Confession Time

I've been in a slump since the Diva Half. I'll get a good start and good program going for a week and then get off track. Not sure why that is, but I am ready to get refocused again. I am very proud of what I have accomplished from January to May, but I still have so much more to accomplish. I have definitely fallen off of my plans over the past few weeks. I'm frustrated that I can't seem to get motivated to get back on track. But, this is it...tomorrow is Monday (my favorite day to start a new routine!). Meal plans are back in action, back to double workouts (running in the morning, JMBR in the evening). I really need to get back into the good habits that I had created for myself back in the spring.

With summer being here, I have been kind of flying by the seat of my pants with plans. And I'm finding that is not working well- it never really does. Some days the kiddos and I are fine with a day without plans, but most of the time we need some kind of plan to help keep us all on track and happy. So now I am going back to what has worked best for us and that is a plan- meal planning, activity planning, chore planning, etc.

So, with that being said, there should be more blog posts coming up, more meal planning and recipe sharing, more workout reviews. I've got three races already scheduled for the fall. I've got goals for each of them and I am really hoping to reach all of them. I do know it'll take work and I am willing to put in the work, I just have to remember to make it a priority.

So, here we go, over the past 2 months, I've gained 5 pounds. I know that I have not made the best food choices overall and that will be changing. I will be continuing with my training for my fall half marathons. I will return to my workouts tomorrow- I will be starting JMBR week 6, which will include workouts 5, 6, and cardio 2. I also was able to purchase a used spin bike from someone in the neighborhood, and I am looking at adding in some spinning for some more cross training. I love variety- it really makes it easier for me to meet my goals.

Looking forward to continuing on this journey and ready to get closer to my goal!

Training with Kiddos

This morning I took my oldest out this morning on my run. The plan was for me to do intervals, I decided to take him with me since it was something I could do at the track. He was so excited to get to go running with me this morning, he had his clothes all laid out the night before. We headed over to the track to get started. He did great, didn't complain and just kept going. He is looking forward to his next run- he'll be doing the ASYMCA Mini Mud Run along with one of my other boys in August.

Today we also celebrated a deployment milestone, and my oldest had requested red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing so after dinner we sat down with cupcakes.... As my fellow cupcake runner Run Find Your Happy Pace says "will run for cupcakes!" They were a hit!

Still going strong

So it's been a little while since I've posted, but I am having trouble finding time for blogging with school being out for summer and entertaining all of my monkeys and still keeping up with my exercise. I did set out a schedule and I completed about 75% of the workouts that I had laid out for myself, and I am happy with that. This week I had a loss of 1 pound. Better than nothing, but I was thinking it would be more. I don't think that I have been drinking enough water though. When I was losing more weight per week, I was drinking much more water and I think it was really helping. I also only had 5 solid days of eating well as opposed to the 7 days a week that I was eating well. So both of those are things I will be working on fixing this week.

I started week 2 of JMBR, which meant workouts 1 and 2 and cardio 1. Usually I will do a running workout every morning- interval, speed work, short run or long run and then the JMBR workout in the evening followed by JM ab workout as well. I'll admit, I've only made it halfway through the ab workout this week, so I'm hoping to add in the full time starting on Monday. But I will also say that I am thankful for a couple days off the ab workout- it's pretty tough :)

I'm lucky to have one of my sister's visiting me for a couple weeks so I've been able to get out and run my short and long runs outside instead of on the treadmill in the mornings. I am finding I need to get up early and get out the door to get them done before it gets too hot though. So I alternate and get a few outside runs in as well- it's really helping to be able to run outside and not always be on the treadmill.

Hopefully there will be some meal planning to post about on Sunday....

And on track...

At least so far (it is only Monday!). I stayed up way too late last night and had a little trouble waking up, but I am glad I ran first thing. It definitely helped me wake up. This evening I started week 1 of Jillian Michaels Body Revolution again. I felt really good during the workout. I used heavier weights to have more of a challenge. I am looking forward to seeing what kind of results I see over the next 90 days.  For the first JMBR that I did (up to week 10), the total loss is 22.6 pounds and 28.5 inches.  I'm pretty happy with this considering that I did fall off track part of the way through and did have trouble getting focused. So now I am starting new with numbers and we'll see where this second attempt at the full 90 day program goes.  I'm hoping that a more relaxed summer schedule (well, at least the kiddos don't have school!)  will help me be able to keep up with the workouts and be ready for fall half marathons!

Starting Again....

So, I've made it to JMBR Phase 3. But, I've had a really hard time keeping up these past two weeks. I think that Jillian may have over-estimated my abilities when she designed phase 3 :) So tomorrow I will be going back to phase 1 and work through the 90 days again. This will put me finishing around mid-September. I am hoping that by starting again when I get to phase 3 this time I will be able to complete the whole 90 days. I do have a final weight loss and inches loss for the time I did JMBR this round. I will post that soon- not sure of the totals right now. I am planning to start a new set of measurements for this round. The plan is still to do running in the morning and JMBR in the evening. I got in several miles last week and I am still focusing on speed and I am planning on a long run at some time this week or weekend.

I don't have a meal plan laid out yet for this week. I've got a couple things that didn't get cooked last week, so I may be cooking a couple of those recipes. I am planning on some zucchini pizzas that I found on skinnytaste. I am actually having some success with my garden (for the first time ever!), so we are starting to have some yummy veggies to eat. Though my younger boys are starting to make faces when I tell them we are having zucchini....they do seem excited to start getting tomatoes though- the first of those should be ready this week. As the weather really starts to heat up, I don't usually like to cook as much. This summer I am planning on more salads. I have one kiddo who really loves salads, so just 3 more to win over!

Sunday Meal Planning

So baseball is done- we had a great season, and Caleb really enjoyed it, so I am so glad that we did it even though it did make our lives a little hectic over the past couple of months. One of the things that suffered the most was our meal planning. I tried in the beginning but when we started with rainouts and make up games it just got to be a little too much. I'd have a plan and then it'd get changed at the last minute, so eventually I decided that it was better just to do the best we could.

But this week we are back to normal-ish, so back to meal planning.....

Monday: Broccoli and cheese stuffed chicken

Tuesday: Quick dinner (open house for the two oldest at school)

Wednesday: Crusted honey mustard chicken

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Chicken Cordon Bleu

Saturday: Hot dogs (hopefully following a fun outside day!)

Sunday: Leftovers or Kids' choice

This week also starts a new summer schedule for me. My kiddos still have 2 weeks left of school, but I am going to start a new training schedule for the fall halfs that I have coming up. I also have a couple things planned for the summer months, I am still planning on a half a month. Those halfs will be very low key- I am really working towards more of a time goal for my fall halfs, so that is what I'm concentrating on. When it comes to my summer halfs, I am thinking that I may split the distance over a couple different runs- maybe in the same day, maybe two different days. I just don't want to push so hard that I can't meet my ultimate goal that I have in place for the fall.

I am also going to go back to evening workouts for JMBR. I have found that time works so much better for me when it comes to that. So starting tomorrow I am planning on running in the morning and JMBR in the evening. I am really hoping that will work well for me.

Diva Recap

This was a short weekend away, and a very quick trip, but such a fun weekend! We left home around 2 on Friday afternoon. Dropped off the monkeys and continued on our way. After a couple stops along the way (and one missed turn) we made it safely to our destination. Saturday we got up and had breakfast at our condo and then headed off to the Diva expo (called the Health and Fitness Boutique). It was a fairly small expo, we got our race numbers, shirts and bags and then looked around a little. I even ran into Amy from Pumpkin to Princess while we were there and we chatted for a few minutes. We made a few purchases and then left right as it was getting a little crowded.

After some outlet shopping, we went to pick up our celebratory after race cupcakes from a shop that we had seen when we were driving to the expo. Yummy!

We relaxed for a little while and then headed out for our other tradition- pre-race fajitas. That is a tradition that started at Disney when we did the Princess Half marathon. We considered changing our pre-race meal to this:

Just kidding- but it did make us laugh to find these chips at a Wal-Mart in North Carolina. We headed back to the condo to make sure we had everything ready for the race the next morning and get to bed early. 4:30 am comes early....

Everyone was up and we left the condo at 5 am as planned. We got to the race site easily and had a great parking spot right by the porta potties and the start corrals. We were able to stay warm in the car while we waited for time to go to the corral. This was a smaller race- about 3600 runners, and no assigned corrals, so we were able to go right into a spot near the pace sign that we chose. Here is the before the race photo

This was a pretty nice course, lots of shade and the weather was beautiful. There was the possibility of rain, but we were very lucky to get to enjoy a great morning for our run. The first half was really good for me. I was happy to discover that I was on target to complete this half at about 3 hours at halfway. But then it went downhill (at least a little!) It was about mile 8 where I started to struggle mentally (seems to be when that happens). I was taking a walk break when I came across a friend that had come close to passing out and her sister was there with her so I stopped to see if there was anything I could do. After staying for a few minutes I went on, but still had trouble getting back into a good running pace. I switched to a run/walk and that seemed to help. I finished with 3:12:38 unofficially (3:15:38 was the official clock time). Either way, it is a new PR for me, so I'll take it!

Finished!

Finishing again with Katie :)

Heather (my brother in law's girlfriend) also ran this race and she found me at the finish.

My two traveling partners and now official Divas :)

Mileage breakdown- you can really see the slowdown after mile 8....

1	12:50	12'50"/mi
2	26:41	13'51"/mi
3	41:01	14'20"/mi
4	55:07	14'06"/mi
5	1:09:15	14'08"/mi
6	1:23:32	14'17"/mi
7	1:37:50	14'18"/mi
8	1:52:21	14'31"/mi
9	2:07:57	15'36"/mi
10	2:23:54	15'57"/mi
11	2:40:08	16'14"/mi
12	2:55:46	15'38"/mi
13	3:11:21	15'35"/mi

Next up....lots of speed work and more JMBR!