Thursday, May 29, 2008

i'm here, just being a busy bee

My post is in response to Wendy’s question of where have I been lately …..
Let’s say I have taken some time off from running – I am still running, I am just making sure to get a lot of living in also. Spring is my favorite time of the year, I love waking up with the sun and going to bed when it gets dark, although I may be guilty of thinking that I could weed the garden with a headlamp on. Here is a long list of the past month or so…. I’ll get back to running soon, I have Portland to start training for after all….


My list:
  • Accepting the fact that I am 30 and nearly every woman I know is pregnant – I’m not even kidding, I can ramble the list of ladies for days. I should invest in Babies-R-Us.


  • My Surprise birthday party with my entire family at the local pizza place (just wished someone told me to wear a nice sweatshirt…)




  • Mini-vacation to Cannon Beach; spa tub, warm weather, long hike, lots of walking/sightseeing, missing our puppy at home.


  • My friend Elinor called us in Cannon Beach to tell us she is pregnant! She and her husband have been so patient, they are going to love this child so much. I am so excited to hear about all of the new steps in her journey. I saw photos of the baby’s leg yesterday!


  • Ran the Tacoma Half Marathon with Wendy. I went slow with her (or so she thought, I was really trying to keep up) and she got me to finish the last couple of miles. We got lots of talking in and it was great to have someone to pass the time with. I still need to check to see if it was my best time or not.


  • I planted my first vegetable garden. I have waited so many years to do this, now that I have most of the ‘flower’ beds planted, I wanted to have my own vegetables (the seeds are even poking out of the ground). I’m sure I’ll have enough vegetables to pass around, I went a little crazy with the lettuce seeds.


  • Brian and I babysat my niece (1-1/2years) and nephew (2-1/2 years) for my sister’s birthday gift. She has baby #3 on the way this fall, so I thought I would make a grand gesture. Brian and I had fun, but were beat after we dropped them off – guess that answers that question.














  • My dad and I finalized our trip to Anchorage to visit my brother over a long weekend at the end of June and see the Elmendorf Air Force Base Air Show. We haven’t seen him since he moved to Anchorage in March. We also get to see his shiny new car (that gets 4 times better gas mileage than the truck he had).


  • Brian and I took the lawn back – over the long weekend we thatched, aerated and over-seeded, and the next day we put down 2 yards of bark! That got a good workout in.



  • Brian and I also babysat my parents Alpaca Farm (they look like llamas, they are decedents of the camel, she raises them for their wool, which has all of the qualities of regular wool only it is really soft) while they went to a convention in Utah. Those animals can win your heart; I don’t think I can have one in my backyard though…. If anyone wants any fertilizer they produce a wheelbarrow full a day (did I mention that we had to scoop poop as one of our babysitting duties).










  • Oh yeah, I joined a local weight watchers group after reading Michelle’s amazing journey. Since April 30th I have lost 10 pounds!!!! My goal is to be a lean mean, running machine in Portland in October.

So that is the long answer to where I’ve been lately…. I hope to get some running in with the Y-club, even if I am the slow guy out there. They are running Chambers Bay Golf Course on Sunday – that might be my run to start up again. It also means a trip to Trader Joes afterward!
Hope to see you all on the trail soon.

5 comments:

Backofpack said...

Jessica,
Good to hear from you again! You have been busy. Now that you've got your yard whipped into shape...how about you and Brian take over ours? Pretty-please?

Hope you do make it out to run with us this weekend. I'm hoping to go to TJoe's after too.

Michelle said...

Hey Jessica,

Great decision to join WW! Good for you. Are you going to meetings? This is my first time doing it and I'm so pleased with how reasonable it is. Are you eating your 35 Weekly Points Allowance? Make sure you do, you need them. In terms of the APs, you can earn as many as you please but the program says you can only eat 4 per day. That said, I've eaten as many as 12 in one day and still had a loss, so some of it is trial-and-error on your part.

A couple of the ways in which I ignore the rules are:

- All apples and all oranges are 1 point. I did not get fat eating apples and oranges. Now bananas are another story, but generally unless they are the size of a baseball bat I call them either medium or small.

- I eat as much chicken breast and lean fish as I want. For the reason, see above.

You will, no doubt, develop some ways in which you don't follow the program but you can still lose. Now this I haven't done on purpose but there have been many a week when I've gone over my points and still had a loss.

One more thing and then I'll stop :)

In terms of eating only four APs a day this is what my leader said one time, "You can only eat four APs a day unless you're doing some really intense workouts like Team in Training or something like that."

I didn't ask her for more details because I'm trying to stick to the four a day, but you could ask your leader.

To deal with hunger issues I eat more protein. Focus on getting more chicken breast, ground turkey or chicken breast, FF cottage cheese, turkey breast slices, etc. Protein keeps you full. Fiber is good too, takes longer to digest so you stay full longer.

I got used to the amount of food eventually and the hunger thing went away, though it still comes back from time to time.

I guess, in short, what I'm saying is, tweak it...if you lose, great! if not, tweak some more.

Again, congrats on making this decision, 10 pounds is incredible!! You're going to feel so much better on your runs with less weight to carry. And thanks for mentioning me in your blog :)

wendy said...

hey! You've been a bizzee girl! When you get some "free" time, you can come overhaul my yard too. What? I'm just trying to assist you in getting extra workouts in. ;-)

If you want to run slow with me, I'll go w/ you to Chamber's Creek, but I will totally understand if you're trying to get faster as a part of your training plan. My goal lately has been to keep my HR under 165 when I'm running, which means lots of 13-15 minute miles...

I'll call you today to see if we can match up schedules. Also, I recently signed up for WW online, so I had no clue about the 4 AP's a day, I've been eating tons of them! Maybe that's why I haven't lost 10 lbs. =) You need to coach me, my friend!

Glad to see you've been having some fun activities, and I hope to run with you soon.

Darrell said...

Nice looking back yard. Congrats on the WW membership. It is a great program. It helped me lose alomost 70 lbs 4 years ago. Running has helped keep it off. Good luck. Enjoy life!

Michelle said...

You've been tagged! Go to my blog to find out more.

http://diaryofanaspiringloser.blogspot.com