No run today

So my alarm went off like it always does this morning but I was tired from the week already and my legs were still sore from the 10 miles that I have gone already this week so I decided to take the day off. Instead of running I woke up and spent a little time with my bible to see if it would put me in a better place today than I was in yesterday and I think it did just that. Yesterday I woke up a litter sooner than I normally would so that I could walk before going to a men's bible study that I found on the church website, if you recall I mentioned it on Monday. I am glad that I went and already look forward to next weeks meeting to dive into the word even more. One thing I am not all that happy about is I have not lifted any weights since I moved and would love to find time to do that again. I don't see it happening this week because work has been even more crazy than normal and we have a new guy that we are trying to train during this whole process so any time I would have for lunch that I would use to lift weights has been taken away from me. I am hoping that when my boss gets back to town I can start lifting again or buy a 10 visit pass to the local rec center and lift weights there on days that I don't run before work. I guess we will just have to wait and see how the rest of the weeks play out. I am still hopeful that someone will get me P90X for my birthday in a few weeks so that I can really focus on getting bigger. I think that would be perfect because I will be leaving to go on vacation on Sept 17th so that will give me plenty of time to read the material and come up with a menu plan and go shopping for the foods  they recommend when we return and I can get started on the plan. Again I am not trying to think too much about how I would go about doing it since this is all based on someone getting me P90X in the first place. There is always the rec center but I would like to have some kind of direction with what to lift and eat so that I build muscle. In the past when I have gone to gyms I have lost weight but never really saw any muscle gain and I don't want to repeat that cycle this time around. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them or if you are in the middle TN area and need someone to run or workout with that is also an options. I am noticing that I am getting more visits each day and I hope the trend continues. I enjoy sharing my journey of losing 115 lbs and my growing relationship with God since starting all this way back in January and at the very least if you find the posts boring I hope they are boring and inspiring all at the same time. If I was able to lose this weight anyone reading this can too.......trust me. Here is yesterdays walk, I can't wait to get up tomorrow and run with some rested legs. I hope that my runkeeper does not crash again because I want to see a more accurate time and calories burned than the numbers I got on Monday.

Second run through the new neighborhood

So I woke up this morning and went on another four lap run around the neighborhood but this time I was focusing on the pace to try and get under a 10 minute mile again. I think that I was able to get that but I am not sure since my app crashed some time during the run and never came back up. I ended up needing to remove it from my phone and add it back to be able to even see my progress. I ended having to manually enter my time and you have all heard about how accurate I think the pace, calories, distance are but hey it is still tracking. According to what I entered I was under 9 minutes and 30 seconds so if that is actually the case than I will be pretty happy about it. An added benefit to the running in the morning is it give me a chance to water the lawn before the sun comes up. I also did something this morning that I have not been looking forward to, I got on the WiiFit scale for the first time in 11 days. When it was measuring me I was totally prepared to have it tell me I gained all kinds of weight from the 10 day of bad eating. Well, as it turns out I lost 6 pounds. I don't want to be all that excited about it because it now has me weighing under 150 pounds so I am thinking I need to start lifting more weights and eating more healthy food so I can start putting on more muscle and gain weight again. Tomorrow morning I am going to get up and walk a few miles so that my legs will not be as sore as they were this weekend after my Friday run, I am also looking forward to going to my first men's bible study with a small group of people. I am hoping that I get a more personal experience this way than I did when I did the giant church wide study, that one felt more like a lecture than a study and as informative as it was I didn't feel like I got all that I could out of it. I am going to do all that I can to get the most out of this study. I will let everyone know how it goes and how the rest of the week running goes, I am thinking I can break the 25 mile mark this week and I keep doing the four laps running in the morning.

Back in the swing of things

I know that it has been a while since I have done any posting but rest assured it has also been a while since I did anything in the way of fitness. We spent the week moving into a new house so I didn't have Internet for a few days and I didn't get a chance to do any type of exercise while moving outside of the moving itself. For anyone that is wondering moving is almost as much of a workout as actual exercise, every morning during the moving process I was waking up with some crazy sore legs my guess is it was from going up and down ladders and up and down stairs with boxes over and over again. I don't know the calorie burn count for stuff like that but I am hoping that it is quite high as I ate like crap for most of the week things like pizza, Mexican food, Sonic, frozen yogurt I don't even want to look at a scale once I get the Wii set back up, I am sure I will not like what I see. This morning I started to run again so I can get back on a routine. This was the first run through the new neighborhood and as it turns out the laps I was doing are longer than I thought they were and are much more hilly than the old neighborhood was. Today I ran a total of almost 6.8 miles, which is way longer than I have ever run in the past and is a bit longer than a 10K. That made me pretty darn happy my mile time was over 10 minutes which I was not too happy about but I will get that down under 10 again before the end of next week. All the hills and the fact that I have not run in over a week made today go a little slower. I was happy that I got the distance down so now once I get the time I will start to make it shorter before I try and add another lap since each lap is a little more than 1.6 miles. Can't wait to see how my legs feel tomorrow after a run like today's. I would love to see 10 miles ran in the morning before the end of September since I was invited to run a half marathon in October. Once I get a sub 60 minute 10 K my next goal will be the 10 miles before the end of next month. Come back to see how it is going now that I am in the new house and have internet again I will start posting like I was before.

Today starts another week

So I made a bit of a change to my plan for this week. I have a lot going on with work and needed to think through everything to figure out when I would be able to walk, run, and workout. Here is what I came up with. Instead of trying to go 8 laps today before starting nine laps around the neighborhood Wednesday I just went ahead and went for nine laps this morning. I am happy to say that I was able to get through all 9 laps today at a sub 10 minute male and burned a good number of calories doing so. This week I am planning to workout on the days that I run since it is going to be the only time I have to do it. Today I will workout during lunch, Wednesday I will most likely workout before my day starts since there is a good chance I will be in the car for 2 hours going to a client. Friday I am going to get up at my normal time and go for a run then I am going to see if I can't try out the Spring Hill rec center for my workout since I won't be going to the office Friday or the entire next week. Today is my first workout of adding weight to most of the exercises so I can't wait to see how that goes. This weekend I gained a pound but my waist line continues to get smaller so I think I am going in the right direction. One of my students gave me a perfect pull up bar and it made me realize that I am a giant wuss since I still can't do a single pull up. I am hoping that the time I am spending in the fitness room at work will remedy that since I am still wanting to get P90X for my birthday and I am going to have to be able to do pull ups if I want to be able to do one of the workouts each week. Like I said before I am pretty darn happy with my run this morning and look forward to my Wednesday morning run to see if I can do more of the same. I am not so concerned about getting the same pace I got today just getting through the five miles again. Check out tomorrow's post to see how the increased weight workout went and check out Wednesday's post to see if I made it the 9 laps again.

Another week in the books

Well today ends another week of getting up everyday and going around the neighborhood. Like I said yesterday it almost didn't happen but I am glad that it did. A couple of good things came out of this week. I found that I can run 8 laps around the neighborhood and am able to do it at under a 10 minute mile pace, I had the furthest distance traveled in a week happen today, and I went to the fitness room at work to lift weights three times this week. I knew today was going to be another busy day so I got up a little bit early again so that I could get my weight training before starting the day so that I would not miss it.The time in the fitness room went great this morning on almost every exercise I was able to do more reps than I did the previous workout and on the ones that I didn't do more I was able to do the same amount. I felt so good about the workout today that I will be adding weight to a couple of the exercises when I get back to the weight room on Tuesday. That brings me to my next point, I have quite a busy week next week between a new person starting at work that I will be helping train, to closing on a new home but I have decided that I am going to make next week a push yourself week. Monday I am going to run and plan on doing the 8 lap run I have done the last two times out. If I get the run done and can keep a sub 10 minute mile pace then the Wednesday and Friday runs I will be running 9 laps around the neighborhood which will be just over five miles those mornings. On top of that, like I said I will be adding weight to some of my fitness room exercises next week to push myself further there. I don't expect to get through three sets of 15 reps on each of the exercises I add weight to but it will be progress and will give me something to shoot for so I don't get bored or start to plateau. Just like I make sure I can do distances at the proper pace before I go further I do the same thing with lifting weights. When I can constantly get 3 sets of 15 reps using the weight that I am on I go to the next weight class until I can do it again. Needless to say I won't be adding weight to my exercises as quickly as I add distance to my runs but I look forward to continuing to push myself and lifting more and more  weight.

Didn't think I was going to make it today

So I woke up this morning and my legs were still a bit tender from my latest 8 lap run on Tuesday. Knowing that I was starting my day south of town I was able to sleep in a little bit. When the alarm went off this morning I almost didn't get out of bed. There was that split second of judgment where I had convinced myself to take a day off because of the tenderness in my legs and pick it up tomorrow. The more I stayed in bed and thought about it the more I was convinced that it would totally mess up the plan that I have going. Finally I got out of bed and got ready for the run. As always the first lap was the hardest but I went right back to my happy place and just kept reminding myself that there were only 7...6...5...4 laps to go until I got to the end. After tomorrow I will only have one week left on the current route that I am running now and will have to come up with a new route in the new neighborhood. When I finished my run today RunKeeper told me that I was under a 10 minute mile which made me pretty happy, as I was doing the run I thought that I was going slower than I was on Tuesday but that turns out to not be the case. Yesterday was a really busy day which is why you don't see a post from me but I did wake up even earlier than normal to get my walk in so that I could go to the fitness room before my day started since I knew I had so much going on. Yet again on all the exercises I was able to do the same number of reps I did the last workout and on some of them I was able to add a few reps to some of the sets so it seems that the NO is working and that perhaps I am getting stronger. My birthday is coming up in less than a month and the more I think about it the more I am leaning toward asking for P90X, from all that I heard I know that it will be hard but if you look at the site and reviews and in my case some of the people I work with that are on it, as long as you follow it you will see results. I am seeing results with what I am doing in the fitness room now but since it is the same thing each time I am worried that I will begin to get bored with it if I don't change it up. If anyone out there has any experience with P90X or wants to offer an opinion on it please feel free to comment one to me.

Thanks

It first I was afraid.....heck I was petrified

Day two of my second week of getting up every morning like last week to run and walk for 20 miles. Like I said last week and yesterday I am, in the words of Cake, going for distance. Yesterday my 6 lap walk went just fine which I was sure it would and today I went for my 8 lap run. As always the first lap was the hardest then it got easier from that point on. As I was nearing the last lap and a half it started to get difficult again but I made sure to remind myself to just keep going. I also did all that I could to remind myself not to worry about the speed in which I was running and to just get through the 8 laps. As you will be able to see my pace and mile time both climbed a little bit today. Believe it or not that was by design, right now I just want to get through both my runs this week and get all 8 laps completed before I worry about the pace. Once I feel like I can get the laps done consistently that is when I will go for the time. My plan is once I get a few good runs at 8 laps each with a sub 10 minute mile I will add a ninth lap to the run and start the whole process over again. So far I have been having the best results when it comes to adding distance to my runs with this plan so I am going to stick with it. The lap number is sure to change after I move in a few weeks since the new neighborhood isn't quite the perfect circle that the one I am now is. As with each of my walk days I went to the office fitness room at lunch to lift some weights. On a few of the exercises I added more weight to what I as lifting. Yesterday's workout was the first one that I had done after taking NO and I don't know if it was the total reason for it or if the weekend's rest helped as well but On every exercise that I did with the same weight as the previous week I was able to get a few more reps per set. This morning I am not even the least bit sore which I guess is a good thing but last time I workout out a little harder I got sore as the day progressed so that might change by tomorrow. I guess we will see how the NO affects my workout tomorrow. If I can get the same number of reps I got yesterday on a second workout this week and a third day of waking up at 4:30 in the morning I would say the NO has an impact on how the workout goes. Check for my Thursday post on the results.

Pushing myself this week

So this is a week where I am going to add distances to the walking and the running that I have been doing each morning. Today was a good start, my alarm went off and I only hit the snooze button one time before getting up then I was out the door. I went on my normal walk but added a 6th lap to the walk. I was able to do all 6 laps in under an hour and traveled a total distance of 3.51 miles in that time. My legs felt fine when I was done and I am looking forward to getting up and running 8 laps tomorrow. For those that don't know the walking is only the first part of the fitness routine I go though on the days that I walk rather than run. At lunch today I will be going to the office weight room to try and build a little muscle mass so I can start to get the definition I am wanting. I have been keeping track of the amount of weight I am lifting and the number or reps per set I have been completing. As part of push myself week I am going to add weight to the exercises that I was able to complete without doing fewer reps and will be pushing myself to get through one or two more reps on the exercises that I have not completed yet. As much as I hate it the next day I want to be a little sore tomorrow so that in my mind I will have gone a step in the right direction toward adding the muscle mass I am wanting. Right now I am thinking that I am doing well because I gained two pounds since last week but my jeans and other clothing seem a little more lose than they did a few weeks ago. To me that means that I am getting the muscle, in my legs from all the running and hopefully a little bit in my upper body as well. As a final thing today I am going to do something I have not done yet along with my normal runtracker.com data that I post I have decided to post a picture of me from when I was at my largest and a picture of me from this weekend. I am doing this as a reminder to myself how far I have come as well as to try and inspire some that may be working to lost weight as well.

Excited to start a new week

So I had a great weekend with my family on my daughter's 2nd birthday weekend and now I am ready to start a whole new. I am not going to say that I ate the best that I should have this weekend but hey it was a celebration. Last week I was able to get up every morning and walk or run depending on the day and I have full intention of doing it again this week. I am going to walk on Monday, Wednesday and Friday this week and run on Tuesday and Thursday. On the three walk days I will be spending time in the office weight room working to get a little more muscle tone. I am also  going to give a few supplements a try and see how they make me feel and how my workout goes using them. Keep an eye on the blog this week since I fully expect to go another full week of updating it just like last week. I did do two quick laps around the neighborhood today because I wanted nothing more than to have the chance to pull Haley around in her new wagon that she absolutely loves. Not only did I get to spend a little time making her happy, which is always great but I also found out that walking the laps around the neighborhood is a bit harder when you are pulling 45 pounds of child and wagon behind you. This week I am going to add a bit more distance to my runs and walks last week I was walking 5 laps and running 7 this week I will be walking 6 laps and running 8. I was I will be because I have found that if I say that I am going to do it rather than try and do it I have a much better success rate. Last week I traveled 21.3 miles in the mornings before work, lets see if I can't beat that this week. I will let everyone know how it goes as I go through the week. Thanks for reading.

Today was a pretty hard run

Before I get started I wanted to take a minute to say happy birthday to a very special lady....my daughter turned 2 this morning and man did those two years happen fast. I Love You little one!!!!

So this morning my alarm went off a little later than I normally set it since I had some time to sleep in today. That is the good news, the bad news is that when it did go off I felt a lot like I did yesterday, I was very tired still and really didn't want to get up. The thought of staying in bed crossed my mind again and I almost did but started thinking again. If I didn't get up I would not have the chance to reach 20 miles ran for the week and I knew I would be upset with myself if I let that happen. Also, although not all that exciting for most people, I got a new pair of actual running shorts yesterday which as it turns out are much more comfy and a whole lot lighter than the shorts I have been wearing. I think that I will be getting some more once I have a little money. 

When I started my run this morning I made it passes the first turn and saw that my runkeeper app had crashed again, at least this time it was right at the start of the run rather than at the end of it. I was just finishing up the first lap when this weeks activities started to catch up with me. This was the first week I started lifting weights and the first week I didn't get lazy and woke up everyday to run or to walk. Once I got about half way through the second lap it became more of a mental think that anything else. There were a few times when I began to plan for where I was going to stop running today since I was convinced that I was not going to be able to make it the 7 laps. I had to make myself stop thinking that way and instead I starting letting myself know, this is no problem you have already gone so far and there is ONLY so much more to go. Believe it or not that makes a huge difference in the distance I can go each morning. When I first started to run I would start thinking about when I was going to quit early instead of how much more I had to finish. Several times during those first runs I would not get as far as I planned, I don't think that is a coincidence. 

Yesterday I spent my second lunch hour in the weight room working on upper body muscle building, when I was finished all I could think about was how sore I was going to be in the morning but so far it is not all that bad. If today is anything like Wednesday though I fully plan on getting sore throughout the day. I just need to remember to keep taking in protein and letting my muscles recover for the next time on Monday. I will let everyone know who this new part of my fitness plan goes as I continue it. I think it will be great since I look forward to the next workout right after I finish the one I am on. 

Almost didn't happen today

First of all I noticed that I have picked up a 5th follower, so I just wanted to say thanks and welcome. If you have been reading for a little while I am sorry I didn't mention before today.

This morning the alarm with off at its normal 4:30 in the morning and it was very hard to get up, as a matter of fact I hit the snooze button 4 times and told myself that I had earned a day off before and was about to roll over before sucking it up and getting out of bed. I was a little upset with myself for having to work so hard to get up but once I did I was glad that I walked. One thing I have to say is that things have been going great for me lately, not just in fitness but in life in general, so I wanted to keep the good vibe going so that is what finally got me out of bed. When I finished my walk this morning I was 2.2 miles further than my 15 mile goal for the week so now everything else is just gravy......mmmmmm gravy. Time permitting (I plan on making some) I will be going into the fitness room at work again today to do so weight training and try to add a bit of definition to my body. I went in there at lunch on Tuesday and did upper body lifts for an hour, I forgot just how much better you feel once you have done something like that. Trust me up to that point in the day I was in a pretty foul mood but was feeling much better after an hour of nothing but me some music and the weight machine. When I woke up yesterday after lifting weights for the first time in about 6 years or so I thought I had not pushed myself very much since I was not all that tired at all. Then the day went on, the more I worked the more my chest and biceps started to get sore and there was no doubt in my mind that I had done some lifting. I am still a little sore today but have been looking forward to getting back in there since yesterday morning. As a matter of fact I have come up with what I think is going to be the fitness plan I go with for a while. I think I may have mentioned it. I plan on waking up each morning for running or walking, on the days that I walk I will do some weight training, on the days that I run I will not. I plan on running Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and walking on Tuesday and Thursday. The next week I will do the opposite walk on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and run on Tuesday and Thursday. Tomorrow when I get up will be my ultimate test I am hoping that I can get through 7 laps around the neighborhood without stopping and even try and go the little bit further like I did yesterday. If I can do that then next week I will begin on adding a little more distance and go from running 7 laps and walk 5 to running 8 laps and walking 6. Here is hoping that happens but I guess everyone will know tomorrow. 

Good run today but a little disappointed

So I got up for my third day in a row to get a run in and I told myself that if I could I would add a little bit of distance to it. When I got started I knew this run was going to be a bit harder than Monday's run and I was right. I entered my pain cave about halfway through the run but just kept telling myself that pace didn't matter getting the distance did. I was doing a great job and was a little slower than I was on Monday but was still staying below a 10 minute mile so I was happy. Every now and then I would look down at my run keeper app to see calories burned and how far I had gone so far. When I was on my last lap of the day my phone vibrated to let me know that the app had crashed and I had lost all my logged running for the day. That is the part of the morning that was disappointing, I ended up having to manually enter my run when I got to work today. I am sure the distance is a bit more accurate but the calorie count totally is not. When the app crashed I was almost at 500 calories burned and when I finished entering the run manually it said that I only burned 208. Not a huge deal, I don't care about the calories burned I care about the distance ran. Even though I was starting to hurt pretty early in the run I was still convinced that I was going to try and run just a little further today and that is just what I did. Trust me when I say a little further I mean just that, a little. I finished my 7th lap around the neighborhood and started into the 8th. By this time I don't know if you would call what I was doing running but I kept going and made it to where I wanted to, which was the first turn on my lap. At that point I turned around and walked back to the house to finish up the run. Depending on how the walk goes tomorrow and how I feel on Friday I might try and extend the run just a little more and make it to at least the halfway mark of the 8th lap. This would put me at about .5 miles away from running 5 miles in the morning. If I keep this up I might be doing the Music City half marathon next year :-) Which I am told is very hard due to all the hills. Wouldn't it be great if  I could find that out for myself. Check out my manually entered run this morning. I am at 14.3 miles walked/ran for the week so I don't think that getting to my 15 mile goal is going to be an issue

Another good morning

So I am still feeling pretty good this week, I know it is only Tuesday, but I have been going to bed looking forward  to my next day of activities. This morning I woke up and did my normal 5 lap walk after a run. I did all that I could to keep the pace under a 15 minute mile which I was able to do. This morning I had a big filling breakfast that my wife turned me on to over the weekend, it was a vita-top which is only 100 calories and has almost no fat and plenty of fiber. I also had some delights oatmeal. I don't remember the entire name but it is good and has about the same nutrition as the vita-tops. I got all that food for only 250 calories, which is less than what I walked off this morning. I have already hit 10 miles for the week and it is only Tuesday. If I can get through my seven laps tomorrow when I run I will be right about to the 15 mile goal I was shooting for this week and only be halfway through the week. Work has been stupid busy this last week and a half due to being down a person but I expect we will be hiring the new people soon. I say this because I brought my shorts a t-shirt and my shoes to work today because I would like to use my lunch to go in the fitness room here at the office and do a little lifting just to get familiar with the equipment. One thing I think made last week so hard was I didn't take  lunches and ate on the file a lot. I don't want to do that this week or I will just be drained and not finish my week of fitness activities I am planning. Plus as my wife pointed out yesterday I seem to stay in a better place when I spend time running and time with the Bible so I don't want to lose that and be bitter the rest of the week. Being the computer nerd that I am I found a workout chart template for Excel to track my weight lifting and will start to fill it in today. What I am planning on doing is going to work and lifting during lunch on the days  that I walk. I figure this will give me a few more calories to burn as well as start to get some definition that I want. Now all I have to do is see if my schedule will let that happen and start to decide on some supplements to with the lifting so that I can get the most out of it since I will just be starting out and will only have an hour to do it in. I am thinking that if I start to see results I will look into joining a gym later this year or next year but first I am going to have to find the money for it. I will let everyone know how it goes.

New week new goal and ideas

I had a great weekend this weekend and went to bed yesterday feeling great and looking forward to this week starting an getting a bit of running done. I also decided that it was time to start adding a little weight training to my fitness activities to try and get a little muscle tone going. Now that I have lost 107 pounds I don't want to look skinny I want to try and look toned. I woke up this morning a little after 4:30 and was out and running by 4:50. I was a little worried about the GPS on my runkeeper app this morning because it took a little longer than I would have expected to fine me. I am beginning to think it might have something to do with my being connected to the WiFi at the house. I told myself that I was going to try and run/walk 15 miles this week and I am off to a pretty good start already. After a walk yesterday and a run this morning I am already at 7 miles and it is only Monday morning. I look forward to waking up tomorrow and getting some walking in to help move that number up. This mornings run went very well, I got seven laps around the neighborhood again for a total of 4.2 miles ran, and I did it in 40 minutes. If  I can keep that distance up the next two times I plan on running this week then next week I will start to try and add the 8th lap to my run. I reached my 5K goal much sooner than I thought that I would so now my new goal is to complete a 10K in under 60 minutes. Right now my pace is right no par to do that but I know I slow down a bit as I run longer but I know I can get to that goal as well. As for the lifting I think I am going to try and start that later this week or starting next week but I need to do a little more reading up on it. Right now I am a bit confused because there is so much information out there and so many supplements that I want to make sure I am giving myself the correct nutrition and working out in the way that I get the most out of what I am doing. If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to comment them to me. Check out my RunKeeper  tracking from this morning I am pretty happy with it.