More Changes

Apparently I only write stuff here when there are big changes, so in keeping with that tradition here's what's been happening: I've graduated and am waiting for confirmation of my teaching license, we've moved and are both trying to find permanent employment in our new location, and we're trying to get into the habit of cooking and cleaning on a regular basis.  After months of what felt like limbo between homes/school and jobs/states, etc. we are finally situated somewhere that we plan to stay for a while.  We had these grand plans to get everything unpacked and cleaned up right away and then keep it clean, unfortunately we seemed to lose steam on that goal pretty quickly and find ourselves three months later still with unpacked boxes, a messy house, and a desire to get all the projects finished but lacking the drive to do so.  We also were finding ourselves eating out far too often or buying groceries and then not using them in time and thus wasting money on food that we weren't eating.

I decided that something needed to change and that the easiest place to start would be food, and so I signed us up for a three month subscription for emeals and we are now at the end of our first week with that.  I had tried menu planning but while I love cooking and choosing creative meals I am not very decisive or good at planning well rounded meals that use up the ingredients.  Over this past week we have been eating things like grilled salmon and couscous with roasted tomatoes, Sausage and arugula pizza and nectarine and tomato salad.  We went for the mediterranean plan that serves 4-6 because we wanted to have leftovers for lunches, although I think we're ending up with more leftovers than we bargained for it's nice to not have to think about what to buy for lunches.

That's where we are now, hopefully we can slowly make progress and get the house running more smoothly as time goes on.

Just popping in…

I haven’t written in a while, thought I’d pop in to post an update.  I’ve been mostly keeping up with my workouts, although I type this after taking 2 weeks off for vacation…I’m sure I could come up with excuses for the second week of laziness, but I think I’ll call it what it is, laziness.  However, I’m jumping back in to it this week.  I also haven’t been doing very well with my sugar avoidance recently.  I don’t think I’ve been trying too hard on that one either, I give in pretty easily.

I have to say that I am really enjoying our CSA vegetables, so much that I’ve actually been looking forward to eating salads for lunches…who am I?  I never expected to find myself excited about eating salad, and also never expected salad to make for a satisfying meal, but somehow something has shifted once we started getting vegetables every week.

I think I’m going to try to put together a post on music/theatre stuff that’s going on, but I don’t feel like taking the time to do it right now.  Better to go do it, but I’ll try to post about it soon…maybe saying I’ll post about it will encourage me to get back to regular practicing…

Later!

Oops! Let’s try this again…

I clearly haven’t been very good at keeping up with writing.  I also fell off the running wagon again, and neither of the races that I had planned are/were in the cards.  I stopped running as much in February, then over spring break the first week of March I rolled my foot really badly and ended up with a tendon injury that took me away from running for over a month, and at that point I just gave up for a while.

While I’m back now, running is not my priority at the moment, strength training is. I’m working my way through the workouts outlined in the book Get A Bangin' Body.  My plan is to do an organized workout a minimum of once per week, and I’m in my third week.  I do plan to increase my workouts, but for now as long as I can stick to one a week I’m at least doing something.

That’s not all I’m doing.  I am trying to run occasionally, and I also got my bicycle out for a short ride the other day and really enjoyed it so I hope to get out to ride more often.  I’ve also been trying to get out hiking on a somewhat regular basis, so far nothing too strenuous, but we’re hoping to work up to some tougher hikes and some backpacking throughout the summer.  We also are looking forward to getting the canoe out some as soon as we can find some good places to take it.

So, that’s what’s going on as far as fitness goes.  As for the rest of my life, well, it’s a little boring at the moment because I don’t have a job and I’m starting to go a little stir crazy.  I’m living at home for the summer and I have a role in The Sound of Music, which gets me out of the house for rehearsals three nights a week, but other than that I don’t really have anything going on at the moment.  That said, it is allowing me time to work on my music, I just need to use the time for it instead of lounging around with the cats.

I am also starting to think about making some changes in the way I’ve been eating.  Namely, since I’ve been back in Lexington I’ve been eating too many sugary foods, and I’m having some trouble with a sore throat and I’m pretty sure the two are related.  So, I’m going to try cutting down on sugary foods like candy, and things that are artificially sweetened.  That said, I’m not cutting things out entirely, I know myself too well for that, but if I’m going to have chocolate, I’ll make sure it’s a small piece of good dark chocolate instead of a candy bar.  I just need to cut down and see if it will help my throat problems go away.

I know this post is slightly disjointed, but hopefully I’ll be able to get stuff up here more regularly for a while.

Last Week of Break

Last week was my last week of winter break. Tomorrow I head back to the craziness that is school. This past week went pretty well, got in my 2.75 miles on Tuesday and it went pretty well, same for the 2 miles on Thursday. There was a slight hiccup in the planned Saturday run though. We went out on Friday night and we had people coming for dinner Saturday night so we ended up postponing that run to today. It was a good 2.75 miles, and I feel ready to tackle 3 miles on Tuesday.

Another week down

I'm one more week closer to my goal of running the Charlottesville ten miler. I'm having trouble believing I will actually be able to run that far, but I can tell I'm making progress.

This week was tough. My run on Tuesday wasn't bad. It was 2.5 miles on a soft, flat trail, and actually pretty easy.  Then we hit Thursday's run. Only 2 miles, shouldn't be too bad except we changed our short run from 1.5 miles to 2 and ran a hilly loop in our neighborhood. We ended up coming in just stay of the full 2 miles, but I'm not going to stress about it.

Friday P and I went for a hike. We did about 3.5 miles on the Appalachian Trail, which was absolutely fantastic, bit we paid for it during our 2.5 mile run yesterday.  It wasn't a bad run, it was just a little more challenging because we were both battling tired legs.

All told, rinningwise it has been a good week, now if I can get my eating back under control I'll feel better about things.

One more week then I'm back in classes and I have to work around a set schedule again, we'll see how that goes.

Ending 2011 Strong!

So, after a rough week before Christmas I made up for it and made last week strong. I started Monday with a 2.25 mile run. It was cold and windy, but it was a good run. It turns out my body likes running in the cold.

Wednesday was a 1.5 mile run after 8 hours in the car. Friday was rainy so we decided to hold off and run on Saturday. Saturday morning we took off for another 2.25 mile run.

All in all a good week, and I'm starting to feel like my legs are actually getting stronger.

Small Setback

This past week was busy. Tuesday saw twelve and a half hours in the car on the way to visit my family for Christmas. I did manage to get the 2.25 mile run in before leaving home Tuesday, and Thursday got in 1.5 miles, but Saturday I wasn't feeling well and decided to hold off. That means this week I will be repeating what last weeks distances were, hopefully without missing too much for travel.