Amy's 15 week Challenge

Go visit Amy's blog - she is challenging you - um, blog people :) to participate in a 15 week challenge!
I'm so excited!! Wheeeee! :) She has LOTS of great ideas for the challenge so it promises to be an awesome 15 weeks!!

Breathing and running - how do you do it?

I have done day 1 of week 7 of the c25k program this morning. I remembered how I wanted to talk about breathing. A few years ago - I think it was 2003-ish, way before I started WW - S had tried to make me run, the plan was to run around the neighborhood... I thought - sure! why not, I can do that! Boy was I wrong. I could barely go around the block without feeling like I was going to cough up a lung... S had asthma as a child so he pointed out right away - you're not breathing right!  That's when I first found out that I needed to control my breathing while exercising. (Yeah, I was clueless, I know!! :)

A few years later, I lived near High Park and thought that it would be such a great place to run, so I decided to try again. The first time I did it, I remembered quickly why I had stopped - ouch my throat and lungs!! So what's that big secret about how you're supposed to breathe a certain way for this to be possible? Well, I had no idea, but I tried this - breathe in through the nose for 2 steps, breath out through the mouth for 3 steps. And it seemed to work! I was so impressed at how simple this was and how much better I felt, how much more power I had, how much longer I could run...

To this day, that's still how I breathe through a run. And it's so silly - as soon as it starts being difficult I am always tempted to stop it and go for a big gulp of air. But now I know that I have to keep up with it, I find it tough, but it's the only way it works for me - if I control how I breathe...

Now, I pretty much 'made that up' for myself, and recently I was curious to see if there was info out there about breathing when you run, you know, to see if there was an even better method... I found a few articles on the subject, and now I'm confused:

How to control breathing while running
The Ins and Outs of breathing during exercise
Breathing during exercise

So my question to you is - how do you breathe when running?

Angie's and Farmgirl's Bootcamp Giveaway!

Just found out about a great giveaway that you can enter via Angie all the way and Farmgirl .

Go look it up! There are locations all over Canada, so don't hesitate to enter - it's so exciting!!! :) Time to 'up' the challenge for me!!! :)

I have to do a proper post soon - I met with some wonderful ladies last Saturday for the Blog Girls GTG in Toronto, and I have to talk about that!!!

Have a nice Thursday!! :)

OMG OMG OMG - What did I just do :)

I signed up for my first 5k!!!

A big thank you to Marie the Mouse for letting me know about the run - She is such an inspiration! I couldn't pass up on it, you were pretty convincing :)

And another thank you to Mel from A Box of Chocolates for pushing me to do this, she rocks: less then a year ago she wasn't even a runner, and now she has 3 5ks under her belt! Thanks for your encouragements Mel, you're the best :)

In other news, I stuck to my meal plan until 8pm, and then I had an extra 6 points worth of dark chocolate and 1 piece of Twizzlers, hmmmm... Let's put it this way - it's better than yesterday's snack fiasco where I had umm 19 points worth of snacks, ugh... I find that I need about 5-6 extra points a day, to feel 'full'. And most days it has to be a treat - I just crave it too much! Maybe if I 'train' myself to eat some every day, but less and less gradually... I just need my chocolate you know? :)

We're having another strange 'outing' at work - after the Zoo adventure, we're now going to go on a boat for the evening this Friday! We're going to screen some completed episodes and have some food and tour the Toronto Islands... That should be fun! :)

Also, I am excited to meet some blogging ladies on Saturday at the Keg in Toronto! This idea came up amongst some of the BLBE people and being in Toronto already I couldn't miss it! Looking forward to see you there :)

The plan...

I have put my menu for tomorrow into my Points tracker - and I thought I would share what the plan is here, so I stick to it. I am having trouble doing that these days, I have had trouble keeping track - the only way it works is if I kick my own bum and plan the night before... count first, then eat - not the other way around...

Breakfast:
'Oatmeal' PC bagel, with some 95% fat free cream cheese, and I'm going to throw in some spinach, see if it'll taste good (4 pts)

Lunch:
A Lean Cuisine frozen meal (5 pts)
A fibre one bar (or any of my 2 pts bars...)
100g of Fat free Activia Yogurt (2pts)
1 1/2 cups of strawberries (1 pt)

Dinner:
9 PC Blue Menu Chicken Meatballs (5pts)
A whole lot of fresh asparagus (Roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper) (1.5 pts)
A cup of Ocean Spray low-calories cranberry juice (1 pt)

That's a total of 21.5 points (I get 21 a day...) That's not bad...

Have a happy hump day! :)

20 minutes...

Oh my Oh my!!! I just wrapped up week 5 of c25k - that means I ran for 20 uninterrupted minutes for the first time in my life!!! I can not believe I just did this!! Although I am quite shake-y :)

It was pretty intense/challenging. My body was definitely trying to make me quit ''oh, um, hey, what are you doing? Pff, that's way too difficult - see how tired you are and it's only been 2 minutes?! You're really thinking of doing this for 20 minutes? Uh huh, nope, no way, I really don't think so...''

My head was thinking a mix of the following - ''Keep going, at the end of this you'll have accomplished something wonderful, 20 minutes of running! Think of Mel who's done it before - she said, stick to the program, it works! And she's a runner now! Think of Jess, who's still running during her pregnancy! You want to be a runner, you want to feel great, you want to get better at it, you have to keep training...''

I want it to become easier, to become a hobby - I want to go run outside for a longer preiod of time, I want this to become a habbit... So I pushed through it, and now I want to keep going more than ever...

I actually kept 'brisk' walking for an extra 8 minutes, just for fun - I get more time to run on the weekend, so I better take advantage...

ok, I better get ready, I'm going to see Toronto FC beat LA Galaxy this afternoon ;)




Next time I want to talk about 'breathing' when you run...

150.4 - maintaining...

I've been having a hard time blogging recently... and I am also having a hard time being on program. I feel like dissecting a typical day - maybe if I read it to myself I'll find some sort of 'answer' :)

I usually get up at 7h30, get ready for work (showering and drying my hair always takes exactly 1 hour:) Leave for work, eat in the car on the way... (I have recently started to try and get up early every morning to sneak in some exercise, but since I often end up having to come into work 1-2 hours early once or twice a week, it throws me off a bit...)

I have 0 time to blog at work (On a regular day, I start at 9h30am and end at 6pm, I do not take breaks, or take time for lunch - every thing happens in front of the computer, most of the time running 3-5 tasks at once...) I spend a lot of time getting distracted by what I would like to write on my blog, what I would like to do to be healthier, sneaking a peak at twitter and some blogs... but it's often interrupted with last minute changes in the list of tasks for the day, and a panicky coordinator who tries hard to make the most of my time by re-arranging everything as material and directors becomes available...

Then I get home at around 7 - 7h30pm... I prepare dinner, most of the time it's something that takes less then 15 minutes to prepare because at that point I am dying to eat, and most of the time I didn't plan ahead what we're going to eat... Rarely we prep something from scratch, often we are picking up something on the way home, often we eat pre-packaged foods, not always a bad thing, but there's room for improvement...

We pick up our plates and take them to 'the office' where S and I each have a computer. We eat in front of the computer, most of the time we also have the TV turned on in the background...

At that point, I go online and try to read everything that 'teased' me throughout the day at work - an article that got my attention, something on twitter, something on Youtube, some of my favorite bloggers who've posted something I can't wait to read:) At that point, on some days, I have time to blog - yes! But then inspiration doesn't come... It's like my brain can't focus, there's too much pressure... I start twittering, commenting on blogs, and of course, I spend a bit of time with S... before you know it, 9h30, 10pm comes around and it's time for bed (well, we usually watch TV in bed for an hour :) At that point I feel like I've left my whole evening go by being zombie like, absorbing as much info as I can without really being focused on anything specific...

Now I'm going to read this when I get home tonight, and think about it, then come up with a plan :) That's how I write on my blog these days - write as it comes to my brain, then read when I have time, and take action - hope you don't mind :)

I want to write so bad...

but for some reason, I never get around to it, I am such a bad blogger these days - please stick around, I'll get back to it :)