Getting Back the Mojovation

A few favorites from around the web as I get my blogging legs under me again.

Love that word, mojovation. I didn't make it up, can't take credit, but teachers borrow liberally, so its ok right?  I heard it on a podcast by Another Mother Runner. Do you listen to them? If not, you should. Find them here.

Know another blogger I love is Rants From Mommyland. She lives in my area and I occasionally see her at Target. This is funny because Target factors heavily into some of the themes that are consistently touched on in the blog. She used to write with a good friend, who went on to get a fulltime job or some sort of nuttiness, but has carried on. And I am glad. Today one of her good friends totally altered my memories of Sweet Valley High. Did you read those books? I read MANY of them and apparently I can blame Jessica for any poor self talk I gave myself. Yikes. Even worse, the comments sections pulled out VC Andrews out of the memory bank. Something was just not right about my mom letting me read those books. Makes me wish I had the energy to read the books my kids do. *sigh*

Another thing that makes me happy? Huffington Post pulls together the best parent tweets of the week each week. I don't have to open twitter and they always make me laugh. Always good for a stress break.

This you can't go see, but I can tell you all about it. So, my son has become interested in football, as one would imagine with his dad being a big football fan and huge fantasy football player. I stick to the one pool my old roommates run where I have to pick one real team to win each week. Easy enough. Well, my son wants to join a league. Since all the leagues my husband plays in are 1. well established and 2. require money to exchange hands, he decided to create a family league. So now I have a fantasy football team. I have no idea what to do with them. I had to come up with a name, so I chose Caligirl. Not much of a football team name now that I think about it. I should have just named it "computer", as I fully intend to embrace technology and let the silly site do as much as it can for me.

My daughter has lice again. *sigh* what more can I say? I didn't listen to the warning bells in my head and put off checking her hair. As a result full fledged lice. Total mom fail. I am the only one that will take care of it though, so I kind of have payback on myself? She has a totally good attitude about it. She also has almost exclusive use of the ipad as I comb her hair out twice a day. I could learn a few things from this if only I listened to myself.

What does all this have to do with mojovation? Not much, but they were how I stayed sane (minus the lice and football) during a summer that sucked me down a giant workhole. My own sharknado you might say. So while I may not have made it to bootcamp or headed out on that run that could have/would have relieved my stress, I did take little mini vacations online. So I wanted to share, because one thing I have learned, is that everyone is better off with a good laugh.

3.5 pounds

3.5 pounds, it really isn't much in the scheme of things. It could be a swing of a bad eating weekend or some heavily salted food.

Right now that 3 lbs is making me worry.

153 lbs is a rounding error to 155.
155 is headed in the wrong direction.
I will grant it isn't 168, my peak weight.
but still.....

149.5 is progress.
149.5 means I am staying steady.
149.5 means working out and eating semi healthy is keeping me honest.
but it isn't my goal for 2013.....

So I was completely off exercise for a month while the wildness of a huge work project. That is over and I am back at bootcamp and running again. It is week 2, so I feel like I am officially back on the wagon. After stress month from crazytown, we went on vacation for a week. A glorious week of no thinking and decision making. I was able to run 3 times and ate anything I wanted to. I gave myself a week after we got back before I weighed myself. Be kind to yourself, right?

Even with that....those pesky 3.5 lbs had stuck around. Bummer.

It's not like it is a surprise, of course. Pizza, beer, funnel cake and ice cream will do that to a girl. So I dig in again. That is a no brainer. Feeling good about myself is the reward for for hard work.

But the wall is a little tall right now, the distance seems a little longer, the hill a little higher. I know I have the fight in me, but I am going to have to dig a little deeper.

3.5 pounds.

July - Half way there, or not

As you know I have set out several goals broken out by month and today is July 1.

One of my goals is to run 750 miles. I am getting there, but am not 50% there yet.

I am however at 43%. And I have decided to take that as a victory. Even 500 miles a year would have been a stretch goal for me a short time ago, so 650 or 700 or hopefully 750 will be great. Something to be proud of. As I am headed into a training cycle for two half marathons, my mileage will be headed back in the upward direction. Last month was 28.7 and this month was 40.1.

So while today was another tough day at work and sometimes things seem like they are never going to work out, I am convinced putting one foot in front of the other has to work at some point.

So this morning was another start, I had run Saturday and Sunday, but today was a bootcamp day. I set my alarm, got up and saw it wasn't raining. (there is no excuse any longer as it has rained so much we have the church on backup) So off I went. And it was good.

Did you start your month out right?

Back to Business

Whew, it has been a crazy few weeks. I gave myself a break from blogging because we had so much going on, but really work has been kicking my behind. I am not out of the woods yet, but can see the light at the end of the tunnel. So I am been working hard to ramp back up on my exercise and *thinking* about getting my eating back on track.

Can I boast about my kids for a minute? They rock, but their activities are running me ragged! They do swim team in the morning and then head off to camp for the day. I usually have to pick them up by 4 pm. It makes for long days and short nights. Not exactly what I want in my quest to become a morning person!

I have been working to get back to running as the calendar is telling me I have a half marathon in 8 weeks! How did that happen? Not sure, but I am sure getting excited as it means my vacation time is getting closer. We will be heading to the beach for a week and then I will be taking the kids to my parents for a week before I run the Disneyland Half. Seriously getting that excited feeling in my tummy. However, it can't come too quickly as I have things to get done and summer to enjoy.

The washington area has been come storm central. We have hot days for sure, but the last two weeks seem to have storms forecast for every evening! What has been crazy is the humidity! I ran today and running in the rain would have been refreshing to the 95% humidity I swear we had. I managed to get 5 miles in, but was not feeling confident about my stamina at all due to the walking.

I have my first race in awhile on the 4th of July. Its a 5k at the local shopping area. I have run a few events there and it is a nice route with some hills, but not anything crazy. There is plenty of parking and the center plaza serves as a nice staging area. The race is giving away beach towels as the premium. Isn't that cute? Nice to have a change from the tshirt.

As today is the last day of the month, I spent some time today checking out some races in the future. Without having my race a month goal this year, I have kind of gotten out of the habit of checking out what is coming up. There were many races I couldn't fit into my schedule last year that I want to try out.

Any rate, don't want to bore you on my first day back, so hope you come back while I talk about running in the summer and lots of other fun stuff.

Back to the Beginning

So I think I mentioned I have been all over the place lately. Today was the last day of school. Yea, that means that all the papers that have been breeding in my kids desks and cubbies come home to roost. In all reality, this has been happening for about a week. My son's class has been in a quad trailer about the size of a small kitchen and I cannot imagine for the life of me how all this stuff x24 fit in that room! The good news is that nothing new can come home....from school anyways. Camp starts tomorrow and the paper fight starts all over again.

Due to my son's baseball schedule my daughter and I have been spending lots of time together. I need to do some thinking on how to make this time productive and fun. Otherwise the weeks are going to go by very slowly!

Proud of myself this week so far. Boot camp on Monday, 2.75 run/walk this evening.

Last night my daughter and I headed to a sorority meeting to help plan the calendar for next year. She has been to her fair share of meetings and is comfortable with everyone. Plus she loves the goodies we always have. There may have been some desserts. (Most were eaten by her!)

Today, I got home from work late, but since it was raining the boys weren't running off to baseball. My hubby took gym duty with my daughter and all of the sudden I had a free hour! The rain tapered off and I was off for a run. My legs were super tight. hrm, stretching might have been a good idea. I ran and walked around the neighborhood and covered close to 3 miles. Dinner was a turkey burger and some broccoli with sweet potato fries. And milk. It has been at least a week since I have had milk. yum.

We have a makeup bootcamp tomorrow, so if I can get myself to bed on time I will be headed to that direction. That way the daughter and I can maybe hit the pool tomorrow evening.

I really hope I can have a better day at work tomorrow and get back on an even keel to match my workout progress!

Summer has Arrived

well summer is here, but the spring activities and the weather didn't seem to get the message. Things continue to be very busy with work and home. Man these kids are hard to keep track of. Mine seem to be overloaded this time of year as the seasons overlap. We have managed to close the door on soccer, scouts x 2 (almost) and regular season baseball. School has 2 more days and swim team is in full swing.

In the meantime I have been trying to get back to a more consistent schedule. I said June would be my time to get back after a tiring and hectic May. Perhaps I have blocked out every other June from my mind? I have  tried to do a better job of getting up for bootcamp and running. I wanted to run more during the week, at least a few miles, but I have totally failed at that. Right now I am happy that I have gone out for about 5 miles the last 2 Sundays.

Today felt good. I got up at 9 and was going to head right out, but since it is Father's Day, I decided it would be much nicer to cook some chocolate scones up before I headed out. Kid 1 had a swim test for camp at 11 Dad was handling, so I headed out a a little after 10. Lots of cloud cover and a much lower humidity level then last week. I decided to see just where the run would take me and headed out on my favorite train. I ended up doing a similar loop as last week without the extra back and forth. I was proud of this run for two reasons. The first was I ran the first 25 minutes without stopping or feeling badly. I was SLOW, but my stamina has grown. The other was that I decided to take a path that I knew was hillier then my other options and I didn't shy away from it.

My weight has been all over the place and I am completely mystified. I eat horrible and it is down, I do my best to be better at eating and working out and it goes up. Completely driving me crazy.

Hope you are doing well!

Late for Bed

Sleep is the #1 thing to get in the way of my morning workouts. I am trying very hard to get in the morning habit because it suits the life with two active kids and a crazy schedule. 5:40 comes early for me though. (i.e. it is 10:45 PM now and I am having email conversations with 2 work people) I am dedicated to making June work for me. To do that I need to alter my evening schedule. Problem? My kids are staying up later then ever, squeezing what I am used to be able to accomplish at night into an increasingly shorter window. Plus the bad TV I would love to be able to enjoy.

June 4/Day 4 - made it to boot camp this morning and ran 2 miles this evening. So far I have run all 4 days this month. That may not sound like a lot (and it isn't - yesterday I ran 1 mile at a faster then usual pace to prove I could) but it has been hot here and any number of other excuses could have been at the ready. Even though I "already worked out" today, I still took the opportunity to run. I knew it would take me a little less then 30 minutes and I have bootcamp in the morning, so no one will care if I am sweaty tonight. This morning I ran a set of stadium stairs for the first time. Love going up, going down makes me all kids of awkward. What is up with that?



What are you doing to make this month different? Its not too late!