Races and some random weight loss stuff.

Over the weekend my family and I did another running race. Read about it herehttp://lewisnclark.blogspot.com/2010/10/muddy-monster-in-cedar-rapids-iowa.html

This race was different from anything I had ever been in. It was an off road race. It had Mud, rocks, broken up trails, huge tire ruts, MUD, sand, holes, grass, slippery spots, puddles, MUD.

Ok so I mentioned the mud. Fortunately I tried to avoid mud and puddles as much as possible and only hit a couple spots that made my shoes dirty. This was a hard race for me because

1. Not knowing what to expect, up to this point I have only ran on streets, flat grass or sidewalks, so running off road in all those conditions mentioned above were hard.

2. It hadn't rained in 4 weeks, but the night before this race rained super hard several times so there was mud and puddles everywhere.

3. I was in a costume and had never run in such a thing before. I had some running tights on below the costume, but that made me very hot and during the race I became over heated many times and had to slow down or walk fast.

As a result of all this my time was slower than my last race. I had a time of 31:02 and only placed 6th in my age group. Had I ran a usual time, like 28:02 or better like my last race, then I would have placed 3rd in my age group. Oh well I guess, so great that I finished.

I haven't run much since my half marathon, in fact maybe only twice a week I have found time to run about 3 miles each time. Running is super hard for me. I find it so great to finish, but so hard to do. I am dying each time on the inside with breathing and all the aches and pains that go with running. There are times I feel just awesome when I run, but most times it's just plain hard. I have come a long way with running because I only started running in March and back then it was only a 1/2 mile and then I was done. I slowly worked up to 3.1 miles within 2 months and from there increased it. I have a long way to go before I like running, but it's getting better each week. I just need to remember that getting good at something takes practice like everything else.

Recently I began teaching more Zumba classes. I now teach up to 8 per week. There have been weeks where I have taught 9 but no more of that hopefully. I love Zumba because it is Latin Dance and it's aerobics. You have both mixed. Some songs are all dance and some songs are just aerobic moves and some are a mix, ok most are a mix. Zumba is where I can be creative and if I want to teach an American Hip Hop song, or a country line dance I can, or I can stick to the Latin stuff the entire class. Seems like most classes I have requests for one of the hip hop songs I have taught in the past.

When I started teaching more in September and October I began some bad habits of eating. I started eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and while you would think that with all this exercise that it would be okay to have cake, ice cream, candy and other high calorie food, well it's not okay all the time and that's exactly what I've been doing.

As a result I have put on 9 pounds. OUCH. This is never a good thing and that has to change.

I always have a wake up call when the scale says 145 or higher because I don't ever want to go back to 220 and with the gaining of 2 pounds a week that's where I'll be in a year if I don't stop.

Ok, so now I've written this OUTLOUD for the world to see, so it's time to do something about it.

My goal will be like in the past when I was loosing weight. I will write down what I eat and see where it is that I cheat. I'm pretty sure it's during the middle of the day and later at night, so right now it's later at night and I wanted ice cream badly, but instead I drank a bunch of water and then put a piece of sugarless gum in my mouth. That helps, but the ice cream is still calling me.

Makes me wonder: If I ate right for an entire month and did all this exercise, what weight would I be? And how much better would I feel?

I have been feeling like a slug for 4 weeks and I know it's all about the bad eating. Sugar just brings you down. There is a natural high at first that makes you feel good, but then later you feel like garbage and are down on yourself for two reasons, the weight gain and how you feel.

So it starts now. I'm 145.6 on the home scale as of this morning. I will weigh myself next Sunday in the morning and see what it tells me.

Meanwhile in addition to writing down my food for the week I will make sure I get in 8 miles of running. 5 miles on Monday is the goal and 3 miles on Friday. The reason I picked those days is because both of those days I don't teach Zumba so I have the extra energy to run.

I just signed up for what I'm thinking is my last race this year. A Turkey Trot. It is on November 13th in Marion, Iowa. It is a 5 mile race.