February Report Card & March Goals

March 1, 2012 by · 5 Comments

It’s that time! Here is how we did on our February goals…

Teal:

1.  Let’s try this damn weight/fat loss thing again – I’ll keep it at 4lbs. Wish me luck, perseverance, and calmness through the frustration. I know this will fix itself eventually!  F-: not sure how it is calorically possible but I have gained weight this month- that is all I can say about that. What fun.

 

2.  Paint my bedroom and hang the pictures – I have had the paint and the frames for our prints since the end of December and they have tortured me ever since.  I am actually going to give myself a B on this even though I didn’t do it BECAUSE – my brother moved out and I managed to get all that mess cleaned, the second bedroom organized and cleaned out, his room cleaned out and ready to be painted, the garage is free of his stuff, the laundry room was cleaned out from the dogs, and my house is generally in awesome condition. No paint yet but hey, that’s why we have March right?

 

3.  Read about and become more knowledgeable about Clean Eating, general good nutrition and Gluten. I have purchased Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis and Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. The goal is to read both this month.  B: Read and finished Wheat Belly- I’ll give you a recap later in the month. Very interesting! I am only half way through Good Calories Bad Calories because it is VERY hard to read. I almost feel dumb reading it because I have to keep re-reading pages to understand what I just read- if  had I known how hard it was I would have just read it a different month but it is very informative so I will finish. God help me!

 

4.   Make the foam roller my best friend and roll at least once a day, and complete ALL given Physical Therapy for my foot which includes stretching/tennis ball rolling at breakfast, lunch, and before bed and ice 1-2 times per day.  A: I completed all therapy given and I am feeling better, although the 13.1 on Sunday did hurt, I still iced immediately! I did not ice 1-2 times a day but only because I felt like the therapy was working and ice was not as needed as before! I foam roll constantly and am making progress!

5. Oh and on a “Non- Actual goal thing listed” I did Pass my Counselor Certification Test that I took the day of the Hot Chocolate Run that I had to miss!! So A+++ on that! 

Beth:

1. HILLS! Do them once a week – for real this time!  D-: Haha, I did them twice! Y’all what is my deal?  Maybe I should make this stop being a goal and just know that each month I’ll tell you what I did hill-wise?? What do you think?

2. Wedding Schtuff – Part A: Get outfits settled on (for both of us) & take engagement pictures!  Part B: Finish two of my three registries! <—Just want those things done and over with! Ha, is that a bad way to phrase it? A-: well, going into this month I had most of my outfits already, but Brent did not.  We spent two Saturdays shopping for him because in general he just needed some new clothes and shoes.  He starts a new job next week which is part of the need but he just needed new pants and shirts to add to his work mix and we made it happen.  We took engagement pictures!!  My dad is a photographer as well as a freakin’ awesome lawyer and he spent almost 4 hours with us one Sunday taking our pictures all over Dallas.  We also spent a few hours one Sunday starting and completing our registry at Crate & Barrel.  That was the only registry we have complete, but I am still proud!  Another wedding thing to check off is we have a Best Man!  We had a planned dinner with Brent’s friend, his wife and their son and got our first person in Brent’s side of the wedding party! So I feel like I still deserve an A range grade because a lot of weekend days this month were taking up with wedding related items!

3.  Lose 5 pounds!  I’m taking engagement pictures this month, so a  few pounds off and working towards a smaller weight for upcoming races needs to happen!  F: Yah, I am at the exact same weight. Ha. In all honesty, I meant to go get a scale to be more conscious of this and to meet my goal, but uhhh, yah that never happened.  Oopsie??

4.  Clean the craft/guest/whatever room!  My sister and I have a guest room at our house and we each kind of have half of it to ourselves and then a teeny tiny twin bed sits in the middle of it. Ha, we are both former, big-time scrapbookers so we have got crafts galore in there!  This will be my next room I conquer! F: Nope, just did not have the time for this! 🙁  If I’m going to get something on this scale done it has to be on the weekend and all the weekends this month were FAR too full to make this happen.

Joint goal:

5.  Both participate in #FabAbFeb Well, Teal finished the challenge even if some days she doubled up on days she still finished it!  Beth on the other hand missed the last week of it.

 

And now it’s time for March’s goals…..dun dun dun!

Teal

1. Paint Bedroom and quest room for real this time. Spring break should make this possible!

2. Survive my 2 week break from running and cardio by not cheating. I am going to give my body a true rest. I think it is overworked and is partially to blame for the plateau of weight-loss, my injury and that it is not fully gone, and from being tired from having 2 jobs and grad school. The break will be hard because rest is really not part of my vocabulary but it’s a needed part of life. Must get better.

3. Yoga 12 times this month. This will be how I survive the “rest” from running/cardio. Low impact, restorative, and a good way to focus on flexibility.

4.  Finish Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes

Beth

1.  Run a sub 2:00 hour half marathon at Rock ‘n’ Roll Dallas!

2. Lose 5 pounds. Seriously, y’all!! I need to get SERIOUS about take some pounds off for my wedding!

3. Get a caterer for the wedding.  You thought this one went away didn’t you?  Well, I was all on track, got one approved by my venue and haven’t heard back from him after our initial phone call about my homes and dreams of wedding food.  I’ve chosen to take that as a sign and look elsewhere just need to setup tastings!

4.  Attend 3 to 4 yoga classes a week. You’re probably like whaa?? You yoga all the time!  Well, technically I don’t totally have yoga goals like I did for all of 2011 and I took 2 weeks off when I hit my 200 and let me tell you my body knew it!  So I want to see how I do with 3-4 times a week for a month where this blog holds me accountable!

5. Update my handwriting/calligraphy website.  It needs a MAJOR change starting with a new theme that allows for a real blog inside the website.  Change is a coming!

It should also be noted that I haven’t given up on my hills every week, but I feel like that’s annoying to keep putting it as a goal and not mastering it.  And another note would be at the beginning of the year I gave myself a goal of reading 24 books this year which this has really been a goal of mine for a couple years now.  I got close one year with 20.  This are two things I kind of want to keep up to date with in these posts but make them different from the things I try to achieve that vary each month.  Does that make sense? Can you handle that? I’m going to be busy this month!

We will see you guys on the flip side of this month with how we did! 🙂  Wish us luck!

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January Report Card & February Goals

February 1, 2012 by · 9 Comments

It’s that time to give you the good & bad of our January goals!

Teal:

1.  Attend a minimum of 10 yoga classes at Sunstone.  This is big time for me! I only had 25 classes last year. I took a huge break!  : A+ Crushed this! As of 1/31 I have attended 16 classes!


2.  Complete one extra day of weight training on my own.  I train with Will two days a week, but that is all the weight training I do.  I am scared of that side of the gym when I am alone, so I am going to buck up and start a progression of doing weights on my own.  Not that I am getting rid of Will, I just need to stop being a baby. C+: I only did my “extra” weight work out twice in 4.5 weeks but definitely feel more comfortable going to that side of the gym on my own.


3.  Lose 4 pounds. I am stuck! I hate it and want to be unstuck! F: besides losing my cleanse weight to get me back to my “normal weight” I technically have only lost .5lbs according to the scale I use with my trainer- oh how I love being stuck…

4.  Read a book for pleasure!  Graduate school has killed any fun reading that I once did.  I have chosen to read Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s by John Elder Robison. A-: Well, I finished literally today (or shall is say night) and the only reason I finished was because it was “due” today for the goal- I did however read another book in between this about food and wellness, so bonus points for that! And PS- I really did not like this book 😉

Beth:

1.  Complete 200 yoga classes.  The very end of January 2011 was when I started yoga and my goal all along was to complete 200 in one year.  I broke that goal into 50 classes every 3 months.  As of this morning I have 29 more classes to go!  A+:  Might have had to do 3 classes in one day to obtain this goal, but I DID IT!!! 200 yoga classes in 1 year!  The best part was I took my 200th class with my friend that got me started in yoga and went to that very first class with me, so she also got to go to my 200th class with me!  Shout out to the awesome @HeadPantsNow!

200 wristband bling from Sunstone Yoga

2.  Do a hill workout every week.  If I blew off a day in my training schedule it was always hills, and I know I will benefit from doing them SO much. C:  I only did two hill workouts…..

3.  Organize my room! I love organization, but for the past year I feel like I’m running from one thing to the next.  All the organizing I once did has gone out the window, and it really makes me sad that I now resemble a messy person. :( A+:  There was one weekend in our 10 day cleanse and that Saturday to distract myself I CLEANED!  Then it got messy again and I finally got the last bits organized.  I took before and after pictures, but y’all I REALLY do like cleanliness so I’m totally embarrassed to show these….

Before

Got rid of clothes, old magazines, bagged old running shoes to take to local running store & threw away a lot!

Final product...and you can see I still have one itty bitty pile on the floor :-/

4.  Find a caterer for my wedding!  This is the next big item I want to get crossed of my wedding to do list! B+:  My goal was to either have it completed or be well on the way towards having a caterer.  My venue has a preferred vendor list and the person I want to use is not on that list, so they had to get approval to be my caterer.  My venue has approved the caterer, I’ve had a lengthy phone call with the caterer, reviewed menus of their’s and given what we want and don’t want.  As of now I am waiting to get a potential menu or two then schedule a tasting!

We each have one last goal that we are both doing –

5. Complete a 10 day Advocare cleanse.  A+:  You all know that though because we did a recap a couple weeks ago!

We are both pretty proud of ourselves, obviously there are areas to work on and we will keep on working!  With that said here is what’s on tap for February for us:

Teal:

1.  Let’s try this damn weight/fat loss thing again- I’ll keep it at 4lbs. Wish me luck, perseverance, and calmness through the frustration. I know this will fix itself eventually!

2.  Paint my bedroom and hang the pictures – I have had the paint and the frames for our prints since the end of December and they have tortured me ever since.

3.  Read about and become more knowledgeable about Clean Eating, general good nutrition and Gluten. I have purchased Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis and Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. The goal is to read both this month.

4.   Make the foam roller my best friend and roll at least once a day, and complete ALL given Physical Therapy for my foot which includes stretching/tennis ball rolling at breakfast, lunch, and before bed and ice 1-2 times per day.

Beth:

1. HILLS! Do them once a week – for real this time!

2. Wedding Schtuff – Part A: Get outfits settled on (for both of us) & take engagement pictures!  Part B: Finish two of my three registries! <—Just want those things done and over with! Ha, is that a bad way to phrase it?

3.  Lose 5 pounds!  I’m taking engagement pictures this month, so a  few pounds off and working towards a smaller weight for upcoming races needs to happen!

4.  Clean the craft/guest/whatever room!  My sister and I have a guest room at our house and we each kind of have half of it to ourselves and then a teeny tiny twin bed sits in the middle of it. Ha, we are both former, big-time scrapbookers so we have got crafts galore in there!  This will be my next room I conquer!

We are once again doing a joint goal this month!  We have decided to….

5.  Both participate in #FabAbFeb:

Overall, Teal feels like if she took these grades home she’d be grounded.  What do you think?  And Beth is pretty happy with her grades but is ready to hit the mark in hills class. What do you think?

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Runner Stubbornness

December 16, 2011 by · 14 Comments

I am pretty sure I am not alone when I say I am stubborn in terms of working out in some sort of pain. I do it basically every time. Some days are worse than others, but I have very few where something doesn’t hurt in a weird way. I basically have gotten used to it. I have been to the doctor a bazillion times, each time for them to basically say the same thing, “Well, if it hurts, don’t do it.” If I followed that rule I would be out of shape. I hate admitting something hurts; I would rather just be tough about it. I have terrible knees that grind and pop and have deterioration of cartilage much more than someone my age should have and arthritis in both. The knee doctor said my IT band was too tight and that he should not be able to see it and he can. This is partially to blame for why my knee doesn’t stay in socket. Recently I have some pain across my lower stomach from running so many miles and being so tight. See… Stubborn – I don’t really stop doing anything.

 

The problem is I think most of the aforementioned problems have resulted in this current one that I can’t make go away. One week before White Rock I ran a super easy 6.2 mile run, symbolic, yea probably, and I was nervous about the race so I wanted to run something. My foot was sore but not in pain. I ran 3 miles on the treadmill that Tuesday and have essentially been in foot pain ever since. The Thursday before the race I was seriously wondering if I could run it, I told Beth that day that it was bothering me but I really didn’t say much. Saying it out loud would be admitting that something was more seriously wrong.

 

I ran the marathon, obviously, but have not run since. We are basically two weeks out from the marathon and I haven’t so much as run a ¼ mile. Something is wrong. My friend Cynthia had foot pain so bad she ended up having surgery. She went to so many doctors and eventually ended up in surgery that really didn’t completely work. She has been lecturing me since I told her my foot hurt. I think it is time to not be stubborn because now I am just scared. Everything else has seemed manageable, but not this.

 

I ran across a blog post from The Trail Jogger the other day and I am going to share with you kind of what it says BUT shockingly enough I have to STOP BEING STUBBORN. You can read the full post here but here is the condensed version.

 

1.      Stop Running: easier said than done, when it stops hurting start running with low mileage.

2.      Ice: This bores me and I hate it but isn’t that rule number one when something is hurt?

3.      Roll it: Use a tennis ball or golf ball and role the arch

4.      Stretch: especially the calf muscles – apparently all of that stuff is connected

5.      Hang your feet off the end of the bed when you sleep:– this is the easiest one! I’m 5’10”- apparently it helps in the morning when it hurts the worst

6.      Support it:– Wear shoes all the time (this one is hard for me. I HATE shoes!)

 

As far as everything else goes- I am foam rolling everything, stretching and going to yoga to strengthen and stretch, and using the “Stick” whenever I can.  Beth has had on and off hip flexor pain that she says has been so much better since yoga, so I am tagging along in that. We both attend Sunstone Yoga.

source

Here are some pics of the recovery process! This really is progress for me in terms of not ignoring something!

icing at home

rolling at work

Thank you to Emily for passing along the Ozarka bottle tip!

 

Yesterday we showed you our December running plan – I have essentially done none of it. This makes me SO nervous because I don’t want to lose endurance! That crap is hard to build. I hope to be able to run the New Year’s Double. My heart and mind say run the race- “How cool is this race, and the medal and the people,” but my body is like- “Really Teal, Why do you hate me?” I am torn and nervous. Essentially I know I will make it!  I ran 26 miles on it already. I know it will work for 26 more especially split into 2 days (see the crazy rationalization) but how long do I want it to hurt, and how do you really stop being stubborn?  

 Beth hasn’t exactly been following the plan either.  She keeps herself pretty busy too and now that the goal of a new unknown distance isn’t looming over her head she’s been enjoying some down time.  She’s still pretty much making it to yoga, Johnny’s or the gym every day with a rest day or two thrown in the mix. 

I can pretty much guarantee that you will see BOTH of us at the race! I’ll run regardless, even if it is slow and terrible, BUT perhaps admitting stubbornness is the first step to solving it?

Do you have any additional advice on treating Plantar Facsiitis?

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