October 18-26, 2015 – Good start, rough finish. Time to reset!

On Sunday, I was in AZ with my sister, and walked 7.8 miles throughout the day. We wandered around a few state parks and historical sites, and then around ASU’s main campus and downtown Tempe — pretty solid activity level for a day I spent 3 hours on a flight.

I walked to work every day last week, and walked home all but two days, which helped me hit my 10,000 step goal 3 of the 7 days, and got within 2,000 another 2 days. I also ate pretty well during the week, having Freshii soup for lunch twice, butternut squash soup once, and salads, pasta, and lots of fruits and veggies frequently. I also started making my own smoothie bowls, which has been an awesome way to get extra veggies in (and fruits, but I never have an issue with that). Plus, they’re delicious.

This weekend was pretty bad in the physical-activity department.. I was super lazy and sat on my couch most of the time. I also ate a whole bag of Guittard Milk Chocolate Chips (AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS but pretty horrible for me) between Friday and Sunday, so that was a bummer…

Already have my alarm set for tomorrow morning’s run, though, and got my shower drain fixed so I don’t have the “but I can’t shower at home” excuse for not exercising, either.

Hoping to reset this week!

Third Time’s The Charm?

I’m pretty sure my last post was the last thing I did before everything came crumbling down in busy season #2 (or, as I like to call it, “the worst time I’ve ever had in my life,” “A supposedly fun thing I’ll be doing again every year for eternity,” or “hell”). Okay, to be fair, I survived, learned a lot, and had some decent times this fall leading up to the September 15 deadline. But I worked over 80 hours per week for seven weeks straight, sometimes getting into the 100+-hour range.

Needless to say, I did not get “back on the band wagon” as my previous post indicated.

Having been working for nearly a year now, and gone through two busy seasons, I feel like I have a much better sense of what to expect, and how to structure my days so I can have time to work out, eat well, and stay sane during busy seasons. Because of this new perspective, I have more reasonable goals set for myself, and I am planning to start working out NOW, during the slower time, so that I can create a habit and keep momentum when next busy season starts in late January/early February.

I have signed up for the Chicago Spring and Fall Half Marathon series — one on May 22, and another on September 25 — and am planning to run a Spartan Sprint (or Super, if I’m feeling really ambitious) in the end of January with my sister in San Diego. Having signed up for events with hard dates should help me achieve some goals, and I’m really excited to get back into running (I know in  a previous post I said I’m not into anything cardio if it doesn’t involve sports, namely soccer, but I’ve recently changed my mind. I miss running!).

I’m planning to do weekly (or more frequent, but weekly at a minimum) posts to keep myself on track — they’ll likely sum up everything I did for exercise in the week, might be in fragments rather than complete sentences, and probably won’t be very long. I’ve learned from the past, and this whole writing-multiple-paragraphs thing only comes along so often… I’m planning on Friday blog posts, and they’re written in my planner for the foreseeable future, so odds are pretty good that I’ll follow through — my planner is my boss. If it says to do something, I’d give it a 92% likelihood that I’ll do it!

Anyway, I’ll be back tomorrow (Friday) for my first weekly update!