Running for My Sanity

I was a smoker for more than eight years. Last Thursday I was hypnotized and I am proud to say that I have not touched a cigarette since 4:54pm 9/23/10. I might not smoke cigarettes anymore but I definitely think about them. I smoked the first cigarette of the day when I left my apartment at 5:50am and had my last right before going to bed. I anxiously awaited preps and lunch periods at work and couldn't wait for 3:30 to roll around. Now that I am a non-smoker I have to take my mind off of them somehow. So I run.

I meant to go for a slow short run last night. Just something to make me forget about pausing the tv to run out for a smoke. I went over to the river and headed north. In the distance I saw the green bridge to Randall's Island and decided to go see it for the first time. The first ten minutes were pretty. Then it got weird.

View of the Triboro from Randall's Island

I ran back over the bridge and headed north. I had guzzled a lot of water by then and my bladder was displeased, but I knew I needed to keep moving. My lungs felt clear and I wasn't tired. My pace had slowed to 7'45" miles, but my legs felt fine.

It was getting dark by the time I reached 125th Street and some older men were smoking and chatting. I used to work in an unsavory neighborhood in the Bronx and I admit this has affected my gauge of dangerous situations. Although I wasn't scared I figured I should turn back before it got completely dark.

Running back towards the apartment.

My First Race in 8 Years

I ran my first race today since my Island School Half Marathon.  The Michael Trama Memorial 5K Run/Walk was held at Centre Island Beach to benefit the Trama family, who sadly lost their father to an undiagnosed tumor.  I didn't realize I was going to be around this weekend, but I came back to my parents' house, saw the race online, and showed up this morning.

I finished in 21 minutes 55 seconds, coming in 3rd for women overall and 1st in my age group.  Booyah!

Equifit

For some reason, I always get offered an Equifit when I'm overweight and out of shape. An Equifit is Equinox's fitness assessment and complimentary training session. On Tuesday I was heading into the 85th and 3rd location for Omar's class when a trainer named Morgan stopped me. I signed up for an appointment for last night. My results place me in the average range. Average? Me? Mediocrity is synonymous with death! I was able to do 25 push ups, which is good, but 30 would've been excellent. Morgan assures me he can fix this. We have our training session scheduled for Thursday, and if I can afford it I'd like to work with him once a week.

I stuck around for 8-Pack Abs with Mario Green. This half hour class is a full core workout that aims for muscle failure. I plan to incorporate it into my schedule. I kind of wanted to stay for R.I.P.P.E.D but I still feel gross from my delightful case of food poisoning.

Tonight I'm either going for a long river run or hitting up Cardio Junkie. My Equifit has reminded me that I have a lot of work to do.

Vibram

Now that I'm back in my apartment and my toe is nearly healed, it's time to break out the Vibram Five Fingers. I really like them as a commuter shoe, and wore them to and from school yesterday. They attract a lot of attention. Some girls from the high school located near the elementary school I work in were so fascinated by my footwear that they asked to take pictures of them on their phones.

I wore my Vibrams to Urban Rebounding for the first time. Terrell, the instructor, has a pair and he recommends them for this workout. I found that the class felt more difficult with them on because they don't give you the same bounce as a pair of sneakers. I think this is a good thing because I had to work my legs and core more to do the moves, therefore maximizing the time I spent in the class.

After class Terrell and I discussed how people who are knowledgeable about fitness recognize Vibram Five Fingers as a training shoe, but the rest of the population will try to make fun of you. Don't wear Vibrams if you aren't prepared to answer questions and take a little teasing.

New Tanning Bed!

The KBL America

 There's a new bed at Beach Bum Tanning in Greenvale! With a 10 minute maximum, you know the bulbs are fresh. I haven't been in a bed this high-tech since I went tanning in Paris. Um yes, I went tanning in Paris. Regularly. I have an excuse, I was depressed.

The KBL America (God I love patriotic product names!) is a cocoon of vitamin D and happiness. It has a built-in sound system and different controls located at eye level. I don't actually mess with those things (while I was in France I couldn't even understand them) but you can change the volume, music, etc. There is an aromatherapy option (gross) but (thankfully) Beach Bum hasn't put any scent in. The thing that I love about newer beds is the mist function and the KBL America has it. After about 4 minutes it mists automatically, keeping you cool, and fresh.

The KBL America is a Diamond Level bed. I think it's worth the money to tan Diamond if you don't tan as often as you did in high school.

My Feet Are So Busted I'm Embarrassed to Get a Pedicure

It's true. I'm embarrassed to let Pearl see my feet because I know what she is going to say to me. She is going to lecture me about my athletic endeavors and my insistence on wearing inappropriately cute party shoes for long stretches at a time. A few weeks ago I badly stubbed my right pinky toe during a night of debauchery. Days later I stubbed it again on one of the many baby gates that act as an obstacle course in my parents' house. Then I stubbed it on my sheets. (Didn't know that one was possible, now did you?) I have been regularly attending kickboxing, dance, sculpt, and something painful called Tabata Cardio. My right pinky toe now resembles a squashed sea slug that has been left to rot on a shadeless beach.

To compensate for my disfigured and dysfunctional toe, I think I started landing on my foot differently. This has lead to a sharp pain in my foot that screams, "Stress fractures!" to me, but what do I know? There's no visible bruising like the last time I had stress fractures in my feet, so perhaps it's not so serious.


To add insult to injury, I decided to wear the cutest, yet most ill-fitting hot pink pumps last Friday night. I was heading up to Hartford for the MML's birthday and I found a hot pink party dress in the basement. Obviously this meant that I needed to wear these adorable Bebe shoes with pink plumes with it. Only problem is that these shoes always rip up my feet (even when my feet aren't already abused), which is why I haven't worn them since high school. Trotting down Trumbull in those things was a seriously poor decision.

Today I broke out the nail clippers, nail scissors, and tweezers and dug out every ingrown nail I could find. My toenails are grossly misshapen, my blisters have callouses and my callouses have blisters, but I'm pretty confident that I will be able to attend kickboxing tomorrow night without toe pain. Now if only I could touch my toes...

Spinning

I have a weird relationship with spinning. I'll go a bunch of times, think that I am all into it, and then I don't go for 6 months or more. I went to two spin classes last week. On Friday I went to Cycle Tech with Melissa Soss and on Saturday I went to Studio Cycling with Damian Vella. I wish I could explain to you the difference between Studio Cycling and classes with fancier names, but honestly, it's all the same to me. My favorite spin instructor is Craig Eisenberg. His enthusiasm is contagious, which is really helpful when you are huffing and puffing up an imaginary hill and praying to the fitness gods that the class will end.

I never invested in a pair of cycling shoes. I hear that they make all the difference and I would probably have more efficient peddling strokes. Tim McNamara, also an Equinox cycling instructor, recommends Pearl Izumi shoes. He also says that Zappos.com is a good place to order cycling shoes from because you can order a pair in multiple sizes and return the ones that don't fit free of charge.

Sun Salutations with No Sun

So I'm not really a yoga person, but today I decided to go to Vinyasa Flow Yoga taught by Michael Aronoff. My legs have been feeling super tight lately and I have been having trouble sleeping. I've never gone to one of Michael's classes before, but he is a knowledgeable instructor and I really enjoyed it.

Today I learned that you are supposed to pick something you are grateful for when practicing sun salutations. I picked my sister. I haven't really liked my sister in the past, and I know the feeling was mutual. However, she and I have gotten along better this summer and we spent an awesome day together at the beach on Saturday. I don't think I take enough time each day to be grateful for the wonderful people and things I have in my life. If you find yourself rushing from one chaotic event to another, trade a yoga class for your normal cardio, and do some sun salutations for someone you love.

Tap & Track

I have started using my favorite iPhone app Tap & Track again. This app really helped me to hold myself accountable and lose a lot of weight this past winter and spring.
The program is very simple. You input your weight and choose a weight-loss or weight-gain program, i.e. lose 1/2 lb a week, lose 1 lb a week, gain 1 lb a week et cetera, and the app tells you how many calories you can eat that day. There are thousands of foods in the database to choose from that you add to your log. One of the newer features is a list of supermarket brand foods. It's so easy to add brand-name snack foods or your favorite cereal.
I use the Biggest Loser brand food scale to measure out items that don't come in packaged servings.  Today I ate sliced banana and sliced peaches with Fage Total yogurt. The container of yogurt said 90 calories, but I measured out my fruit slices and weighed them in grams. A food scale also makes buying in bulk much simpler. When I buy the big container of Fage yogurt, I'm obviously not going to eat the entire thing in one sitting. I can put a few spoonfuls into a bowl and figure out how many calories my serving is. The Biggest Loser food scale has a tare function, which is great for weighing out salads. You just hit tare between each ingredient and then you don't have to dirty a whole load of dishes to measure everything out.
Tap & Track has an Add Exercise function.  You choose from a list of exercises and input the duration of the activity and it calculates the number of calories you burned.  The app then recalculates how many calories you have remaining for the day.  I now use the Quick Add Calories because I get a more accurate calculation from using my heart rate monitor, but if I go for a long walk or do a fun activity, I still choose from the list.
For $3.99, this program more than pays for itself in the long run.

I actually am out of my mind.

This evening I went to the Equinox in Great Neck. Yes, I know I ran 4 miles this morning. I started with Yves' 45 minute Total Body Sculpt class. I want to push myself and develop bigger arm muscles, so today I sucked it up and threw a set of 12 lb weights out with my normal 5s, 8s, and 10s. I was able to do most of the heavy weight exercises using the 12s. I knew not to even try to do flys with them though because I ended up hurting myself when I first started using 10 lb weights. There's being insane and then there's being stupid. If I have to miss workouts because I injured myself, I get really pissed.
The hour of Cardio Kickboxing came next. I was really psyched because my friend T was there and we worked out in the front together. She motivates me to work harder. I am really impressed by how good she looks these days. Yves' kickboxing class is an amazing workout because it targets every part of your body. He added resistance bands to our mat work and I'm sure I'm going to feel it in my glutes tomorrow.
Yves' Dance Fusion class in on Tuesday nights. I don't like any of his other dance classes, but I love this one. I don't know if it's the people or the routines, but it always puts me in a good mood. I always end up leaving in the middle of the other dance classes in an awful mood. I blame the people. I am a horrible dancer and it's not like I don't know it. I stay in the back, try to stay out of people's way, and laugh at myself the entire time. Dance Fusion lets me work on improving my rhythm.  It's been slow progress.
I finished up my workout with a few sets on the abductor and adductor machines. This older gentleman was incredibly impressed that I had 185 lbs on the machine. He asked if I were a jock. I had to say no, even though I was very tempted to say yes. I burned 1,600 calories at the gym according to my Polar FT7. I burned a little over 400 calories running, but I don't trust the iPod as much as my HRM so I round down. All in all, 2,000 calories burned from exercise is something to smile about.
I had 16 ounces of coffee and a protein shake made with almond milk before I went to the gym (205 calories) so I figured I should have a substantial dinner. Not eating enough actually screws with your metabolism and you thwart your weight loss efforts. My family had tacos for their dinner so I used the leftover ingredients to create this:

So I ate my dinner out of a mixing bowl.  Shoot me.
Please ignore my cat Coly's behind in the background.