Yoga Fun

I've had a marginally successful week this week. I went to yoga a few times, so that was the success. I didn't eat as healthy as I would have liked, so that was the unsuccessful part. I don't even think it was that I ate so poorly, but I bought a lot of food at my work cafeteria and at restaurants... so that's a double whammy to me. Spending money I don't need to spend and eating food that isn't as healthy as something I would have prepared myself. I'm going to focus on preparing my own food next week and avoiding unnecessary spending as much as possible!

Yoga has been great! I'm finally getting to the point where I can concentrate on what I'm doing instead of my brain being all over the place. When I first started doing yoga, I felt like it was too slow for me because I wanted to burn tons of calories (I was cardio obsessed). First of all, I do burn tons of calories in a 90 minutes yoga class... easily 600, which is what I'd burn on a normal weekday run or a P90X workout. Now, I really appreciate the slow pace because it makes me relax. We all need to slow down sometimes, and now this is how I do it!

Yesterday I took power yoga, and since it was hot out, the room was over 95 degrees. It didn't bother me actually! I sweat a ton but it felt good. She did some tough moves! I'll try to explain what I thought was the toughest... forgive me if this makes no sense. Also, if you know all the true yoga terms, forgive me. I have none of that memorized!

Start in plank pose and then go back to downward dog. Lift up your right leg and then shift your weight back to plank. Bend your right knee (leg still lifted) and bring your knee out to the right so you're trying to touch your right tricep. Hold for several breaths. Straighten and extend your leg again for one cycle of breath, then repeat. I think we did 5 cycles of the bent leg portion, and then we finished in a downward dog. Essentially we were in plank for what felt like an eternity, and that was just one side! We repeated on the left, and then we repeated the whole thing with your knee bending across your chest and trying to touch the opposite elbow/tricep. Whoa!

If you're between workouts, I highly recommend going to take a yoga class at a local studio. I'm loving it!

Blog Shout Out!

I had to stop by quickly to give a quick blog shout out to my sister! I highly recommend you check our her blog. She has been on a healthy living journey all year and she's tracking her progress there. It's super impressive and way more inspirational than me running races! :) She has lost a lot of weight and is currently obsessed with the elliptical for her mode of exercise. If you need a pick me up or a smile, I'm sure you'll find it there. I'm super proud of her progress, and I know anyone else who's ever been through a similar journey or is going through one now will be too.

Enjoy! Have a healthy day!

Yoga Month

I have about a month until I have to start training for my half marathon, so I decided to get in a little more yoga than usual. I got super lucky and actually found a good place nearby that was running a new student special. I got an unlimited month for $40! That is ABSURD!!! Unlimited yoga is usually well over $100 a month!

I took an all levels class the day I signed up... I loved it! It was so low key and the teacher was really encouraging and friendly. We did hip openers too, which is perfect for me. Given my injury during the marathon, this is something I need to work on! She said something sort of interesting about hips too... you can take it or leave it depending on what you believe. But anyway, she said that we carry a lot of stress in our hips, especially relationship stress. Hmm... So she said when we were doing our hip openers we should picture all of our relationship stress leaving bodies. Believe what you want... it felt great! I left there relaxed and content. AND I was sore for 2 days... whoa! I love it!

Tomorrow I'm going to get up early to run before work. Have a healthy happy night!

Gym Workout

Yesterday I decided to do a gym workout since I had run on Monday. Wow, I forgot how much I loved going to the gym! There was a class at 5:45 called "Sculpt Express" and I got there at 5 so I had some time to kill. I started with 25 minutes on the elliptical. It's always nice to switch it up, you know? It felt great!

There's a fitness challenge at work going on right now called "Fitopoly." Basically, they have a monopoly board on the wall, and we each have our own little characters. You roll dice when you get to the gym and move around the board. You do a quick workout based on where you land. Yesterday I landed on Core, so I had to do 2x30 bicycles, 2x15 leg lifts, 2x30 holds in dead bug (up position in a double crunch), and 2x30 second holds of opposite arm and leg extension (in a table top... for your lower back). That killed enough time for me to do the class, which was focused mostly on upper body. We did 5 upper body exercises for different amounts of time with little to no rest. We finished with 2 minutes of lunges on each leg and 90 seconds of two different ab exercises (bicycle and crunches with your legs in butterfly position). LOVE IT! I felt great when I was done!

The other major benefit of the gym was that they did a fit test before I started working out. You had to do crunches to failure or a maximum of 75, pushups to failure, a treadmill heart rate test, a stretch test, and a body fat/weight measurement. The good news is that my cardio fitness is well above average! My pushups and crunches were as well! I did 75 crunches and 50 pushups. I think I could've done more pushups but it seemed like 50 was enough for the purpose of a fit test! My weight was good (although I'm trying to lean out a bit for running) and my body fat measured at 17%! I thought it was more than that! Of course, this is just a caliper test, but I'll take it! :) My only "bad" point was my flexibility. I talk about it all the time, but I really need to do it... YOGA! I can retest every 3 months so hopefully my flexibility improves after 3 months!

Hope all is well out there! Have a healthy day!

OMG she's alive!

It has been aaaaaaaaaaages since I wrote... my life has been a whirlwind! After graduation, I had to get myself all packed up and moved to my new place. That included flying out to see the area, finding an apartment, getting stuck overnight in DC, having a moving company cancel on me twice, getting a new moving company who then delivered a week late... it all ended up okay, and my life is now NORMAL! Woo hoo! I love it! My job is great and my apartment is slowly coming together. Finally! Feels like everything is moving in the right direction!

My goals have not changed since I last wrote. I'm going to run the Hartford half marathon in October. I just joined the gym at work, and the trainer there is going to work with me on my training program. Thanks for the advice! I am going to start running some track workouts and I'm also going to try to lean out a little bit. I'm not doing it for the superficial reasons... just to be faster! Today I went out for a 3 mile job and averaged a 9:23 pace. Improvements!

I'll keep updating now that life is going in a great direction!