just today. So far. I need to get a bit more consistency with this. I think Tricia at Endurance Isn't Only Physical hit the nail on the head with her blog title. And I could sure use a bit more mental and emotional endurance.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Great job on the running - hopefully those "kinks" will get worked out soon so you won't be so sore, lol. I'm just getting over sickness, so I'm hoping to get back to some exercise tomorrow...
Get your eating on track, woman! You can do it!

Heidi said...

It took me two or three "sessions" of running to get to the point where it didn't HURT anymore whenever I was starting a new routine.

Which is why I'm not a huge fan of running in the first place, of course.

I hope that you have much success in the Couch to 5K program. You looked fabulous at 160 last time I saw you so I'm sure you still look fabulous but I understand the need to look fabulous-er.

Amanda said...

Thanks Jenn and Heidi :)

I managed okay with the eating today. Not marvelous, but I was within my calorie limits. I could have chosen better for dinner, but I could have chosen worse LOL. The big thing is that after eating out at dinner and THEN hitting up Publix and not getting home until after 7:30, THEN scooping two truly foul litter boxes...

... I got on that treadmill. And I *just* got off.

So far, so good :)