No More Stress!

I had a little mini revelation over the weekend. It was about my life in general, but running and working out played a part. 

I've been overloading myself, spreading myself too thin with favors for other people, or saying yes to too many things. Turning 30 recently has given me a much stronger sense of what my priorities are, and what I want to spend my time on and vice versa. I spent the last couple of days sending emails and making phone calls to cull a lot of the unnecessary things from my life, and it has made me a lot less stressed and happier already.

One of the biggest committments I had made for myself was the training for the half marathon this summer. Having trained for a halfie before, and knowing that I have knee issues, and not wanting to hurt myself by running too far too soon, I knew I needed to be very strict about sticking to the training schedule, and increase mileage gradually. There are only a certain number of weeks before the big race, and I didn't have any time to flub the schedule or I would end up hurting later.

Well, finding time to fit in long runs, even on the weekends, just isn't always possible for me right now. Yes, most days at work I have time to go for a short run on my lunch break. But sometimes meetings get scheduled, sometimes I have to work through lunch. And feeling like I was screwing up my training schedule was stressing me out.

Two weekends ago, I ran a 5K with a friend just for fun, and it occurred to me that I can do these shorter races, have a blast participating, and keep up with my running in a way that is *gasp* enjoyable and not one more thing that is an item on my to-do list. Running was becoming one more chore to get through every day; working out in general, it was just something else I HAD to do, more work, and so rather than relieving any stress it was making me more miserable, and so I was skipping it often and then feeling guilty.

Ugh, Enough!!

So, the half marathon is scrapped. I hadn't registered yet anyway, so good. There are a TON of super-fun looking 5K and even 10K races in the San Francisco area all the stinkin' time, and lots of great trails and paths to run on where I live. I do enough work and I have enough stress. I want running, and working out, to be a fun thing that I do, I need more fun things in my life. And once I ditched the self-imposed pressure and stress, suddenly, it seemed that way again.  

Sick Baby = Sad Mama

Little Miss Pants has had the flu this week, which makes Mama very sad. Luckily, there was no vomiting involved, but she had a high fever and has been congested and sad. We took her into the doctor when she peaked at 105.6, but the Doc said that she looked okay, and to keep giving her Tylenol and Motrin, and to watch. The fever broke yesterday and we've been running the humidifier almost non-stop. She's not sleeping the best and so she's cranky, but is otherwise starting to get back to herself again.

What has made this extra hard is that on Wednesday morning, as it became suddenly clear that she was sick, Shawn was on his way out the door for a trip to Anaheim with his band until Monday. He felt really guilty leaving, but her being sick wasn't an emergency and his trip had been planned for months. It's been stressful to not have him here to help, but his mom has been amazing, coming over during the day to help me with Violet so that I could get some work done from home and not have to go into the office.

She insisted on holding the medicine bottle. Thank goodness for child-proof caps. We had a Caillou marathon this week.

The upside was that I got some baby-cuddles at night, because the only way to get her to sleep long stretches was just to take her in bed with me, because she needed the comfort. So that was nice and snuggly.

What this has also meant is that my fitness plans have been derailed by a week. I didn't get to do any exercise for a week, and when I finally got into the gym yesterday afternoon and went for a run, I could feel the absence.

I haven't blogged much about it here, but I have been on a quest to return to my pre-baby weight before I hit my 30th birthday in March. Which means not taking a day off until then and losing somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 lbs a week. Honestly, not an unreasonable goal. But kicking oneself in the pants to get the snowball rolling on motivation and good habits can include the occasional misstep, and those become all the more frustrating when I can hear the clocking ticking away to March 11.

But I had one of my revelations this morning -- the number on the scale matters less than the ability to fit back into my old clothes again. So perhaps I should measure my success by what fits instead of that digital readout every morning. That thought was the bump I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and refocus on target training my trouble spots, toning up, getting in shape.

I want to be a fit, happy, healthy mama, sexy and confident and excited about life, because Violet will learn my attitudes, and the last thing I want is my own personal struggle with body image, occasional bouts of semi-depression, and just that adult disenchantment with life to negatively affect her world view.

I'm sure she'll develop her own neuroses in time, she doesn't need any of mine. :)

Hot Fun in the Almost-Summertime

Hot, hot, hot today. Not a good day to live on the top floor of the building. Miss V took a long nap this afternoon, which I couldn't resist taking pictures of, since she was wearing her Ruffle Butt pants and sleeping butt-up. Adorable.

Working on this blog is giving me an itch to learn some photography skills. First off will be learning how to properly use the fancy-dancy camera I got for Christmas. Like, how do I get it to not have the stupid date and time stamp?

Afterwards I slathered her in sunscreen and popped on her cute little sun hat, and off we went for a walk down Park Street to the book store.

Mistaaaake.

First of all, wearing jeans was a bad idea on my part. I felt sticky and puffy and bloated. Not hot. Well, not the good kind of hot. Especially watching all the smart chicks in their cute shorts and tank tops.

Second, it was just too dang hot. The baby got all lethargic and sweaty, and I kept giving her drinks from my water bottle and spilling it down her shirt so she could cool off. Once at the book store, I didn't see the book I'd come for, so we left again and just went straight home.

However, experiencing the first summery day of the year has made me want to start training for a half marathon again. When I was in Campbell, I loved running. There was a great trail just down the road from my apartment, and I would go there 2-3 times a week after work and work on my mileage. It was great. So I think I'm going to look into some halfies around here and then put together a training program.

So, stayed tuned for more news on that front.

Fitness Goals

Sunday night. After a pretty successful weekend as far as diet and exercise are concerned (and otherwise, really. A good weekend all around) I find myself once again motivated for the week to come. I've been making too many excuses for not exercising, and it's time to get into gear. Because we're going to the baseball game tomorrow night, I know I have to do my working out in the morning. I have workout clothes laid out for myself, and a dvd prepped and ready in the player. All I have to do is get dressed and hit play.

I've been using DailyMile.com to track my fitness progress, and since it's meant to tracking your running mileage, it's making me want to get back into running again in earnest. Since I know that, once I get home for the night after work, it's impossible to leave again, I have to work around that -- bringing gym clothes to work so that I can go running straight from the office, packing healthy lunches, and so on.

I made a goal to be back down to shape by this Christmas. Supposedly, it's 9 months up, 9 months down. Well, Baby Violet just turned 5 months, and I'm not sure I'm on track to have lost all the weight in the next 4 months. So it's time to go crazy!