Challenge!

Over at One Twenty Five (a fitness blog that I came upon while reading Ben Does Life), she is posing the Operation 5km, 5 lbs, 30 Day Challenge. I'm in! Starting on Wednesday June 1, 2011, I will be starting this challenge. The goal is to lose 5 lbs and/or be able to run a 5k in 30 days. I'm pretty excited. This is a jump start I need to improving my 5k. I'm rather excited and look forward to starting it! So here it is. I PLEDGE AND COMMIT TO LOSE 5 LBS AND RUN A 5K IN 30 DAYS! (I'm over-achieving)

As she says..."...5 pounds and a 5k, are you willing to make sacrifices? It’s 30 days of your life, food and the couch will be waiting for you in July."
"No one will lose your weight for you, so why not start now? Let’s get sexy for Summer 2011 and do something good for ourselves for one, simple, month."

Come on my faithful readers (hello? hello? anyone out there........ hehe :P) I challenge those of you who are feelin the slump. It's only 30 days and it will be awesome. Ditch the last (or first...or middle) 5 lbs and get in shape. If your not a runner, then just shoot for the 5 lbs. If your not worried about weight but want to run, just shoot for the 5k. If neither apply...then just make a commitment to be healthy! Either way....get it done! I will be jogging and following my Weight Watchers plan. At One Twenty Five she is following a Paleo program (not sure what that is) and is creating a training guide. But go check her blog and see if its good for you. Or just follow the basic food pyramid we all know and love. Whatever works. Just get it done.

I'm committed! Are you?!

Motivation

 I have been very motivated as of late. Very. I'm not sure why...maybe an added confidence that I can indeed accomplish what I strive to do? Where in the past I gave up easily? Maybe so. Who knows. But non-the-less.... I am very excited for this new chapter of my life. I feel like I'm finally taking control and manuvering it the way I would like...and I'm finally "growing up" so to speak. And I think tonight is going to be slightly pinnacle in this growing up deal. One of the bishopric stopped me at church and asked if he could meet with me sometime this week....my guess is for a calling. Except I think this is the divine intervention I needed for some other things to happen and assist in the whole universe aligning as well. So I'm scared to death, absolutely scared to death. But I'm feeling at peace about it as well. Anyway...only a handful of people will know what I'm even talking about but those that do just may be leaping (?) for joy....or saying FINALLY! in their heads. Anyway. On to the rest of my post. We had a delicious dinner of Catalina Chicken with rice and veggies. I love using the boys' plates because I feel like I have WAY more food than I do. Regardless, it was very tasty.
Afterwards, we had our family night. I've made a goal to work on scout stuff with Nate every FHE so thats what we did. We completed an entire achievement (the physical fitness one I'll have you know) during family home evening. It was a whole lot of fun for everyone and I think it meant alot to Nate as well that we all wanted to help him achieve his goals.

I again...did not want to run. And had slacked Saturday and Sunday by overeating and not exercising. So I figured I better just get it done. It was ALOT harder to endure the 2 miles. Seriously...I've learned a valuable lesson. If you slack and don't run for a day or two, your endurance suffers. No more slacking. So to make up for it...I pushed myself to go 2.5 miles and I did it! But only with the help of my ipod. I have never appreciated that thing more. 2 pumped up songs came on and I was able to bust out the final 1/2 mile that I had been struggling with. I'm thinking it will be a must do have that during the 5k.

And...the proof is in the pudding. Ignore the fact that it took me 50 minutes to accomplish. Granted 5 minutes of that was cool down but still. Thats not good. My goal, however, is to do 2.5 miles every night this week and increase to 3 miles next week to prepare for May 21. Then I hopefully won't die while running. Since I've never ran a race before...I don't have a PR (personal record) in which to break but my goal is to finish in less than 60 minutes. Even that is pretty sad...but I'm taking baby steps. Speaking of which....come one come all. May 21 at 10:00 am is the official/not so official 5k Walk It Challenge for Weight Watchers. Come walk, strut, jog, or run with us! I've heard they are timing but its not official enough to have numbers assigned. And its a stroller friendly 5k. You don't have to sign up...just be there. Show up and get your exercise on. I'll be there. So will my jogging buddy. So come say hi. :)

...

I have officially gotten a full blown sore throat/cough thing. I really think its a sign from the exercise goddesses that either A. I should give up or B. I need to forge through and show myself I can do this. I'm hoping B is the right answer cause thats what I'm doing.
In other news...I just need a venting session about my job. As most know, I work for a non-profit organization that I absolutely love. I love my job, I love where I work, I love my co-workers. I DON"T love the Lenders I deal with day in and day out. When I first started, they were really nice. A couple months ago I had an awesome streak of approvals. Now...they are getting cut throat and harsh. So far I've had Lenders tell people they are worthless liars, that they tried to help the homeowners but the homeowners didn't feel the need to help back (so untrue), that their attempts in modifying and helping were FUTILE. Seriously...the letter said FUTILE. And the day after that letter showed up, the denial letter showed up. I just don't understand whats going on. I really don't. It went from a fairly easy in with Lenders to them doing anything possible to string out the process and find any reason possible to deny. I truly just don't get it.
On a happy note....congrats to my sis-in-law Betsy for being honored in the Festival City newsletter thing. We love you and I'm happy your hard work could get acknowledged!

FHE

After work last night we decided to go at it FHE style. We had some BBQ chicken with potatoes and corn for dinner, then discussed some new family rules after a song. The new rule? Momma is tired of hearing "I didn't do it! It wasn't me!" So from here on out in my household, if someone says that when I asked what happened...they take automatic blame. If no one comes forward, then EVERYONE gets to bare the consequence. And if the person who did do it comes forward, they will still recieve a consequence but I will go easy on them. Hopefully this helps.

Also as part of our FHE, I have decided to go through Nate's scout book and help him pass stuff off. So we did 4 achievements last night. Afterwards, we went and got a smoothie then walked to the park. Yes walked to the park. This is not something I would've done 3 months ago.

Nate was trying to give me a "tough" look. Didn't quite work out all that well.

Ry was having a cause of "Mommas Luck" and tripped like 5 times while at the park.

I quite liked this 'twilight' lookin picture...not the vampire twilight but the twilight like right before the sun goes down.



I've been thinking about my weight loss and even though its kinda like DUR you shoulda known that A LONG TIME AGO I'm realizing that to get my full potential going...I can't be lazy. I have to push myself and I will only get out of it what I put in. I know thats just a general rule, but in my mind I figure if I just eat right and do some walkin I'll drop some poundage. Which is true. But I could be doing so much more...so much faster! So I decided to go suck it up and run OUTSIDE. Not go easy on myself and go inside. And it was fantastic. I did 3 loops around my complex/street which is .55 miles. So I pretty much did a little over 1.5 miles last night. I didn't run the whole thing, but I'd jog one street then walk the next and repeat that pattern...and by loop 2ish my lungs had stopped burning. It was awesome. I want to add one loop around every week or sooner if I feel I can handle it. Then the 5k in T minus 3 weeksish. I'm excited. For once...I'm saying BRING IT ON!

Running...ohhhhh how I loathe thee

So to start this little story off right, I've always had a love/hate relationship with running. I've sooo badly wanted to be the girl who could knock out a mile in 6 minutes and be able to go longer. This has never happened, even when I was a crazy super soccer/tennis/basketball/softball girl. Well last night...I got put in my place big time. I thought I was pretty awesome and a shoe in for this 5k. I'd been running jogging on the treadmill alot, I was keeping good time, I wasn't getting super tired........

Did I mention that was on the treadmill?

I learned last night that it is MUCH different jogging outside. I decided to try jogging around my complex twice. Figured that would be a good start.Yeah...I made it to the corner, then to the next corner, then my lungs wanted to explode inside my body. They were on fire. Burning like crazy. I walked the rest of that street and then attempted to jog around the corner, but only made it about half way and had to walk the rest of the way home. And that was only one loop! So then I decided instead maybe I'd just do small runs on the sidewalk that runs behind my house. Its fairly lengthy. I managed three back and forths before I threw in the towel and just hopped on the treadmill....where I was able to jog 5 more minutes and speed walk 10 more without my lungs wanting to shoot me. Seriously? This makes me wonder how well off I'm going to be at the 5k. I'm also pretty positive I will be slowing my partner in crime down, so just to put this out there...I will not be sad/mad/offended/or anything else if you run ahead of me. I will finish....it just might be on hands and knees crawling across the line.