Time to Catch Up

I seem to be getting worse and worse at keeping with any kind of consistency to this thing. For many months now I have been commenting (maybe complaining) about how busy I have been at work. Our project is still going on, but the ridiculous hours and definitely been reduced. I'm now down to something much more manageable. The problem is that the rest of life is getting in the way. There seems to be a lot more going on in life right now. And as I'm typing this, I'm noticing that my tendencies are to stress about one thing or another. Now that I'm not stressing about work, I'm stressing about everything else going on in life right now. Here's a bit of what is helping the rest of my hair to turn gray. Let's see, closing escrow on a new house in a month, sell or rent the existing house (and everything related to this decision), moving into the new place, picking out new flooring and kitchen designs in the new place, money, weekly appointments that take time away from work, baby/pregnancy stuff, getting in at least the bare minimum of workouts to try to have some success at this race which is now barely 2 weeks away, potentially the best shape I will ever be in for a race and the possible disappointment that it won't be as good as I want it to be, figuring out the new budget estimates, packing, decorating/furnishing/unpacking new house, etc. There are plenty of other things going through my brain, mostly when I lay in bed trying to sleep every night, but these are some of the highlights. Crazy!

Anywho, no one cares about what's causing me stress. After the crazy day I had on Saturday, I still haven't recovered. I'm not sore or anything, but it was very physically demanding. I slept 9 hours the next night and was very tired the next day. Since then, I have averaged around 6 - 6 1/2 per night and this has kept me behind on sleep. So I've definitely been a bit tired. Take that combined with everything above and it gives me less time than I would like. So this is one thing that has been left out.

I played my last softball game of the year, potentially. I've already been invited to join another fall league, but with everything else going on, I think I might need to pass. I got tons of action in left field and left center which was fun, but the other team was just way better. They crushed us 15-1. We ended the season something like 2-9. Horrible.

Monday's interval workout called for 8x800s at 5:36 (2:48) pace. As it was warmer and I wasn't into it, I didn't expect much out of this workout. I was close on most of the numbers, except the last two. Given the temps and my energy level, the results weren't too disappointing.
1 - 2:47, 168 bpm
2 - 2:50, 169 bpm
3 - 2:52, 168 bpm
4 - 2:51, 171 bpm
5 - 2:49, 170 bpm
6 - 2:54, 173 bpm
7 - 3:01, 171 bpm
8 - 2:58, 174 bpm

Today's run called for a 5 mile tempo at 6:42 pace. This is 10 seconds under race pace. My last 2 Wednesday runs have been something like 10-20 seconds faster than goal time so I expected that today would be the same. I didn't set any time goal in my head other than to push it a bit. As I mentioned before, since my workouts have been limited, I decided that I would push a bit harder. My numbers for today were faster than I thought I was capable of running. I could have easily broken 40 minutes in a 10K. I wasn't sure I was capable of that. I think I would have easily broken 19 minutes for a 5K if I was racing today. I did 5 miles in 31 minutes. That's a 6:12 pace. It was way faster than the schedule called for and I felt like I could have gone faster and/or longer if either was required. Nice!
1 - 6:24, 151 bpm
2 - 6:14, 168 bpm
3 - 6:16, 170 bpm
4 - 6:11, 174 bpm
5 - 5:55, 178 bpm

As I mentioned above, we bought a new house and move in next week. There is lots to do and decided between now and then. Most of my spare time and energy go into thinking/stressing about all this stuff. I guess I need to learn how to relax and enjoy all this stuff.

We watched The Biggest Loser tonight. The new season started this week. I haven't mentioned it in awhile, but I love this show. It is so inspirational. It motivates me so much to see these people who have struggled their entire life, who always say I can't and always choose the easy path find so much joy stepping on that scale at the end of the week, especially week 1. Even though tons of the weight is only water weight, the look of complete shock/joy at the numbers they lose is very enjoyable. They worked so hard and put themselves probably through more than they've ever been through and they get to see immediate results. This has got to be one of the greatest shows ever. They teach these people so much. I think a lot of people get themselves into trouble with their weight because they do not know a basic truth. If you want to lose weight, you have to take in less calories than expend. That's it. Simple math. Most of these people are so sedintary that their basal metabolic rate is only like 1200-1600 calories. Ok, as big as they are, it's probably higher. But still when you sit down and eat 800-1000 calories in one meal, you ate 1/2 if not more than 1/2 of the total amount you should be eating all day, especially if you are not exercising. I don't think people realize this. Once they get the basic idea of this down, they need to learn things that affect their metabolism like it's horrible to skip breakfast and glycemic indexes of food.

Maybe I should take this blog in a new direction once I finish this race. Since I will have so much spare time on my hands, I might as well take on another hobby to go along with the too many I already have. I should start adding daily, weekly, whatever posts about weight loss and was to help other people. I am so inspired by people who are able to overcome their weight problems through education and hard work. The problem is that I'm more of a teacher by example. So I'm not sure how succesful I can be at this needing to use words to motivate. Hmm, this will require some thought. Can I come up with something that will people will use as a resource to help themselves become more active and lose weight. There's so many resources out there already on the internet that I'm not sure there is need. Maybe this could be a resource to consolidate what is out there into a central location. Need some more thought and ideas on this I guess. Nothing like brainstorming as I type.

Well, this ended up being ridiculously long as I rambled on about things as they entered by head. Sorry about that. It's all because of The Biggest Loser. That shows rocks and it inspires. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it.