Kicking Goals

Where does the time go? Another 10 days between posts!!! Running is going well, I have built up from 4km to 6km in the last 10 days so next week will be out chasing 7km. With 10 weeks to go until the big 12km I am very happy with my progress and certain I will have my distance up to 12 by the time the big day rolls around. In light of my new goals I thought it best that I go and get fitted properly for a new pair of runners. There is an amazing shop in Geelong, the running company, so I headed off there to be put on one of their treadmills and filmed while running so they could see how my feet and ankles behaved to determine what sort of shoe I needed. Turns out that I have ankles that don’t behave – they roll inwards when my foot lands meaning I need shoes with a truckload of support in them, after trying on 10-15 pairs of shoes – each pair has to be tested back on the treadmill and the footage reviewed to see if my ankles are behaving I am now the proud owner of a shiny new pair of brooks runners, which I am told will be perfect for the amount of km’s I will be clocking up and will be fine to wear should I choose to join Greg in the madness of a 21.1km run in April.

My new best friend

On the work front, I have been offered a promotion, thankfully no one at work knows about my blog as I have been sworn to secrecy until next week, but I have been promoted to hotel operations manager. This means a nice pay rise but also I have been able to negotiate much better hours for myself to ensure I get to spend more time with my family & I can stop stressing out about job applications – YAY

My car unfortunately needs a new motor, so that’s not good news; thankfully we have been able to borrow my grandparent’s second car for as long as we need it. Trust us to have a car with a notoriously hard to find motor in it. The mechanic is hoping he will have one for us next week but it also means the car will have been away from home for about a month by the time we get it back, decided I LOVE my car, can’t wait til it comes home

Off to a Trivia night tonight organised by some good friends of mine, their lives and the lives of many I know have been affected by cancer, they are participating in a number of rides in order to raise money for cancer research and tonight we are raising funds for the Melbourne Ride to Conquer Cancer – if anyone can help the cause please follow this link to donate funds to help them raise enough money to participate in the rest of the rides around the country . Julies Ride or Gregs Rides

Until next time, have a great week all x

Run Forrest Run

Wow, a lot has happened since I posted last, not sure where to start. I might start with the negatives and finish on a high

The Bad, or as some of my amazing friends would say FFS.... My car died :( It is with the mechanic right now. I had to get a ride with the tow truck driver on Monday night after work to get my car home and to get me home. The car is going to cost around $2k to get fixed. I’m sure anyone reading this is just like us and does not just have that sort of money just lying around. I have had to call the bank and get a stop on the mortgage this month so that we will have the money to pay for the car to be fixed. I am hoping it will be ready for me to collect today. 3 days with no car is not fun. Tuesday was my day off so not so bad, it just meant I was stuck at home for the day, yesterday hubby took me to work and picked me up and this morning one of my staff came and collected me to take me to work and I will probably get someone else from work to take me home.

The Good - well really, the scary. There is an annual fun run – Run Geelong – that benefits Geelong hospital children’s ward. Last year I signed up for the 6km course and walked the majority of the course (I may have run 500metres), upon signing up again this year I knew after all the hard work I’ve put in over the last 9 months dropping my weight and improving my fitness,  I could run the entire 6km. I then decided that wasn’t a big enough challenge. The run is 3 months away so I thought why not sign up for the 12km run and give myself something to focus on and train towards over the next 12 weeks, so that’s what I did. Hubby, who can’t stand running, has chosen to sign up with me, not only to support me but to also give him a focus and a reason to get out there, train and improve his fitness. Now anyone that knows me knows that this is a BIG deal. I am the girl who does not run! I have always claimed that I CAN’T run, but guess what? After training in the gym for the last 5-6 months and slowly increasing my time running on the treadmill, something must’ve worked. I decided last week to head out for my first run just to see what I could do & hey presto I knocked over 5km. I went out a few days later and smashed another 5km. So now I have a plan – 12 weeks to push that 5km to 12km. After talking to a girl at work who is a PT and doing a bit of research, the plan is to now focus on increasing that distance bit by bit, week by week. This week I will be chasing a 6km run, and then we’ll add another km, etc etc as well as that I have been advised to do some interval runs and hill runs to increase my running fitness. This has really helped me forget about being upset about not being involved in 12WBT this round as I still have a 12 week focus. My focus is now not on the scales, I’m really not concerned about my weight right now, what I am doing now is fitness focused and my new number chasing is increasing those pesky kms. So even though my new focus is running, I still need to fit in my weight training to maintain strength, so on Tuesday, stranded at home with no car I figured I would run to the gym, so I got out there, ran to the gym, did my weight session and then ran home. A total of 3.6km run plus weights took me an hour and I achieved my best calorie burn for a 1 hour session (585) and my fastest km (4min 5sec) – clearly not a time I can keep running at but a quick km to begin my session.

Back at work last week looking online at some other runs that are in the area I discovered a 10km run 2 weeks prior to the 12km run and I thought that would be good preparation to know what to expect the following fortnight. So I signed up for that too. I have gone in 2 weeks from being the girl who can’t run to the girl who is training for her 1^st 10km fun run, quickly followed by her 1^st 12km fun run. My brother has started calling me Forrest – hence my blog title. I certainly have no aspirations to run a record time for these events, I am going to be happy just to finish them without stopping. Once these events are over I guess I then need to tackle Greg and his crazy idea that I can run the Geelong ½ marathon with him in April........Maybe Greg, Maybe (but that’s not a No)

So what’s on the agenda this week? Spend a heap of cash on my car, then try to find $$ and time to get fitted for a new pair of runners and just keep running

This is Life

Long time no blog.... I have been battling the last few weeks. I have been on an emotional rollercoaster, my eating and exercise patterns have been erratic and some days out of control and I have been working on getting my balance back so the little ole blog has fallen by the wayside. Be warned, this is a long catch up.

Why the rollercoaster? Good question! I don’t know. I am struggling to find a new job as there is really nothing in the job market right now but I am not completely miserable at work so I don’t think that is the cause of my mindset. I battled with PND and a few months ago came off all of my medication, I had been doing really well until I decided to go back on the pill. I believe going back on the pill has been the reason behind my struggles these last few weeks. I have had so many days where I just couldn’t be bothered so what did I do?? Nothing! I sat on the couch and ate. One day I didn’t even have dinner as hubby wasn’t home so I sat on the couch and ate chips and chocolate instead then felt sick then got a junk food headache. Did that make me feel better? HELL NO! What my poor husband has had to put up with from me the last few weeks is ridiculous, I went back to how I was in my ‘dark’ days, I was really a shell, and I just went through the motions not really caring. Once I connected that my moods had changed since starting the pill it was a very easy decision to take myself off it. I haven’t even been off it a week and I already feel a million times better. I almost have my old self back. There was a positive to come out of this though, I started this blog as I am useless at opening up and talking, through this recent depression I have actually had nights where I have sat on the couch and told hubby everything I was feeling and what was going through my head and he is so brilliant at helping me talk through everything I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner :)

So end of round 2, success? Weight wise I think I lost 3kg, finishing at about 78kg, so not my best effort but with all the down days I had where I ate shit and didn’t exercise I think it’s not a bad end result. At one stage through the round I was down to my lowest weight ever 76.6kg but I undid a lot of that work by the end of the round, this morning I am already back at 77kg so I’m well on my way to kicking my mojo back into gear and getting up and going again.

Finale – Well what a way to get back into my groove. A weekend away with no children, just hubby and I, plus a few very special members of the 12WBT family. Hubby and I decided to make the most of flying in on Friday morning and hired a car to spend the day cruising around the Barossa, had the best day visiting Maggie Beers Farm Shop for lunch then to 2 of our favourite wines cellar doors for a taste and a sneaky purchase of a few bottles finished off with a beautiful afternoon tea looking over the Barossa vines at Artisans of Barossa. It was so nice to just have a chilled out day reconnecting with hubby, been a long time since we were able to just take some time to ourselves. We finished Friday with Thai takeaway in our hotel room. Saturday, up and at em, dropped the car off and walked the 3.5km to group workout stopping for a piece of toast and coffee along the way. Once at workout we hung out with some of my favourite 12WBT people waiting for it to start, we were treated with Michelle sauntering straight past where we were sitting to make her way to the stage then it began – I am so proud with my efforts, I made it through the entire workout, people that have been to 5+ finale workouts said this was the hardest they had done by far and I MADE IT THROUGH THE WHOLE THING – I burned 565 cals through the session, so not only did I do the whole thing but I clocked my highest calorie burn in an hour too :) So after workout it was off to the pub for a liquid lunch where I got to catch up properly with one of my favourite people, the lovely Jules xx Greg & Ben got on like a house on fire which made lunch even more enjoyable with the friendly banter being thrown around. Taxi back to the hotel from lunch, shower and off to pick up Jules for hair and makeup. Frocked up and Made up we headed off to see if Adelaide knew how to throw a party, yes they did :) We had the BEST night, jumped straight into the photo booths to save the huge queues later in the night, managed to get our hands on plenty of tasty food, plenty of refills to our wine glasses, got our portraits drawn by the resident caricature, we’re still not really sure who he drew in our pictures but it was a fun experience, we enjoyed a show by some very flexible strong men/acrobats/circus boys not really sure what to call them & of course got to see the top 10 most inspirational 12WBTers. It was really lovely being able to hear all of their stories, I much preferred the way they did things with these presentations than the way they did them in Melbourne. Sunday we weren’t feeling too bad so with some time to kill we had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel then jumped on a tram to Glenelg where we got to wander for about half hour in the beautiful sunshine before tramming back to hotel to pick up our bags and head home.

I had an amazing weekend and feel so much closer to hubby now, I think we really do forget to take time to ourselves when we have children, we rush about from day to day between work, appointments and day to day stuff that just gets in the way. We do things as a family on the weekend which is lovely and manage the odd dinner here and there but this weekend away for me was a big eye opener that we really do need to make the time to do things together as a couple and spend some time just being ‘us’.

So now I’m home and back to reality. I decided a few weeks ago that I was not going to sign up for round 3, although I have really enjoyed my 2 rounds I feel I need to see if I can maintain this lifestyle by myself to make sure I really have learnt the lessons I needed to learn. I still have an amazing support network around me to support me through it. When the round kicked off and my friends were all excited about staring the new round I did wonder if I had made the wrong decision and thought about quickly jumping on board before the closed the round, but a chat with hubby reminded me that I was going to stop 12WBT at some stage, it was never going to be forever so why not sit this round out and see how I go, there is always round 4 if I find I’m struggling. I agreed but if I am going to do this alone I still need a goal. In November Cotton on Foundation organise a fun run to benefit Geelong hospital children’s ward, last year I entered and managed to run about 500metres of the 6km course, my challenge for this year’s run in November is to run the entire 12km course, a big call from someone who has always claimed to not be able to run. I have slowly started improving my running capabilities in the gym on the treadmill but road running is very different to treadmill running so Tuesday morning (not feeling 100%) I decided to skip my gym session head to the river and run. On my first ever ‘proper’ run I managed 4.75km nonstop in 33mins. I would’ve kept going too but I was back at the car. I am so happy with this start and I can see from this I would easily be able to run the 6km course so with 3 months to train I have my sights on 12km. Hubby has committed to doing it with me so when he is home at the end of this week from his week on the road we will work out a training plan and set our sights on smashing our new goal.

I will be celebrating with my friends in Sydney at the round 3 finale as I still feel a part of the 12WBT family, this time though I don’t have a magic number that I am chasing for my weight, instead my magic number will be a distance to be reached the week following finale. Good luck to all my friends smashing out round 3, looking forward to helping you celebrating your successes in November xx

Please excuse my sideways photos - for some reason they just refuse to rotate for me :( 

Lunch at Maggie Beers

Original grape press at Henschke

Afternoon tea at Artisans of Barossa

The lovely Jules at our liquid lunch

Ben and i frocked up and ready to party

The girl that i adore, Jules xx

Tightening the reins

Well the last few weeks I have definitely loosened my grip on those proverbial reins. I have allowed myself to indulge in foods the old Sarah would’ve destroyed........why? Did I give into cravings? Not always, sometimes there was a craving, other times I ate just because the food was there. Did it make me feel good? No. I said to hubby just last night that I have noticed on the days where I don’t exercise or on the days I eat crap food, I find I get myself into a funk, I don’t start these days feeling low but by the end of the day I am in a crappy mood and that’s the only thing I can think of that might be causing it. I don’t have the feelings of oh why didn’t I exercise today nor do I find myself ridden with guilt for eating the wrong foods but yesterday I made the connection that the days where I am feeling slightly depressed are the same days I have found myself making bad choices.

I have made the decision to sit out round 3 of 12WBT but if I keep following this pattern of self destructive behaviour I might just have to sign up before they close registrations. I really would like to prove to myself that I CAN do this by myself, that I HAVE learnt enough lessons to get me through life and be able to maintain my healthy outlook on exercise, food & life. When it is a work day and I am following my routine I am fine but the wheels seem to fall off on the weekends. This is where I really need to make more of an effort. I need to develop some sort of routine to follow for Saturday’s and Sunday’s. My gym does not open until 8 but I generally want to be out at 7. Maybe what I need to do is hit the pavement? Just get out of the house and take the dog for a run rather than wait for the gym to open. By the time I have lounged around with hubby and the girls, had my breakfast and coffee I don’t want to go anywhere. Maybe on the weekend what I need to do is get out of bed, chuck on my runners, get out the front door and just GO!

Maybe this is can help explain some things

 

The round 2 finale party is just a few weeks away and if I keep following this self sabotaging trail of destruction then I will not fit into the dress I have bought for the occasion. So the plan for this week? Follow the plan! Stick to what I know best, keep planning my meals, keep following my routine, and keep going to the gym, even when I don’t want to. Shift the 1-2kgs I have allowed to creep back on and follow it up with the next 2kgs to get to my 75kg goal. I CAN do this and I WILL do this. I have got an amazing support network around me, I need to use them when I have moments of weakness, I know those BIS girls of mine will certainly bring me back down to earth with a thud if I start getting carried away, I just need to make sure I open myself up when I am struggling – ASK FOR HELP – I will get it. No one will know I need help if I fail to ask for it. OK, let’s do this!

Just an update

Right, I have been absent so I figured it was time for an update. I will apologise now as I have the feeling this post will be one long rambling mess.

I realised this week that I forgot to come here and brag about my PB that I cracked the week before last. I have been trying to teach myself how to run as I am sure I have mentioned. Previous PB was running for 20 minutes and I think that was just over 3km. Well my new PB is 30min nonstop, in that time I ran 4.2km. Not far to go and I will have my 6km goal. Why 6km? Well last year when I was 22kg heavier than now and as unfit as I have ever been I signed up for the cotton on foundation run for the kids – Geelong. I had high hopes that I could get my ass into gear if I had an end goal and I would be able to run so I signed up for the 6km run. Well I think I ran for all of 200metres that day, I am determined that this November when run for the kids rolls around I WILL run the entire 6km! This has also made me realise I am THE FITTEST I have EVER been in my entire adult life.  Proud moment, I am achieving my goals :)

I slipped on the ab challenge, so I started again. Today is my new day 3, let’s see how far I get through this time before I forget to do it and come back to start again. Today was tough, I got my new programs from my trainer this week so every ab challenge has been on the back of my new workout. Tony has really upped the ante on my weight training, lots of things I have never done before and today my hands were hurting a lot so he suggested I go and buy some gloves! Oh dear things are starting to get serious, my hunt for guns means I am starting on some serious weights and need gloves to do it! I will be thanking myself in a few months when the new lean and fit me starts to take shape. This is not about becoming a professional weight lifter – I need to keep my curves, losing my curves is a deal breaker, I love my curves! I am just hoping to trim a few cm’s from my thighs and develop some nice arms that I am happy to show off in a singlet top come summer

This week I have also decided that I am not going to sign up for round 3 of 12WBT. I have barely looked at the program this round, I use my collection of recipes for the bulk of our meals and adapt other family favourite recipes, I plan my own meals and use MFP to track everything, I follow the training plan my trainer has developed for me at the gym, I have my own support network in my fabulous BIS girls & hubby, I rarely check in on the 12WBT forums & I haven’t been watching the mindset videos. So all this in mind I figure why spend $$ when I am not using the resources. If I find that I actually do need the support of the program then I will just jump on and resign for round 4.  My trainer has told me he is always there for any fitness or nutritional questions I have and my gorgeous girls are always there for me if I am having a bad day, need extra support or need to bounce some ideas. You know who you are and I love you to bits and pieces xx

So that’s it, another couple of weeks and I’ll be going solo – I will still be tracking and planning my meals and I will still be working out just as much and just as hard. I need to see if I can keep up the momentum all by myself, I believe I can! That’s all for today, I’ll check back soon

I've certainly come a long way in 6 months - what will 6 more bring?

Feeling the burn!

Day 3 of ab challenge and its starting to hurt. I don't do anything ab related at the gym so even though today was only 25 sit ups 10 crunches 10 leg raises and a 15 second plank it is starting to get hard! Tomorrow is a rest day then back to it on Thursday. I will go to gym tomorrow after work but I have discovered this week I am a morning exerciser. Went to gym on my way home from work last night and it was one of the hardest sessions I have done. I was already tired from working all day and mentally drained. Then towards the end of my session I felt like throwing up! I was doing a session I have done a million times before and usually power through but when I exercise in the morning I don't eat breakfast until after my session, 1 piece if toast is all I eat if I eat anything before exercise and that is about 2 hours before I set foot in gym. I think maybe lunch was too close to my afternoon session :( ah well, will have to remember to not have a big lunch tomorrow. 

I am currently looking for a new job, hopefully one with 'normal' hours. When I land said job I have decided to be 'one if those people', you know the ones? They get up at 6am even though they don't really have to be up for work until 730, then they head out in the cold, dark morning and then the mad people exercise! For an hour! Before work! Yep, we'll I've decided that I'm going to become one if them, and you know what? I'm actually a little but excited about it. 

Ab challenge

Hi all, if I throw it out here then it's real :) I've decided to commit to a 30day ab challenge. I'll check in from time to time to keep you all up to date but I've started it off tonight with a very gentle start, it gets challenging pretty quickly. 

Today kicked off with 15 sit ups, 5 crunches, 5 leg raises & a 10sec plank. By the end of 30 days it'll be 125 sit ups, 200 crunches, 65 leg raises & 120sec plank. 

Anyone who might want to join the challenge let me know and I'll post the whole thing up here or shoot you an email