Monday Musings and Making a Comeback

So I'm three and a half weeks back on Weight Watchers and into Marathon training and things are clicking and feeling good. I feel like I'm on a comeback after a long stretch of nothing feeling like it was working.

This past Friday I had my weigh-in and I was down something small like .2 pounds. ALL GOOD. I wasn't even the slightest upset with the mini loss. First, I had lost a combined loss of about 7 pounds in the first two weeks which is a lot for me. Secondly the day before was Thanksgiving and I'm pretty sure that the extra sodium and wine wasn't helping my cause at the scale. As long as that scale is moving in the right direction I will take those .2 pounds proudly. :)

At this point even if I only lose .2 a week for the rest of my journey (annoying as that would be) I would be at peace with that. I'm feeling good. I'm exercising and moving often, eating right (for the most part), watching my portion size and doing a better job at hydrating. 

Starting line at Turkey Trot

On Thanksgiving I kicked the day off with a turkey trot. It was a great day. I ran it with a bunch of girls from the running club I belong to and it was great to see those friends. I planned for this race to be pretty much incorporated in as just a general training day. I didn't 'race' per se but I found myself pushing the pace more than usual. It's a tough little 5K because it is very hilly and it's also pretty congested for the first half of mile or so. Lots of little kids and walkers 5 across. This would not be the race to try to PR at. However, even with all that said, I wound up running it faster than I've done a 5K in a long time.  I've been training at around 11'50 - 12'00 min. mile. My hope was to be around 11'30 in this race. I wound up doing better - an overall average of 10'31! I didn't expect that.  It was a beautiful run. A little chilly (but felt great once running) big fluffy snow flakes falling and in a beautiful upscale, Bergen county neighborhood. 

And talking about beautiful - check out these sexy splits: 

9'56!? Wow. Haven't seen that time for a mile in a loooong time! Woo!

After the race we went up to my parent's house for festivities. I did well. I 'counted' my points for all the indulgences and between my weekly points and the points I earned through activity had plenty to cover. I'm happy about how I handled things.

Of course, the irony is that I did well on Thanksgiving and then while visiting a friend on Saturday afternoon wound up falling face first into a bowl of chips, dip and a few glasses of wine. :/

Partially responsible for that empty dish of french onion dip

Ooops. The good news is that I had the points to cover the damage thanks to a six mile run that morning and I had just got all my weekly bonus points back. The bad news is it's not the way I wanted to uses those points. Oh well. Crappy food happens every once in a while and the fact that I was aware of what I was doing is the key. It's important that I acknowledge it so I can learn from it and also adjust my eating the rest of the week to compensate for the slip. 

This Friday I'm heading to Palm Springs to participate in a Triathlon. I am signed up for the OLY distance but I'm going to drop down to the sprint. I'm not trained for the OLY distance - I have been exercising but focusing on running. I just haven't been motivated lately to work on my swim or bike. I don't know what my problem is. Part of me really wants to love triathlon but the other part of me just feels overwhelmed by the idea of breaking my training up into three different things. Just running is so much easier for me to wrap my head around. I'm not giving up on it yet (I just bought that bike!) and I'm already signed up for the Pococnos OLY next year but triathlon definitely continues to be a challenge for me. 

How was your Thanksgiving?

Thanks to you all for your comments and to those who've sent me notes I appreciate it!

XO

Jen