Big Ben Spending

Just wanted to report that I have spent "Ben" (the $100 bill I won) on a new bike. After discounts and the $100, I only spend $10.50 out of pocket. Thank you Sweat Life for my new bike!!!! Carter can't wait to take bike rides with me!!

Final weigh in and my last week

Phew.....last week was a busy week. I felt the need to kick it into high gear and workout like I had gone crazy. If you haven't figured it out already, I'm a very competitive person. I've been behind a contestant for the a while and I haven't gotten myself into high gear to pass her up. One of the main reasons, recently, has been my injury. I'm happy to report that my heel has felt much better after I took a week to rest. By rest, I simply mean that I only worked out on my planned personal training days and I didn't run on it.

But this last week, I went crazy. I feel like running is the best cardio exercise for me to shed the pounds, although I hate doing it, I love the way it feels after I'm done. I would get up and run first thing in the morning. I probably ran 3-4 miles when I would normally be reading the newspaper or watching my the morning Today show. I then worked out in the evening-either with our planned personal training sessions or again running around the neighborhood. I even ran around my house in circles one day while my kids napped-yes, I had gone crazy.

But, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and although I knew I couldn't keep up this pace for the long-term , I wanted to take advantage of the time I had and leave nothing left on the table.

Our final weigh-in was on Friday (April 29th). We weighed in, did our physiographs (that measures our body fat %), and did our final fitness test. I will say that I surprised even myself (yes my trainers were very surprised). I won't say what I lost, since the actual results don't come out until tomorrow, but I surpassed my trainer's goal by 3 pounds and my goal by 1 pound. But the weight doesn't determine the winner, that is why I'm still unsure if I have won. The winner will be the person who has lost the most body fat, determined by the physiograph. Those results they didn't share and will all be revealed tomorrow (May 3rd).

I'll find out tomorrow who won and believe me.......you will know too! :)

Planters Fasciitis and Finishing Strong

Well, the Dr. confirmed it! I have torn my planters fasciitis. This is connective tissue that runs almost the entire length of your foot. It ends at your heel. I've had this injury before but this time I have really done a number on it because I couldn't even put pressure on it.

It is a common injury and more than likely a result of my overzealous training schedule (along with the extra weight I've been carrying for the past 5 years!). I've been trying to make the most of the time that I have with this contest, so I've been working out 5 days a week and on two of those days I've been doing double workouts-one in the morning and another one in the evening. The stress of the exercises was taking a toll on my body and my body was telling me to lay off!

So, I went through a week of rest. I went 2 days without working out and the only workouts I did last week were the ones with the trainers at Sweat Life. They were really accommodating and the training didn't put any impact on my injury.

After the week semi "off", I started this week with the desire to "finish strong", as Dan will say. There are only two weeks left in the competition and I didn't want to leave anything on the table. I got back into my workouts with some elliptical training. I wanted to see how my foot would feel if I jogged, so I got on the treadmill this morning and ran. To my surprise, it didn't hurt at all. My knees (which are a chronic pain-literally) were bothering me more than my heel. Good news, I'm back in the game and planning on pounding it out until I loose the last 8 lbs.

I have 10 days to loose 6-8 lbs. 6 lbs would be the goal that Dan has set for me. But I set the 8 lbs goal to make it a nice even number.

The worst part about all of this is that my kids have about 7 Easter Egg hunts/parties in the next 5 days. Which means a lot of candy at my house! But if I want to win, I have to resist the candy for 10 more days and focus on my goal-8 lbs of fat....see ya!!!!!!!!!!!

Muddy Buddy

When April first started talking about the Muddy Buddy, a 10K bike/run adventure race, I looked at her like she was crazy. We were only about a month into our training and I felt like I wouldn't be any good at it. But the more we trained, the stronger I felt and we finally made the decision to go for it. I signed us up for the "competitive" female division, not really knowing what I was doing. I figured: why run a race if you're not going to be competitive? right? Well we quickly learned that we were way out of our league. But the good part about starting this heat was that there weren't a lot of people in our group and we went out 3rd.

The race started bright and early at 7:15 AM, which meant that we needed to be there by 6:15 AM and had our alarms going off at 5:15 AM....not my favorite thing to happen on a Saturday morning.

We decided that April was the stronger biker, so she would bike first and I was stuck with running! There were 5 legs of the race. April started first with the rest of the bikers in our group. They gave them a 1:30 lead and then the runners took off. We ran about ~1.5 miles and then we go to the obstacle course. This first obstacle was a 7 foot rock wall. April had already gotten to the wall on the bike, climbed it and she was now running. I climbed the rock wall and then hopped on the bike, which she left for me. I then biked the next ~1.5 miles to the second obstacle-the inflatable wall. It had rope squares to help you climb up. April was already at this obstacle when I got there and she took off on the bike. I started on my second run-another ~1.5 miles. Then we got to the third obstacle-the inflated short wall that we had to jump over without ropes and then crawl through more inflated tubes and out the obstacle. April had already been through and had started on her run. I jumped on the bike and headed toward the fourth obstacle. This leg I finally passed April while she was running (I was supposed to do this on my first bike leg-but I was too slow). I made it to the fourth obstacle-the Marine Assault, where you have to duck down and go through a maze with a rope roof. I finished the obstacle and headed out for my final run. Another 1.5 miles to the finish. I wasn't having my best day and had to walk a lot of this leg. I also developed a stitch in my side, which made me walk more. April then passed me on the bike and waited for me at the finish. When I finally got there, we raced together towards the final two obstacles-the rope wall and the mud pit. We scaled the small wall and then crawled through the pit of mud and finished together as MUDDY BUDDIES!!

Once they post the action shots, I'll add them to this post. For now, all I have is a before and after shot of the two of us!

We finished in 1 hour and 8 minutes. We got 46th place for the competitive women division and beat 30 other teams....not bad!

Timed Mile

This month's challenge was to improve our timed mile. Everyone had different goals based on our original time that we ran on week 4. My original time was 10:58. My goal for week 12 was 9:30. I trained for it as much as I could on a treadmill, but running in circles on a track is much different than a treadmill. The rest of the group ran their miles on Sunday afternoon, but since I was at the taping of the Ellen Show, I had to do it by myself on Monday afternoon. Everyone who ran on Sunday met their goals, so the pressure was on me to keep the record perfect. I felt good starting the race and completed the first lap in about two minutes. As I kept going I wondered if I started off too fast because my mind was really telling me that I needed to walk. But I knew that if I walked, I probably wouldn't meet my goal, so I pushed on. After completing the third lap, I looked down at my watch an realized that I had 3 minutes left to complete the last lap and meet my goal. This made me feel good so I pushed through the last lap by telling myself that it is almost over. I usually can sprint that last 100 yds, but the wind was blowing against me strong and I couldn't go any faster. I crossed the finish line at 9:05! I was so excited to be finished and have exceeded my goal. I cut my time by almost 2 minutes! WOW! I can't believe it....and I felt good about 2 minutes after : ) Up next......the next 5K...Girls on the Run. Stay tuned for how I shatter my original 5K time and possible run the entire 5K!!!!

My first 10K

I've already told you how much I dislike running, so when the trainers at Sweat Life told us we were going to run a 10K for our Saturday workout, I was a little disappointed. My knees had just started to feel pain free and I didn't think I could make it a mile without walking.

So the morning came and it was a little bit chilly. I knew it would warm up when the sun came up, so I put on shorts and a t-shirt. Then we began the run. I jogged at a slow pace, which I realized was around 11 min. miles. I was surprised to see the first mile marker show up so quickly. I wasn't even feeling winded. I kept going and realized after mile 2 that my hips were taking the brunt of all this terrain. I push past the hip aches and ran until mile 3. After that point, I did a run/walk routine that helped me finish the race in 1 hour 15 minutes! I was excited and felt great after the race. Within a few hours I started to begin to feel the soreness of what I had completed. By 6 PM, I was completely exhausted and couldn't walk without limping. Luckily, the next morning I felt back to normal!

Plateau, Homework & Nappy Hair

We had our 2-month weigh-in on Tuesday and I lost a unencouraging 3 lbs. While overall, I'm down 16 lbs, after having such a great first month, this last weigh-in was not my proudest moment. But if you take the 16 lbs and divide it over the 8 weeks I've been training, it comes to a loss of 2 lbs a week, which is a nice healthy weight-loss. So I'll just continue to look at the overall number and quickly forget that only 3 of that came off last month. I hit a plateau. We're working on changing things up to get my body moving back in the right direction.....the path to winning the contest! :)

For the past month, we've been doing "homework." This homework consists of doing workouts on our own. At first it was just once a week and now it is up to twice a week. The workout is a 35 minute cardio workout that keeps your body going back and forth to your 80% max heart rate. For my age, that HR is 150. So, since my knees haven't been doing well with running, I hit the elliptical machine. I warm up for 5 minutes and then start the climb to get the machine up to a hard workout. I do this fast pace hard workout for one minute and then go all the way back down so that my heart rate can recover back into the 115 range. I do this 6 times. I then cool down for about 2 minutes and I'm done! It is a quick and high calorie burning workout that kicks off most of my days. I've noticed lately that it has taken my body less time to recover. Originally it took about 2 minutes. Today it took me only 1:15! That means I'm getting into shape!!!

The worst part about all this working out is the nappy feeling I have all day. My hair is always up in a ponytail and I wonder why I'm going to wash it when I'm just going to workout again first thing in the morning. Plus most mornings after my workout, I'm off to the races to get all the things done in the morning before the boys get out of school. This usually doesn't include a shower. I'm happy to finally get into the shower when nap time arrives around 1 pm. Yes, that is a long time to be sweaty nasty when I workout at 8:30/9AM!!!