Bursitis... are you kidding me??

I'm feeling pretty crappy today, because I'm realizing that I most likley have bursitis in my left hip. I've been having this stinging pain on the outside part of my hip joint since Thursday. It hurts when I sit for too long, hurts when I walk, and hurts a lot when I try to sleep. I've been taking my mondo ibuprofen pills (which I hate to take), and trying to rest as much as possible. Looked up the symptoms today, and it looks like it's bursitis (an inflammation of the bursa sac on my hip).

And I'm just like, "what the heck?!" First it's stupid plantar fasciitis, which made me feel like there's no way I could ever run. Then I decide to run anyway, and lo and behold the foot pain starts to go away (correspondingly, I'm losing weight, so I know that helps). I get off the ibuprofen pretty much entirely, start to gain a little confidence in my ability to run a 5k in a few months, and now this. Pretty much excruciating hip pain, and nothing I can do about it except anti-inflammatory medicine, ice packs, and rest.

I just want to be healthy. I want to use my body, and I want to enjoy my life and this beautiful weather that's coming up. I want to be out there, doing stuff, accomplishing something new that I never thought I could do. I guess this is a time when I can envoke my old saying: "Did you think this was going to be easy?" Well, yes, I did think this was going to be easy, as a matter of fact. I thought I could make myself healthy with will and determination, but apparently my fat old butt will need a little extra t.l.c. before it'll become a full-fledged runner.

Okay, so deep breath. Good points? I'm okay, and this will most likely pass with a little bit more rest and ibuprofen. In order to stay healthy when I can't exercise, I'll have to pay more attention to what I'm eating. This is an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with my love for delicious and nutritious food. No more chocolate chip cookies here and there because "I'll exercise it off after all" ...for now. Gotta roll with the punches--er, the "lessons." This one is bothering me, but I can handle it.

Quick Thoughts

(Most days I don't feel like writing a big blog post, but I figure I can always spare a few sentences... So some days, I'm going to post some Quick Thoughts, and the bigger blogs will be interspersed between)


Running yesterday was splendid. My legs feel strong and tired, my lungs feel bigger. I'm starting to look at various paths around when I'm driving, thinking "I wonder if I could run that..." seeing people out walking or running, and being jealous.

I'm also starting to be startled by my body. Like, feeling under my chin, and there's no skin to grab there. My shoulders feel muscle-y and boney... I know it's what I was aiming for, but it's weird. It's like, who is this body around me? It's somebody else!

20-Minute Run & Running Outside

Last you heard from me, I was gearing up for my 20-minute run, and I had just accomplished my first 8-minute run. Well, the next day I prepared for that 20-minute run all day. I meticulously prepared 31 minutes of a running play list, I ate the food that I felt would be best, and most importantly I tweeted my butt off, letting everybody know what I was about to do, and asking them to hold me accountable to doing it. My dear sweet husband tweeted back words of encouragement, and when I saw that I knew I had to do it.

The time came, and I was pumped. You have to understand that running for 8 minutes two days before had been truly hard for me, and I couldn't conceive of how my body would physically do 20 minutes nonstop. Still, I set out to do it. I ran. I listened to my music, watched bits of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves with the sound down, and I just ran. When I needed to get a drink or wipe sweat, I told myself that somehow this was a *break,* like I could pretend while I was doing those things that I wasn't running, and somehow that made sense.

There were some times during that run when I had to tell my heart to relax. I was asking more of it than perhaps I ever had before, and it had been taken by surprise. It was pumping hard to get oxygen to everywhere it was needed, and I was having this little inner monologue with it, saying "Thanks for the hard work, keep it up, but don't freak out. This will be over soon, and we can rest." I also had to purposefully breathe. I remember learning that the physiological cue that makes us breathe is not so much the oxygen that is needed as it is the carbon dioxide that needs to get OUT of our body lest we die. Knowing this, I would purposely breathe out deeply, before then breathing in. I wanted to replace all the residual CO2-ey air in my lungs with more O2-ey air.

Somehow it worked. Twenty minutes passed, than thankfully I had run the whole time. It was a miracle.

___________________________________________________________

Skip ahead to this past Saturday night. While watching the Big East Championship game (which WE WON! Woohoo!) at the timeshare condo at Canaan, I started thinking that tomorrow morning would be a good time to start trying to run outside. I commenced to making a playlist on my phone during commercial breaks. 

When the shortest day of the year dawned (stupid Daylight Savings Time), I set the big kid in front of cartoons with a bowl of cheese goldfish and a cup of water, and I went outside. It was cold, like 40. I wasn't sure how much I was going to be able to run outside on the real ground--"through space running"--as the Gomers say, so I just did a 5-minute warm up walk, and then gave it a go. 

Turns out, running outside is DAMN hard. Shew! I later drove the lap around the condo complex to find that one lap was 0.5 miles. I did 3 laps (1.5 miles), and a total of 1 of those was running (split into 3 chunks). That's all I was able to do that day. I felt good about it, but also daunted. I was thinking, "Wow, this 5k is really going to be hard." 

However, I had known this. The treadmill was only a starting point, and a necessary one for me, but eventually I was going to have to learn how to run 3+ miles continuously actually outside. 

So today, a week later, I decided to change the course of action on my Running Plan, and just back up a few weeks on the Couch to 5k plan, to where I thought I would be able to accomplish the requisite runs outside. Looking at my app, I saw that Week 4 Day 2 was "3 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes" (with short walks in between), and I figured I could handle that. I set up a fun running mix and set to it. Here are pictures of my views on this beautiful woody trail behind my work that I am blessed to have available: 

While I was out doing this run, my phone rang. It was a lady calling to urge me to call Congressman Rahall about the Health Care bill. She said that I sounded "very busy," and I said "I'm out exercising on this beautiful morning!" She said that indeed, it is a "gorgeous day." I told her I'd already called the congressman, and that I hoped she got to get out there to enjoy this beautiful day, too. It felt really good saying that to a stranger. She doesn't even know that a year ago, my biggest activity on a day like this might be to drink a beer in the sunshine ...and hey, I might do that before the day is out too!

My Running Plan

It looks like this running thing is really going to happen for me. I have been doing this Couch to 5k program for many weeks now, and am now on the latter end of Week 5. I repeated Day 1 of Week 5 several times over the last few weeks because I was dreading Day 2, which included two 8-minute runs. When I had started 3-minute runs, it was hard. Five-minute runs were next, and they were also hard. My mind looped around and around the thought of an 8-minute run, and wasn’t anxious to attempt it.

Well, yesterday was one of those Good Days. The kind of day when you know that it’s all in your mind, and if your mind is in the right place, you can do anything. With this in mind, I set out to do the 8-minute runs, and I knew that I wouldn’t die doing it. I didn’t die; in fact, I finished the whole workout, and when the guy in my ear said “cool down,” I was relieved, but I wasn’t dying to be done. 

I had been thinking the next day on the schedule (Week 5 Day 3) would be basically a repeat of yesterday's workout, but I am surprised to see that it requires a 20-minute run. Wow, that's a lot more than 8 minutes, but somehow I know that I will do it. I'm realizing now that this Couch to 5k plan at Week 5 is morphing from a "couch-sitter" plan to a "beginner runner" plan. These remaining weeks will be more of the short run-short run-long run type weeks of a regular style running plan. 

Okay, so I'm on board. I'm going to do this. And, my official 5k Race is on June 12th. I finally decided to sit down and look at my remaining weeks, and to fill them with actual running plans. I have 13 weeks to the race, and I'm putting in my plan already that I'm going to repeat each remaining week of the Couch to 5k program. After that I'll do a 6-week modified Beginner 5k running program. For specifics, here's what I've got:

I'll post the rest of my plan later, but for now I want to say that up until this point in the training I will be focusing merely on "minutes run," ending with being able to run for 30 minutes straight. I'll be able to use the C25k App on my iPhone to complete this, as the guy in my ear will always be telling me when to run and when to walk based on how many minutes have gone by. When I get to the end of the C25k training, I will not yet be able to run an actual 5k distance (which is 3.1 miles), because my speed will be slower than the 6 miles per hour required to run a 5k in 30 minutes. 

After I've completed the C25k training, I'll do my next 6 weeks of training based on miles run, and I'm going to figure out the best plan for working up to being able to run a 5k in a reasonably slow time (45 minutes, maybe?). I'll figure out where to put in fartlek runs (yeah, I can't believe that term either, but it's true; it's apparently Swedish for "speed play"), intervals, and tempo runs. I'm not even sure what all of these are yet, but I have some time to figure it out. 

Sorry for this plan-heavy post, but you know me. I'm a planner. And I need some accountability. So catch up with me sometime around the end of April, and see if I really am finishing Week 9 of the Couch to 5k program. Thanks!

Why am I Ravenous?

It's almost lunchtime, and I have been chomping at the bit to eat since about ten o'clock. In fact, I don't think I'll be able to write all this until after I get some food in my belly. For now though, I'm thinking: why the heck do I feel this way right now? My first inclination was emotions. Sometimes a particular day will have me feeling down, and I want to quell that feeling with fatty and huge quantities of food. I thought about this though, and unlike in my past, I'm actually able to assess my self now. I know that I'm not feeling down. It's Friday, I had a great breakfast, and I feel like I have some direction and purpose today.

I've thought of two facts that may have led me to this feeling this morning:
1. I ate mostly carbs last night
2. I had no coffee this morning



Now I am back from lunch, where I did my best to eat right, but DAMN I was hungry. I went to Wendy's. Had a fish sandwich--no added cheese this time--and a Caesar side salad. I splurged by actually eating the croutons. They're not too bad, but none are as good as Bryan's home-made croutons dripping with olive oil. It was very hard to leave there without a pack of fries, a baked potato, or a frosty, but I managed.

So, lack of coffee probably had an effect on me this morning, but I'm hesitant to point to it as the main culprit. Yes, coffee gives me a bit of an appetite suppressant in the morning, delaying my need for breakfast for awhile. Coffee also makes me happy, which probably causes me to not feel like eating emotionally. These are all good reasons, but I just don't like the idea of coffee controlling me. Also, it's slightly depressing to remember this morning, coffee-less. It was sad.

On to the carb issue last night. At 5:30 I was headed back to work to take a quiz online, and told myself that I couldn't funciton without something to eat, and God help me if I had to have another friggin granola bar when all I wanted was something savory. Thus, I stopped at Tudor's and got pinto beans and cornbread. In itself, not horrible for me. Beans are good, cornbread not so much.

When I got home though, Bryan had ordered an extra special delicious (and slightly more nutritious) pizza, so I had to partake. I had 2 slices of Domino's new (and really great) pizza with: no sauce, chicken, spinach, and red peppers. It was great. Very salty and wonderful.

When the kids were in bed, I shouldn't have, but I rewarded myself with a stupid cupcake. Five days old and slightly smooshed, it lacked luster and I knew it would. I devoured it anyway. So goes the life of a sweets addict. Later, Bryan brought out the fancy chocolates, which I have told myself EVERY night are not really that delicious to me. They're too blah, and nothing like a good old fashioned Reese's egg. Still, I ate 3. Chocolates are wicked; 3 of them are like 175 calories.

So, last night was carbs, carbs, and more carbs. Carbs are like the crack of food. They suck you in, you consume 10x more than you meant to, and a few hours later they are begging you for company from their tiny graves in your stomach. (There are "good" carbs, of course, but pizza, old cupcakes and crappy chocolate do not qualify).

Today's lesson learned: Fill my belly with vegetables, low-fat proteins, not too much fat, and only reasonable kinds and amounts of carbs. Gotcha!

I'm on to my repeat of Week 4 Day 3 of Couch to 5k training this afternoon. I am going to rock it today. It's going to be one of those days where nothing can stop me.

Maintaining, in the Stages of Changes form of the word

Well, it’s been over two weeks now since I’ve created a blog entry. Two more weeks of plugging away at this new lifestyle, getting used to it. In one of my classes this semester, I’m learning about the theory of behavioral change called “Stages of Change,” and it’s interesting to see that I’ve been going through these stages unbeknownst to myself, and I have fit each one pretty well. The theory is usually applied to health behaviors like smoking, eating badly, not exercising, and doing drugs. These are the “negative health behaviors,” and the change is how close a person is to ending the behavior for good.

The Stages of Change basically start out with precontemplation, where the person is not considering changing in the next 6 months. They are pretty resistant to the thought of it, and/or are unaware of the health benefits of change, and likewise the health consequences of what they’ve been doing. When a person moves on to contemplation, they are considering making the change in the next 6 months. Then they go into preparation, then action (when they actually stop doing the behavior), then 6 months later move into maintenance.

I had basically been stuck in contemplation for several years before I moved on to action. When I was pregnant with Zene, especially, I said the whole time that as soon as he was out (at which time I would be pretty certain I wasn’t having any more babies), I would start eating right and exercising. I talked it up pretty big to myself the whole pregnancy, thinking that would make me really do it when the time came. Well, the time came and went, and I didn’t do anything. Couldn’t find time to exercise; fatty and huge quantities of food tasted better to me than the alternative.

The whole time though, I was contemplating… I had done strange little things, like I decided I would no longer buy bigger t-shirts. At first, I was just saying “I won’t move to 2XL. I will not be a person who has to wear 2XL, ever." So, I didn’t. And even though I didn’t lose any weight, I soon told myself I was no longer buying XL t-shirts either. I would buy Large shirts, and they didn’t fit me very well, but my thought was that I would eventually shrink into them. If I didn’t, I could at least be showing off my huge fatty guns, back, and belly, and in some way be proud of them. I didn’t want to be ashamed of my body, and I also didn’t want to buy XL t-shirts. True, I did have a lot of larger shirts around, and I used the heck out of them… just didn’t buy any.

I also just had a general sense that eventually in my future, I was going to be lean and healthy and feel great. I knew it was coming, I just couldn’t see ‘round the corners ahead to see when it was going to happen. I have been planning for years that when I get old I would be like Nanny. I will be in shape, riding bikes and swimming laps and whatever I could do to keep myself moving and healthy. I want to be one of those active older ladies. I don’t want to live the last several years of my life in a living room chair. Or, maybe I will, but that will be when I’m in my nineties. I look forward to those days, actually, but I just want to make sure that I live a lot before then.

So that brings me to today. With 6 months under my belt, I’m officially in maintenance, Stages of Change-wise. According to my text book, “maintenance is the stage in which people have made specific, overt modifications in their lifestyles and are working to prevent relapse ... They are less tempted to relapse and are increasingly more confident that they can continue their changes.” I am indeed increasingly more confident; I know that this is the life for me. I eat what I want to when I really really want to, but most of the time I eat smart. I love exercising, and I know that as long as I continue doing it I will continue to love it. It is only people who don’t exercise who think that exercising sucks.

And check out my new graph. I know, it’s funny to be this braggedy when I’m still many pounds over 200, which is hard for healthy (or just thin) people to imagine ever being… but this is a big thing for me. I’m getting closer and closer to the <200 mark. I’m looking very forward to it, as does everyone who loses weight after having been out of control for a long time. Here I am, maintaining in the Stages of Changes form of the word. Maintaining my lifestyle, and continually adapting to my new self. I love it. I feel great. 

An emo music-filled running day

To quote a term that the kids are using these days, I'm feeling a little "emo" this afternoon. For those of you who don't happen to know any young hipsters, I'll tell you to the best of my knowledge: picture Edward from Twilight. Brooding, sullen, for no particular reason.

I had been pretty nervous about today, because Week 4 has me doing 5 minute runs. Up to now the most I had done was 3 minutes, and that was pushing it.

So anyway, picture a brooding and sullen me. Entering the afternoon with little expectation of extraordinary achievement or even satisfaction. Time ticks on, 3:30 comes around, and it's time to do Week 4 Day 1 of the Couch to 5k challenge. "Oh well. Whatever. I'll do it, but I don't have to like it." I pop in my earbuds and head to the gym. I decide that I'm way too moody to watch any silly movie while I run, so I'll just listen to my emo running mix, stare at the wall, and brood. 

Listening to music on shuffle is like inviting the hand of God onto your iPod. I don't know if he's really taking time to make me a running mix, but my mind certainly can put him in there, giving me little messages with each subsequent song. The first song was a Tab Benoit song from a mix from our friend Matt, and has Matt's voice at the beginning saying "Let's go..." It was lighthearted and just good pure steel guitar music. Wonderful for getting the heart pumping. Next was Genesis' Mama, and I was drumming those slow chunky beats in the air as I ran my first short run. Not sure how the next few songs transpired, but U2's Where the Streets Have no Name was definitely in there. Medeski, Martin, and Wood's Let's Go Everywhere came up too, and I almost skipped it, but it reminded me of my kids: "don't forget to call your mama!" Rush's Tom Sawyer got me to the end of the workout, Neal Pert's drumming never ceasing to thrill me, as always.

The two 5-minute runs in this workout were difficult, don't get me wrong. But they were do-able because I was focused on music. I even turned up the speed halfway through each of them, because the music was just pulling me forward. I let the screen go off on my phone at the beginning of the workout, and never turned it back on. I am usually betting myself not to look at the screen, and this time I just didn't care. 

As the after-workout cool down walk was completing, a rockin' song came on. It was Depeche Mode's A Pain that I'm Used To (from their newer album, Playing the Angel). I decided to start the song over at the end of the official workout, and ran three and a half extra minutes to that song before doing another few minutes of cool down. 

So, Week 4 Day 1 complete. I guess being emo can be beneficial sometimes.