Step Away From the Cake

My legs are still aching this morning. I'm really pushing them apparently. Tomorrow there is 6 miles on the schedule so I decided to take a rest day today. I want to see what the legs can do on some good nutrition and some rest. So today I will take it easy. I want to take some photos so I may go walk around and do that today. That will be a nice relaxing thing to do. So even though I know how evil processed, packaged food is for you, some things still call my name. Yesterday it was Nutter Butter wafer cookies. Those are my absolute weakness and yesterday I succumbed . In my defense, it's been about 3-4 months since I've had any. If I had them any more often I'd have to seriously consider some diet pills to stop me from eating. Other than that my food and water were fabulous so overall I consider it a good day. So it's a beautiful day, perfect for taking pictures. I'm going to shower and head out for some photo adventures.

I think that's what's going here. My last couple of runs have been after my strength training. My strength training is two workouts, front and back. One day I focus on the chest, shoulders, quads. The next day is back, hams, etc. Both have cardio intervals, things like jumping jacks, step ups, etc. So I do front one day, back the next day, then a cardio day. Wash, rinse, repeat. I do that for 5 days. On Saturday I generally hike or do my long run. On Sundays, either the long run or something fun. So that's my workout schedule. On Wednesday and again today, I did my strength training and then went for my run. Both days my legs have felt like crap. Heavy, tired, weak. I did 5 miles on Wednesday and put a lot of it up to the distance. In my strength training today I felt really good. Strong. I was able to really push the workout this morning, take it to the next level. When I headed out on my run my legs felt really bad. Worse than Wednesday after my 5 miles.

I am the type of person that needs to know things. I can't just go with 'that's the way it is' well, I can sometimes but not often. A couple of years back I discovered the problem with my sweet tooth. All my life it seemed that my sweet tooth controlled me. I would start eating sweets and I literally could not stop. I would eat until I full and still continue to eat. Then, in a short period of time, I learned a couple of things. I have hypoglycemia and processed food make me crazy. Also, I have underdeveloped taste buds. That means I could never find something to satisfy my sweet cravings. Once I understood these things the power shifted. Before I would wonder why I just couldn't get enough of sweets and could never satisfy my cravings for sweets. Now I know what's going on and I have control. That's exactly how I feel with the knowledge I gained last weekend. I really want to shout it from the roof tops, those packaged, processed foods are n

I need a new watch. I've been wearing a Timex Ironman watch since I seriously started training a couple 4 years ago. Even though it's pink I'm done with it. I rarely do things that require my timing it, plus I'm not going to throw the watch away, I'll still have it if and when I need it. But I use my Garmin for running. I have a computer on my bike. I don't swim at all lately. Why exactly do I need this watch that has a 100 lap memory and various timing modes? I'm not even in the lab anymore where I need to time tests. So that's it. I'm done with it. But I'm also unemployed. What's a girl to do?? Well, I did what any computer savvy, smart woman would do. I headed over to buy.com to see what they had on sale . Earlier this year I got the camera I carry with me there for such a fabulous price I was talking about it for days. So I went a looking. Okay, so truthfully I also looked at the Wii because I'm a child at heart but

I have nothing going on today so I decided to focus on workouts. I didn't get my run in Sunday because I was busy, I didn't get it done Monday because of my food issues on Sunday. Yesterday I had school and didn't have time for a run. Today seemed like a good candidate. I did my strength training then headed out for 5 miles. I didn't have any kind of goal I just wanted to cover 5 miles. It was ugly. But I got the 5 miles in. Much of it was walking because my strength training was leg heavy today, but I got it done. I'm pleased. Now I must shower and figure out what to do with the rest of my day :)

but I thought I'd share since I know how everyone is into record keeping. A while ago I downloaded Mozilla Sunbird which is basically an online calendar. I've have it set to load when I turn my laptop on so it's the first thing I see. I entered all my workouts for the month. I turn on my laptop, up pops Sunbird, and I know what I'm supposed to do the next morning. Then there's a place where I can make notes about what I did and how the workout went. I really love it and it's becoming a real handy tool for me. Just thought I'd pass on the info.

Yea!!!! The schools started back today and I went to the high school I'm placed in. I went there because I'll be teaching more this semester so I want there just to be in the class more and because I have nothing to do. Then I had a job interview. It's teaching pathos physiology at a vocational medical school. It would only be a couple of hours a week but it'd be good experience. We'll see. I don't know if I want to take it or wait and see if something else comes along. On the workout front, today was much better then yesterday. Because I had to be at school by 8 I was up by 4:30. Got my strength training and 20 minutes on the elliptical in. It felt great. It's amazing what a difference nutrition can make. I ate really well yesterday and this morning felt like a million dollars. So that is something I have to remember at all times. Even when things are crazy I have to make a priority to eat well. Today I had to be in school by 8, which means I

So what is the aftermath of a day of eating like I did yesterday? Zero energy. I tried to work out and my blood sugar went crazy 2 minutes into it. I stopped and let things calm down and tried again. Within 2 minutes my blood sugar was all over the place again. I realized that it was not going to happen today. I packed it in, made a nice high protein breakfast and am trying to decide what to do now. So not only do you eat way more calories then you should, you don't have the nutrition to run your body. I will now have to spend the day eating really well to balance things out again. This sucks. This is the best reason I've come across to eat right.

I am absolutely sure of it. There is no doubt in my mind. It's happened to me twice and I am positive I am right. Let me explain. Yesterday ended up being a very strange day. I had a lot of things to do in a fairly short amount of time. I know, I've been screaming all week that I was bored I could have done some of the things then, but I didn't. Anyway, I got up and worked out right away, that was good. Then I jumped into cleaning the house. I had to scrub Grumpy's cage down because I was taking him to his new owners. That took longer then expected. I finished cleaning the house only to discover that it was time to get ready and leave for my bird club meeting. The one thing I hadn't done all morning was eat. We had this cinnamon crumb cake around so I grabbed a piece on my way out the door. The bird club meeting is a pot luck so I figured I'd eat something there. The problem with that plan is that there was no protein. I had macaroni salad, lil'