Rough Month

Since I wrote the post on the Color Run, we ended up not being able to go because I had to have a procedure done the day before that made walking painful so we had to sit it out which made me  really sad.  I have slowly been getting my speed and my endurance back up since the weather started warming back up and hurt my ankle due to some tight calves on April 15th doing a group run with one of the local running stores.  I made an appointment for the Campbell Clinic for April 18th but ended up going up to Nashville a day early because my father had a heart attack so I had to cancel it.  I have rescheduled with a physical therapist for Wednesday of next week to hopefully get some exercises, stretches and things I should do to help alleviate some of this pain.  I'm also going to have them check on arm and shoulder since it is giving me some issues as well.

I don't have a memory of my father being sick so seeing him in the hospital was a surreal experience and has put some of my own health perspectives in line.  In February, I went to the doctor to have an all around physical done and found out that my cholesterol was a little high as were my triglycerides so I made a conscious decision to start changing and being more diligent about my eating habits and the foods I put into myself.  After this weekend and the family scare, I want to make even bigger and better changes for myself and my little family.

I've been doing a lot of reading on heart healthy diets, diets that seem to be the best overall for losing weight, and those that are good for long term, lifestyle changes.  One of the major things is that it needs to be something that is sustainable in the long run.  It has been interesting to me that many of these diets share the same underlying principle: lean meats, dark leafy greens, variety of colors for your vegetables along with a variety of colors in your fruits, and minimizing grain intake, soda consumption, and sugar consumption.  I'm glad that I am already doing some of these things but I can't wait to incorporate more healthy living and eating choices into my life to have a healthier way of living.

Color Run

I'm really excited!  I'm doing my first color run this Saturday here in Memphis and I'm doing it with my husband.  Tristan started working out at the beginning of the year but has fallen off track due to extremely cold and bad weather and getting a really bad respiratory infection; however, he is still going to do this with me since it is a fun run and you aren't really timed.  I'm going to bring my camera with me and hopefully get some really awesome shots of us both acting crazy in color.

Oh the pains

One of the things that I am learning about working out so much is the amount of pain or at least muscle soreness I experience nearly daily. After reading about how it is not always effective to take a pain reliever for your muscles, I started looking into alternative methods of relief.  I have found an intense love for my heating pad and have discovered the awesomeness that is massage balls.  The ones I have are pictured below.  So far the spiky one is the only one I've used.  I don't do the hot or cold thing with it yet but I have to deal with a dog that is obsessed with balls so I have to use these things covertly.

I am still having some shin pain even though I bought some new shoes.  This weekend I was going to look at some compression gear but because of some family emergencies I was not able to.  I'm starting to wonder if I need to either: a) start some leg/calf strengthening exercises on top of everything I am doing in kickboxing or b) have my legs examined in case there is a bigger problem going on.  We do this hopping thing to Tina Turner's Proud Mary in my Wednesday night kickboxing class and it is a full 2 minutes of hopping and it just kills the front part of my legs like shooting rockets of fire are coming up from my ankles. The good news on that though is that they get better each time that I do them.

Throughout this exercising journey, I have found a ton of pains.  Leg pains, back pains, knee pains, neck pain, etc. however,  I have also discovered the joy of when something used to hurt so bad and doesn't anymore.  The feeling of utter accomplishment that happens with that is amazing.  I still have a lot of room for improvement (planks are still an enemy of mine most days especially when we do reverse plank) so this journey isn't going to come to an end any time soon.

Only $14.99 at Target!

New Year, New Goals

I simply CANNOT believe it has been over 3 months since I have updated this thing!  That is just crazy to me as I was pretty good about doing this when I first started writing this thing.

There have been some changes since I last wrote here.  Tristan and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary in New Orleans and had an extremely amazing time doing some amazing things. I kind of freaked out because they thought we were going to see some hurricane action, not talking about the drink here folks, but all we say from it was rain. During the holiday season, I tried doing a mile a day running streak but the flu had different plans for me.  I actually got the flu for the first time since I was a teenager and it sucked.  At that doctors appointment, I was tested for asthma and found out I actually have asthma.  I suspected this once it got cold out because I would come home from a run all wheezy like so I'm super glad to have an inhaler for this now.

Since getting the inhaler, I haven't ran nearly as much as I would like although that has been more of a weather thing than anything else.  This morning for instance it was 17 degrees when I woke up and that cold air just hurts my lungs so I can't really run.  Shelly and I have started doing a 20 minute walk since the GPS on my phone didn't really work in the concrete slab that is our building so we can't say we just walk a mile.  I am pretty sure it is a little over a mile but since I can't really figure that out without pulling out the building schematics we just do the 20 minutes before kickboxing.

One of the biggest things to have happened since the last time I wrote was that I did a 5k in under 35 minutes.  I'm still having a hard time processing this fact.  That day was a perfect day for running though.  It was about 55 degrees outside, bright and sunny, and I did a different route that was so flat compared to my normal route.  The pups and I just wanted to keep going and it was awesome.  Since that day, I haven't been able to match that speed because of some shin pain but I have no doubt I will be close to that again soon.

So here are my goals for fitness in 2014:

Run between 500-750 miles this year.  I gave myself a range because I have pledged to do at least 500 in a virtual run that is to get people from all over the world to pledge miles to be able to say that as a group we ran to Venus. I know that is corny but I thought it was a cool idea.  My ultimate goal is 750 which is a little over the distance from Memphis to the Canadian border.

Train for and run my first Half-Marathon.  I want this to be done at Shelby Farms Park in October.  This summer I will probably be changing my runs on Saturdays to runs in the park and that makes me uber excited about it.

Do 4 kickboxing classes every week.  This will be my 3rd week of doing at least 4 classes a week and I can already tell a big difference.

Add more fruits and vegetables to the diet.  In order to do this, I started making smoothies in the morning as my breakfast during the work week and trying to add more veggies to our suppers since we have leftovers for lunch every day.  I'm still working on adding more veggies to dinner but this is a growing process lol

Thanks for reading my rambles.