July Challenge

I was going to make this month's challenge about food since I have done so many workout ones lately. But here's the problem.  We are just beginning our kitchen remodel, so therefore, no kitchen this month.    I am going to have to come up with as many, raw, no-bake, healthy meals as possible and we are going to have to eat out more than we have in a long time.  I guess I'm going to have to do a lot of research on healthy foods at restaurants.  We have been eating out maybe once a week for a couple of months now, so this is going to be interesting.  Anyways, so I decided to do yet another fitness challenge.  One of my many goals is to be able to run a half marathon by the end of the year.  So my challenge for this month is to work my way up to a 10 mile run.  The last time I ran that distance was 13 years ago.  Good old Saturday morning cross-country practices.  Coach would send us out to run and say, don't come back for 2 hours.  To be completely honest, there were times I didn't run the whole two hours which explains why I usually finished 4th or 5th on the varsity team instead of 1st or 2nd, but I had fun.  It's weird, back then I actually was practicing for a race, but I feel like I am more motivated and dedicated now. I guess that's just what happens with old age.

To accomplish this goal, I plan on adding a mile to my distance run each week.  Last week I ran 7 miles on Saturday morning, so that is where I will start.  7, 8, 9, then 10.  We will see if these old knees can hold up that long.  It's been 10 years since all of the knee surgeries and they haven't really bothered me running so far, so hopefully they are strong enough now.  In between each long run, I'll still do short runs and weight lifting.  Most importantly, I'll be doing my best to eat right this month.  "You lose weight in the kitchen, you get fit in the gym".  I change that to , "You get healthy in the kitchen, You get fit in the gym".  Challenge #5 is on.

#1- no cokes
#2- no eating out
#3- work out 5 hours a week
#4- run 10 miles a week
#5- run 10 miles at once

7/3/12
July is over and all I can say is "goal accomplished".  It wasn't easy, but I got a 10 mile run in this month.  I'd like to thank my sis-in-law for running 8 miles the day before to give me the motivation to beat her.  Beat that Amber! I learned a lot of lessons with this challenge.  Most important one is that I'm not 18 anymore.  I can't just go out and run 10 miles on 4 hours of sleep, nothing to drink or eat that morning, and without having run 10 miles in 12 years.  I felt great during the run. My legs got pretty sore by the end, but I wasn't really breathing hard.  Even an hour after the run, I felt fine.  My mom and nana were in town, so we decided to go out to breakfast.  Waiting for our food, I started feeling bad.  I barely made it to the bathroom before blacking out.  I couldn't even see the door to open it, I had to feel for it.  I sat down on the floor as soon as I got in the bathroom to keep from falling on my face.  Apparently I looked pretty bad to the 3 ladies in the room because they were afraid to leave me in there.  One went back and told the waitress about me, who brought some fresh squeezed orange juice to the bathroom for me to drink.  Haha, you can imagine the looks on people's faces when they walked into the bathroom and saw me sitting on the floor drinking orange juice, white as a sheet.  Embarassing! I survived it, went home, took a nap and ate breakfast.  The important thing here is that I finished my challenge and learned my lesson.  Sleep is important.  Water is important.  And eating at least something is important before a long run.  I also learned that I like running long distance again and am ready to train for a half-marathon.  I figured out that I burned about 1200 calories on that run.  Felt like I could eat as much as I want that day. Good feeling!