Introducing soreness!

Yesterday I jogged 2.5 miles with a .5 mile of a warm up and cool down to total of 3 miles. The path that I ran was not flat because it's California and I live in a city with a Mesa as the second part of the name....so there were rolling hills. When I got up this morning my hamstrings were pretty darn sore. It wasn't sore in the sense that I  hurt myself and my muscles are sore and it hurts with pain. The last time I remember that type of soreness, I did squats with too much weight and just the act of the sitting in a chair was like setting my butt and hamstrings on fire with a match. So the soreness today is a nice welcome because it means that I worked my muscles out very well yesterday. I don't remember running on a treadmill and actually being sore like this. Usually the soreness is from my knees, shins, and any other thing that feels like complaining on a treadmill. Treadmills are great if maybe it's too hot outside or just more convenient but I definitely rather run outside and feel the soreness the next day. To me this type of soreness is like a reminder that I worked hard the day before and since it reminds me for the whole day of any type of walking, bending over, and sitting it's a CONSTANT reminder and great motivator.

Today's plan is to do the regular 20 minute cardio with Ron and the strength training circuits. We actually get to decrease the number of reps for the next couple circuits since that's what the book says. After a couple of the circuits, we continue decreasing the reps but then start increasing the sets...burn baby burn. haha It's cool because we're not doing as many reps for the next couple we can push ourselves with heavier weight and once we do that, we challenge ourselves with more sets. Keeps your muscles guessing... muahaha the muscles will never see what's coming! Alright crazy talk about my muscles of having a mind of their own is over. =)

For Ron's cardio we're planning on starting the couch potato to 5K training routine. We'll be doing it on the treadmill -- seems to be a better surface to run on than on concrete and asphalt. He's going to be my guinea pig for my practice of being a personal trainer...nice test to see if I would want to pursue a certificate for personal training.

Some may have noticed that I've already ran 3 miles so why would I train on the same plan as Ron. For me I have already trained for over a year for a marathon and completed two marathons in months of each other. Many people like running because it is an individual type sport and you can have your peace of mind. I have done my workouts like that by myself for way too long and it's really nice to train with your spouse because you're both working at a goal. Given that sometimes I do go jog an extra day and it does give me this "me-time" but I don't want to have to train by myself like I did for over a year. I guess I am a team sport type person ... woo hoo go team.... too bad my knees aren't good enough to keep me stable on a basketball court...*sigh*.  

Anyways, I will write again once we go through the workout tonight. 'Til then, Happy Running!

First run off the treadmill

As I mentioned yesterday, I decided that I wanted to try and jog on an actual road rather than the running of a belt of a treadmill. So I did. It was a hazy day and had a cool breeze which made it a perfect morning for some running. I wore my garmin running watch that tracks how far I have gone, and allows you to set alerts to let you know you've reached a certain distance, and so on and so forth....basically it's a pretty freakin' cool watch. Alright onward from the clear obsession I have with my running watch. =P

So I chose a path I have ran in the past, basically concrete sidewalk and a bike lane asphalt were the options. I did a warm up for 1/4 of a mile that was just a nice medium pace walk. After the 1/4 marker, I began jogging. From what I have always been taught from cross-country in high school and my marathon coach, running on asphalt is some how a little better than concrete sidewalk. I'm sure you would have to weigh in good for knees vs. higher chance of getting hit by traffic. For me if a car is going to go out of control, a sidewalk is not going to shield me. With that reasoning I jogged mostly in the bike lane.

Everything felt pretty good, except for my left hip muscle -- I guess the hip to the inner thigh muscle -- was bugging me near the end but went away once I did my 1/4 mile walking cool down. In the end I jogged about 2.5 miles with the warm up and cool down making the total mileage 3 miles. Not too bad for the first run off the treadmill in a while. The jogging pace was pretty decent: between 11 mpm - 12mpm.

Definitely need to find other paths to jog on though, preferably dirt and away from heavy traffic. But of course I am paranoid because being a woman running is some how a target for perverts. Even in Riverside, there were reports of women running around campus in the morning and being a victim of rape or damn near close to it. So of course I am paranoid. That's a reason why I am anxious to get dogs so I can have my buddies with me when I run. I would want maybe a routie or a pitbull type dogs, for one their big dogs and they are pretty intimidating to people. But that's on the wait list until we get a house.

Anyways, my run was successful and I am happy it was. Although my sunburn seemed to get irritated because I had little blisters on the skin when I got back (I did put sunblock on before I ran). Probably after a couple of days it'll go away. My eating habits have been good so far this week. I actually made a turkey sandwich for lunch with some wheat bread that has a little hint of sweetness and added slices of white onions and 2 pickles and it was amazingly awesome. The difference between the sweet flavor of the bread and onion with the saltiness of the pickles made it an interesting flavor. So just need to keep up on the good eats until it becomes routine.

Until next time, happy running! =)

Jog and strength training!

So tonight, I went to the gym again to do the usual 20 minute cardio and the strength training. Since my attention span on the bike had diminished the last time I biked, I decided to run on the treadmill. I did a 5 minute warm up to make sure that my knees didn't complain while I jogged. After the nice warm up and feeling pumped up from not getting any aches from the knees, I jogged for 15 minutes at about 13 :35 mpm (minutes per mile). I ended up running almost 1.5 miles but since we decided on 20 minute cardio, I stopped there. But the run felt good and I wasn't as paranoid of a possible knee going out incident on the treadmill so I enjoyed the run.

After the run, we did the workout B from my book of New Lifting Rules for Women where we did RDLs (Romanian Dead Lifts), dumbbell shoulder presses, lat pull-downs, lunges, and some crunches. RDLs felt pretty good-- 15 seem to be a little much to be doing with that exercise, but overall not too bad. The lunges felt amazingly great so I'll probably increase the weights I carry in my hands to make my legs work more next time. Now for the crunches we did this swiss-ball crunch thing. Either I'm swiss-ball challenged or the exercise isn't very useful. I'm thinking of substituting the exercise with some other type crunch because it doesn't matter how many I do, if it's wrong I'll probably pull something or hurt something....because....*sigh*...I'm just getting old and my body likes to humor me with injuries.

Tomorrow I plan on trying to jog a couple miles outside to see how it feels. My body seems to like running outside than on the treadmill. I also started keeping track of my food today. It was a little rough because I did it at the end of the day, but hopefully it gets easier as time goes on. I'll probably steal the workout schedule Yuh Jiun linked for training for the 10K and just edit it a little bit. I will update tomorrow and hope my knees don't fight with me tomorrow on my run! =)

A start of a new week

It's been a little while since I wrote in this, and that's because I had skipped most of my workouts last week. I had some interviews early on in the week and I was going to work out later in the week. Then I got sunburn pretty bad on my shoulders because I had lunch with a friend outside for several hours last Thursday. And no, it didn't occur to me before the lunch to put on sunscreen....yes failure. So I did not workout last week. It seems like I have tendency to hurt myself consistently.

So here I am, now ready to go yet again. Last night I went to the gym with Ron and we did 20 minute cardio and then our strength training workout A (squats, seated rows, push ups, steps up, etc.). The strength training near the end got me panting like a dog. I can't remember breathing so hard from that workout, but I guess it shows you how much of a slacker I have been on strength training. My 20 minute cardio was biking with intervals in the beginning but then my shin was bothering me. Maybe because I didn't warm up too much before.

Like I mentioned on an earlier post, I think I am setting myself up for failure at this point. I don't have a set schedule of "these are the days we work out and these are the workouts (i.e. running with weights)". Without a schedule to me feels like floundering. It's like saying I am working out to lose weight...and then I get bored while working out since I have no real goal. So today is my rest day so I will write up a schedule for my workouts, and possibly think of the meals I should be eating through the week. I was thinking of investing in a type of planner, but I am not sure at the moment.

So for me, I know when I gain weight when I run in my runner's shorts and it's like starting a fire on my thighs because rub rub they go and chaffing begins. So wearing spandex to the gym is what I will do for now until I lose some weight. And it's amazing that in a span of a week and 1/2 I lost like 3 lbs, then when I stopped the healthy eating and working out I gained it back. I'm not depressed since I kinda had it coming but in my mind it's like, damn it, back to square one.

I really need to force myself to start writing what I have been eating. I don't mean count the calories, because that's making myself do too much at a time and knowing me I'll stop after 1/2 a day. I'm not saying it's bad to write down calories, but I mean if you write salad for lunch and a big mac for dinner, it's not too hard to see where you have gone wrong. Maybe once I get more disciplined in writing my food down, I'll start the calorie counting just to see where I am investing all my calories. My guess at this point are in oreos and red vines. But then again that's just a guess. =)

Week of Rest and back again

About a week ago I twisted my knee trying to teach my fiance how to play basketball i.e. shoot, lay-ups, and post moves. Of course I got excited about playing that I was jumping all over the place and *pop* there goes my left knee. I don't think anything tore since the achy/pain went away after 10 - 15 minutes of massaging it. I was a gimp for a while and took a week off. Now I am back to the routine.

Since at the time I didn't know if I was going to be out for a couple weeks I removed myself from the bet of weight-loss from my sisters. Of course I am feeling great now, and with the stress of loosing weight in order to not loose money is gone I don't feel too pressured. While I was on my week break I decided to remove some of the rich foods I was eating from my diet since I noticed a spike in weight gain within a week. *cry* So I removed a good majority of the rice and pasta I was consuming and substitute it for salad and veggies. Don't get me wrong, I am a lover to carbs, but I was eating more carbs than usual since I started trying out recipes. A week and a half ago I weighed almost 187 lbs and today I weighed myself and I am 183.2 lbs. Obviously I was doing something right with removing a good amount of carbs. haha

When I stepped on the scale I was like, alright just slide the smaller weight up to 38 so I don't get my hopes up but the balance metal piece plopped down when I hit 34 on the smaller weight. But I am happy about the weight loss...I guess the old school scales can't be off since you don't really calibrate them like you would for the digital ones.

So this afternoon's workout was pretty good. I wore my spandex capri things and a tank top -- I guess I was feeling good about myself so eh, might as well wear something cute to the gym. Plus if you wear shorts and bike....shorts just creep up and I get annoyed having to pull the shorts down every couple minutes. But I did 20 minutes on bike: Every 2 minutes increase the resistance by 2 levels until I reached level 9 and I stayed at that level until 15 minutes and stayed above 90 rpm. Then 1 minute rest at level 7 staying above 80 rpm. Then 2 minutes of level 9 at above 90 rpm, then cool down for 2 minutes at level 7 staying above 80 rpm.

I wasn't sure what level would give me enough resistance so that is why in the beginning I increased the levels by 2 every couple minutes. But now since I know what level is high for me, I will probably do 5 min. warm up with intervals at level 9 (above 90 rpm) for 2-3 minutes and 1 min. for rest at level 7 (above 80 rpm). Intervals seem to give me something to actually keep my brain entertained -- the thought that I get a break in less than 30 seconds seem to keep me motivated... I hate being a drone on the bike just pedaling along with no purpose. If I just did that then I wouldn't really be pushing myself. =)

After the bike I walked on the treadmill for a warm up of 5 minutes than jogged for 5 minutes at 15 mpm (min per mile) then walked for 2 minutes then jogged the rest at 15 mpm with a cool down. Did some ab work and then stretched. Overall was an awesome workout. I was just happy I didn't cause a scene on the treadmill -- like *pop* there goes my knee and I roll off the treadmill and end with a *bang*. So in my mind it was a good workout. =)

Tonight I will be going to the gym with my fiance to do some cardio + weights. I'm sure it will be an awesome workout. =)

Picked up some Runner's High

Although Monday was some what motivating when I figured out I could jog without having chest pains and shortness of breath, it didn't really motivate me too much for Tuesday or Wednesday. The constant need to look at the timer and decide when to stop and start was a little annoying and yes some what boring. It seems to have the same feeling as if you were on the treadmill running and you were counting down the minutes to when you can stop and step off the treadmill without feeling guilty.

Tuesday I was suppose to give running a chance again on the treadmill but of course I had a better excuse....watch a couple TV shows until I felt too lazy to go because a treadmill just sounded boring. Then Tuesday night my fiance and I were suppose to try out racquetball to encourage more cardio in a fun and competitive way but after waiting 10 minutes at the front desk of LA Fitness with no employee present and then finally being told that they have no equipment that can be borrowed so that we can use the racquetball courts at the gym...well it became less motivating to come back and try to get some cardio in. 

I would think the goal of losing weight would help motivate people to workout and be consistent, but just thinking about that as my only goal brought misery very quickly. It seemed like an empty goal. The only way to really test it is to jump on one of those scales and watch the numbers go higher...and torture yourself on not eating yet again another little cupcake you baked a couple days earlier. In my mind, losing weight as a goal alone inspired some short term planning but no motivated execution. After playing basketball in college and completing 2 marathons, it became clear that I needed an actual goal I am use to shooting for and that has proven in the history to work. The type of goal needed to be some type of competition hence the attempt to play racquetball at a place that has the courts but not the equipment (yes it's irritating in paying so much for a gym that doesn't have the equipment compared to other gyms). 

Finding the lack of motivation annoying and adding to my already negative spiral of depression about weight gain, I agreed with my finance that we will do cardio and weights 3 times a week and the rest of the days we can workout if we feel like it. It seemed like a good idea since it's less time you have to go to the gym and since you're already there doing some strength training, why not jump on the treadmill for 20 minutes as a nice warm up? So tonight we started our new arrangement of 20 minutes of cardio and 1/2 hour + or - for strength training.

This brings me to the title of the post, runner's high. Instead of walking and jogging in combination during my time on the treadmill, I decided to warm up for 5 minutes and then jog the rest of the time. This would allow me to test my lungs now and also not feel like I am always watching the clock. When I reached the running part and I didn't feel chest pain or shortness of breath I increased the pace from 15 minutes to 14 minutes per mile. The ability to just run and feel this good....amazing! It felt like a runner's high. My mind was enjoying the run along with an escape into my random thoughts bouncing around in my head. The occasional glance at this TV show on the screen in front of me was quite entertaining as well -- "I survived a Japanese Game Show". Of course when I was watching they were doing a obstacle course that entailed two treadmill type walk ways and moving circular discs in the middle and contestants have to carry the most panda bear stuff animals as possible to the other side. And since they were tripping over themselves, I started to sway on the treadmill as I watched. As a clumsy fool I caught the none moving part of my own treadmill but caught myself from falling on my ass. Obviously my coordination isn't that great these days. haha

So I jogged for a good 15 minutes and then we went on to our strength training routine. This was now a new workout -- workout B in the book (and yes it did take a lot of creativity to name these workouts apparently =P) . Here's below the workout:

1. Deadlifts (which were replaced with RDLs -- Romanian Dead Lifts) 2 x 15

(Was feeling it in the back so, we moved to halfies on the Dead Lift part to get form)

2. a. Dumbbell shoulder press -2 x 15 -- 10lbs/1st set | 15lbs/2nd set

  b. Wide-grip lat pulldown- 2 x 15 -- 60lbs

3. a. Lunge - 2 x 15 -- BW/1st set| 5lbs/2nd set

b. Swiss-ball crunch --2 x 8

Again it seems like a short list, but it gets everything working and you sweating. I am sure I will be feeling it tomorrow. With all that work, we drank our protein shake to help recovery.

So on to tomorrow's workout. We decided to not workout on Thursday's nights, but since it felt so awesome to be able to run without the fear of somehow having clots stuck in your lungs and feeling pain whenever you just breath....it seriously feels like a fresh start has been laid out in front of me. Just today's workout has provided a new goal...to reach back to a 10 minute pace like I ran for the 2 marathons in the past. I would write that it may seem like a small deed to be able to breath without pain, but with the year of fear behind me with such experience of pain when breathing and the panics that occur when you can't tell if you are getting enough oxygen in your lungs...it feels like a blessing to have this chance at regularity. I have been waiting over a year to be able to feel the ease of breathing coming back to me physically and psychologically...this is probably the motivation I really needed when I started this workout scheme. It's easy to forget what I once had valued more than anything in my life the ability to breath as easily as I do now, but since I have the ability to do so it is hard to remember on a consistent basis that this luxury of living was almost gone from me. I intend to keep it as the main motivator of my workouts.

Now it feels like I am on the right track of workouts and motivation. Cheers to the upcoming days. =) 

Start of training

Today seems to be the first step back to my running after a year long of a dry spell for running. It's been a little over a year now since I have been diagnosed and recovered from my Pulmonary Embolism. So to take the right step with my workouts, I attempted to do 2 miles on the treadmill with a mixture of running and walking to test out how my lungs will do. 

Total time: 35:48 (min:sec)

Total distance: 2 miles

Warm-up walk- First 5 minutes

Run 5 minutes (15:48 mins per mile)

Walk 2 minutes (17:40 mins per mile)

etc, etc, etc...until 2 miles is reached

It actually felt really good and I didn't have any shortness of breath or chest pains which is definitely a plus! So I'll probably start to increase the amount of time  I run slowly through the week. I'll add in some time in the pool, since the pace that I swim seems to be working my lungs a lot harder than my gentle jog on the treadmill. My goal is to train for a 10K (which probably won't be ran until October) and then on to a 1/2 marathon if all goes well. 

I have invested in protein shakes and it's suppose to be some new type out there (Compete Lean Recovery Formula). I mean it's not the best type tasting because no matter what you mix with it, it's going to taste like a protein shake. The only way to minimize the taste is to put ice after mixing milk, fruit and the powder in a blender. Seems to help and I mean if it works for drinks that have alcohol more bearable then it's got to work for this little protein shake after taste.=) 

This week I should be starting up again for strength training in the evening. Tonight will be workout A out of my strength training book "The New Rules of Lifting for Women"...

1. Squats - 2x15 with body weight(BW) w/ 60 seconds of Rest

2. Alternating between:

a. Push up - 2x15 w/ 60 seconds of Rest

b. Seated Row - 2x15 w/ 45 lbs w/ 60 seconds of Rest

3. Alternating between:

a. Step up- 2x15 w/ 20lbs w/ 60 seconds Rest

b. Prone Jackknife- 2x8 w/60 seconds Rest

At first when I tried this workout, it seemed too little to do, but afterwards, I was convinced that it will get you sweating and breathing heavy. Alrighty will be back to report when I am done with my strength training. =)