Part 2: The weekend

Part 2: My actual weekend

Okay, so now that I’ve got the vain, yet happy part about self-love and body image out of the way I can talk about my actual weekend.  Friday night I came home and Chris wanted to go out for dinner. We ended up at Chang’s Mongolian Grill. You know one of those places where you pick out all the veggies and meats and then they cook it up on the grill in front of you.  I’d say that 80% of what I ate was just veggies. Heaping piles of vegetables but then I did have some turkey, chicken, and salmon.  I had some noodles but I tried to limit that.  And then of course for good measure I had to throw on peanut crumbles on the top.  I had 2 plates. I was full. And then of course they give you vanilla ice cream laced with caramel and peanuts for dessert. And then once we ate that, they brought us another one. I ate it too.  Oh well.  Still couldn’t have been all that bad.  Mostly vegetables.

The plan for Saturday was to wake up at a decent time, which for us was pretty much our normal weekly time and then get ready and drive an hour to the Oregon Coast for the day to run.  I was honestly terrified that I wasn’t going to be able to make myself do a long run all on my own. Honestly I never have. Not really. It’s easy to run long distances when you are in a race. Doing a half provides all the necessary adrenalin and motivation one needs.  Powering thru mileage all by yourself is daunting.  But I was pretty adamant to Chris that I needed to do this long run if nothing else to prove to myself that I could make it happen.  I think that is always the most important part.  But here’s the thing, Saturday was supposed to be like 102-104 degrees here. This is rare for us and hot.  I had zero desire to run in that.  So Lincoln City Oregon bound we were.

We ended up leaving at like 9 AM or 10 AM or somewhere in between.  I was expecting the drive to be horrible as everyone and there brother was probably headed to the beach to stay cool but I was shocked to see the drive wasn’t bad at all. We made it there in what seemed like a blink of the eye.  The next task was to find a route to run. We drove a little before deciding that the best thing to do was look up the Lincoln City half marathon we ran in 2014 and see that route.  I easily located it on the internet and we headed to that area.  This turned out to be an excellent decision. In a nutshell we ran 10 miles of 13.1 of the official Lincoln City half marathon course.

The course was off the beaten path, not insanely hilly and was scenic along a river.  It was a beautiful perfect temperature when we started running.  I should note we drove the course first and hid water bottles along the course for us. This ended up being a wise decision and the only regret is that we didn’t hide before because it ended up getting hot even for the coast.  So we parked and got out and I was like, okay am I really doing this? Yes, I’m doing this.  And off we went.  It is hard to really push yourself on your own though.  I have to admit to not running my fastest overall or really caring that I wasn’t running my fastest.  But I guess I didn’t need to run my fastest.  For lack of anywhere else to run we chose this course but about 6 of the 10 miles were run in gravel and in hindsight that was probably stupid.  Running in gravel is hard. Extra hard. I endured well enough but it did slow me down.  I know it slowed me down because on the return trek back to the car as soon as I hit the paved ground I instantly sped up and this was at like mile 8 and I should have been more tired and yet I cranked it up a notch on paved ground. 

I have no complaints about the run.  I did it.  That is the magical happy part of all of it.  I freaking made myself run 10 miles just because.  Work around the obstacles.  This gives me hope for a few of those extra-long runs I have on the plan in August.  We shall see though. One weekend at a time. So after we were done I felt amazing. Proud and accomplished.

We then headed to the beach and walked around for a while before realizing we were starving.  So off to Subway we went. Yes, this is a stupid choice for the coast but honestly I didn’t want to eat shitty and most of the little restaurants were not healthy and busy and expensive and at least I knew what I was getting at Subway.  I really wanted to try this weekend to stay on point with my nutrition because I seem to fail pretty much every weekend. We walked around downtown, went into a few shops.  Honestly it was wonderful. It was a great perfect day. 

Sunday morning I was lazy lazy.  I got up and didn’t want to do anything.  I knew I was going to go to the gym but everyone who would have wanted to work out with me had plans so I knew I was on my own which sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation for.  It took me forever to get started with the day.  Chris had to work so I was really on my own.

EVENTUALLY like at 12:30 or 1:00 I made my way to the gym. It was completely empty.  It is a 24 hour gym so you can scan your card and get in, but I was the only person there.  This is lovely because you get the place to yourself, but hard too because all your motivation must be internal.  I started with a warm up run which turned into me feeling awesome on the treadmill and just running. 4 mile run.  Not too shabby. I felt great.  And then I did some legs.  I’m not going to lie it wasn’t as good as it could have been.  Like I can probably still do more legs because I didn’t really max myself out. But at least I put in some effort, right?

So I came home and pretty much spent the rest of the night fucking around.  Showered, took selfies, you know how that goes. For dinner I had a chicken/avocado sandwich and it was amazing and spectacular.  I have been really trying lately to eat a little better. Perhaps that is why I am “feeling” so much better. Things are responding to the good I am doing for myself. More “real” food if that is possible for me. I am a processed food kind of gal unfortunately so I suppose when I try and incorporate more real stuff my body likes it and rewards me.

All I know is that I am generally on such a high right now that I want to keep going and see where I can get before Maui.  I have kind of mentally decided that weighing myself is retarded yet again.  It’s retarded when you first lose weight because your body needs more time and your brain needs more time to adjust. It’s also retarded when you don’t really lose that much because your brain has a hard time handling the lack of movement.  So I think I will weigh myself next Thursday because its July 2 and then I’m going to try and go cold turkey until August. Technically I have 12 Thursday’s until Maui. So 12 weeks until I get to hit the beach.  I’d love to feel this good about myself then, hell I’d love to feel better about myself.  I’d like to see what I can accomplish by then both physically and mentally. Certainly I will be sticking to my marathon training plan so that has got to help.

I also realistically know that I will eat a ton of crap food between now and then as well. It’s life. I like food. I eat out.  It happens. But you can still do all those things and love your body and lose weight or tone up.  Just nothing in crazy excess. 

So I have one more topic I really want to talk about but I am thinking I shall save it for tomorrow since I’ve already written a ton as I knew I was going to. Monday’s are always a large weekend recap post so it’s a lot at once.