Last Wednesday I managed to hurt my foot, this meant I now had a sore left knee and a very sore right foot. Least my injuries were on opposite sites of the body, so I wasn’t unbalanced! lol
I gave myself a bit of a resting period after I finished my 30 Day Challenges so my knee could recover, and also so my foot could recover from the heavy stuff that fell on it *rolls eyes at myself*
Today was the official end of the resting period! 😀
I didn’t really think about it when I was getting my gym gear together last night, at most I thought, get the bag packed now so I have no excuse to not take my gym stuff to work and if you feel like going to the gym after work then you can go. See, I have this defect, it is called laziness, I have another defect called “my cat is in charge” so if I go home after work with the idea I will change and head out to the gym, well, it never happens because (1) I end up sitting down and then I am comfy and no way in hell are you dragging my lazy ass out of my comfy living room chair after a day at work and (2) the cat gives me sad eyes because he’s been alone all day and I feel bad so I end up cuddling him then he is comfy and sleeping on my lap and in my world you don’t disturb a sleeping cat. The cat has me well trained lol. 😛
If I have any intention at all of exercising after work I can NOT go home! Sad but true.
I have been known to take my gym gear then say “screw it, I’m too tired” at the end of the day and just go home but generally that is when I am running on 3 hours or less of sleep so I don’t feel so bad when that happens lol
Today however, when I was at work, I made a decision. Not an exercising decision, a food decision. See, at work, whoever does the morning shift (sundays and mondays that is yours truly) does the baking for the breakfast that gets laid out buffet style. It is little muffins, pastries, croissants. They are killer. They are all empty carbs, full of refined sugar, no redeeming nutritional value to any of them, but they taste so freakin good! lol The croissants are my weak point. They are small croissants so you don’t feel as guilty eating them, but just cause they are small doesn’t mean they aren’t wicked bad for you right? Right!
Normally I nibble. That’s right, I nibble! So sue me! If I accidentally decapitate a muffin when taking it out of the tray I eat it so it doesn’t get thrown out and wasted (like how I can justify it? lol), when I’m plating the croissants I “accidentally” put one on a plate for me…then, if there are croissants left over at the end of breakfast I more often than not swipe one, or two…so in case you aren’t doing the math, that is a potential 3 mini croissants in one morning! That is on top of the toast I make myself…which great, right? even more freakin useless carbs, *groan* Not a good way to start the day!
Today, for some reason I decided to not eat any of the breakfast baking. I still had the toast cause it was either eat toast or have no breakfast at all and I figured the toast was better then starvation lol but the pastries? the mini muffins? the mini croissants? Nope, I’m good thanks. 🙂
Oddly enough, what I kept leaning on when I was tempted to grab something was that I had completed the 30 Day Challenges. Those sucked at time but I finished them, didn’t cheat, didn’t skimp out on anything, I got all the way through and if I could handle all those squats and all that ab work for 30 days surely I could manage one day of not eating the bakery items?
I found myself walking towards them a couple times out of habit but when I realized where I was aimed I turned and went somewhere else, luckily there is a lot to do at work so I could always find something to distract me.
And guess what? I made it through the day without touching a single item from that breakfast display and when the day was over I felt a little bit stronger for that. Not so much for holding out but for making the healthier choice. For putting my goal of eating healthy and getting in shape ahead of the instant satisfaction of something tasty. By not caving in with the breakfast goodies it made it that much easier to choose to go to the gym after work. I was tired, kinda didn’t want to go, was coming up with all kinds of reasons to skip it but lo and behold I ended up at they gym and well hey, once you’re there you can’t turn around and leave, you’d just look stupid if you did that lol 😛
The gym however almost killed me. lol. Not the working out part, although I did push myself on the cardio, but the gym itself was an oven, the air conditioning is broken so as soon as you step in to the gym you are hit with a blast of heat that doesn’t let up the entire time you are there. Oy! You could easily have started to sweat just from being in there, wouldn’t even have to do anything to work up the sweat!
Well whatever right? I got changed and headed to the treadmill. I had such a (surprisingly) good run just a bit before I hurt my foot I was feeling super optimistic about todays run and almost decided to set it for 45 minutes. The only reason I didn’t was I was parked in a one hour only zone and wanted time after my run to stretch out soooooo 30 minutes it was! I am so grateful I set it for only 30 minutes! I was running at a decent pace (for me), but by the last ten minutes I was doing that deep, slightly louder breathing and it just kept getting louder the longer I ran. Also grateful no one was on the treadmill near me lol Part of my brain was saying “stop! for the love of all that is holy just stop! you don’t have to tell anyone, it’ll be ok, you can’t take anymore!” but this little voice in my head was whispering “you can do this, you have done this and more in the past, you ate well today, you have the fuel in you, just keep going, prove to yourself you can finish, don’t quit” the “don’t quit” voice was no where near as loud as the desperate wheezing pleading voice that wanted me to stop but I clung to it, repeated over and over “I can do this!” in my head and what do you know, I did it! I ran for 30 minutes, on a random hill program, at a speed of 5, level 4, with inclines ranging from 0-5 and not once did I stop. *puffs up with a bit of pride* I know I used to do way better before, was on a higher level, doing intervals, running at a base speed that was faster then the speed I did today, with higher inclines but instead of dwelling on how I did so much more and did it so much better last summer when I was more consistent with my running training I am going to be happy at what I accomplished today. Getting back to the shape I was in last summer doesn’t mean starting at the levels I left off at last summer, it means starting a little lower down and earning my way back to where I was.
I went and stretched then headed to the locker room where I shocked myself silly when I looked in the mirror! lol Imagine a sunburn, the worst face sunburn you have ever seen, the pinkest, the reddest, the brightest, now times that by 100 (cause I am a redhead and super pale and burn worse than other people) and that was my face! I kid you not! I was soooooooooo red! lol It was quite embarrassing actually, I made sure to keep my head down while I was walking out of the gym and to my suv. I go quite red when doing cardio anyways, but the combo of the cardio, plus the over heated gym, plus the treadmill was radiating heat (not even kidding! when I stopped I realized blasts of heat were coming from the lower part of the machine and hitting me full body) I guess my poor skin just couldn’t take it and it turned me in to a tomato! A highly unattractive tomato! lol I am so not attractive when I work out and going red really doesn’t make it any better, *sigh* No wonder when I was done running I was a bit unbalanced if I was that over heated!
Ah well, who cares if I get a red face right? Just means I worked hard, I earned that red face dammit! Well, partially earned it and partially got cooked in a room with no air conditioning lol 😛
tomato running on a treadmill, aka me at the gym today
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 