Whew! After a day of approximately 24h of travel, I'm back home in the States and currently residing in Cincinnati for most of the month so that I can work and earn some money before I go back to France. This Paris trip was definitely interesting and, most importantly, taught me a lot about myself and how I function. It also served as a more or less one month break from WW. I only counted points 1 entire week and, due to circumstances outside my control, I missed all of the WW meetings I'd considered attending. That said, I still looked at what I ate and kept up with my running, but still.
Thankfully, when I stepped on the scale at home this morning, I clocked in at 171.2, meaning that I'd lost roughly 3 lbs from my weigh-in in Alabama. Nothing stellar, since I'd previously been as low as 165, but I'm elated to know that not counting, I was able to at least maintain my weight while still incorporating baguette, pain au chocolat and other French delights into my diet.
While that's a comforting thought, I'm going to set myself a goal of breaking 165 before I leave to go back to France. That's a little more than a pound a week and would at least put me on track again by breaking that plateau. Starting tomorrow (when my points tracker resets itself for the week), I'm going to get back into WW like I'm new at it. There's a meeting at 6pm tomorrow night, so I'm going to stop by and get back into it. I'm ready to knock off the rest of the weight and train up for my runs. I'm sick of running a 12-minute mile on average and I'm sick of not seeing any progress and continuing to pay for WW.
PLUS, I don't know if I told you all, but I have two new runs in my future (hopefully!). The first is almost a 100% definite run: a half marathon on November 13th in Cognac, France! My new, future roommate in Avignon has a bunch of friends there who we could stay with and I'm so into this idea of running tourism. Also, I emailed a bunch of the other language assistants and I think some of them might join too! The other possible run would be the Barcelona marathon on March 6, 2011. That'd be during one of my vacations and, hopefully, during one of the times Jon plans to visit, so we could train separately and run the same race "together." Even better is that our friends Sonita and Martin are going to be living in Barcelona this year, so we could visit them at the same time! Wins all around!
Finally, the last bonus of these two races is that they fit perfectly together training wise. I found these two plans on Runner's World (Half and Full) that I think I'm going to follow and they time out perfectly against one another if you count back from the March 6th race day. I'm really intimidated by these ideas though since my current long run is only around 6 miles.
To get this ball rolling though, I would love to get some advice from you, my lovely blog readers, on the following:
1. If you track calories (and not just points), what site(s) do you use?
2. Any fun advice for running cross training?
3. Any must-reads or key training tips for cutting down on mile times?
4. Any general long run training tips? I'm feeling SO intimidated!
Okay well, more on coming home from Paris and such later... I just wanted to tell you all that I'm back in the blogosphere in a more regular way and hope to FINALLY be giving you all some more positive weight loss feedback after a month of Parisian indulgences. :)
Can't wait to see any of your tips!
2 comments:
The only way that I would train for another marathon was if it were in Barcelona!!! Ooooo...what bliss :)
Nice loss! You must have done a fair amount of exercise. :)
I track my calories in a notebook. Entering everything into a website seems time consuming. Doing it old school, I never have an excuse to skip tracking.
I was already working out a lot when I added running to my workouts. I still ift weights three times per week, and I also bike a bit. Lifting weights is so important for runners! I enjoy biking and don't take it too seriously.
Long runs... DON'T cut them short unless you have a medical reason for doing so. Don't take excuses from yourself. Running a marathon will be hard, so get used to finishing tough runs. Don't worry about how many miles you have left. Just enjoy your run. Each mile is wonderful, and you'll miss out on the experience if you're just counting down to the end. I don't listen to music or anything, and I think it makes my runs more enjoyable.
General training tips... We'll have to get together because I could talk all day! I see you switched your Facebook city to Athens. Are you here or there?
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