Smooth Move

I've been thinking a lot about running lately, sometimes I can't believe I'm actually running, well, jogging, if you will. They say the first few weeks are the hardest and I certainly hope that is the case, but I do know that at some point, before my first race of the year on the 22nd of March, I'm going to have to train for hills as I seriously doubt that the race is going to be level. Atlanta is very, very hilly so it's looking like I have a two week gap from when I complete the Couch to 5K program and the actual race. Assuming I don't have to repeat any weeks during the initial training, I should be able to incorporate hill training during that two week gap.

I finished up Week 2 yesterday, which wasn't bad, I didn't feel like I was going to die and I wasn't as tired at the end although I did sweat more this time around, that may have been because I was covered in a lot of layers. It snowed all day yesterday, it started late morning and continued til early evening. I ran earlier than normal, around 10:30 AM because I did not want to run on slick surfaces nor did I want to get soaked if the temp rose a few degrees and the snow turned to icy rain. All in all, I did pretty well. Tomorrow I start Week 3 which is now two repetitions of 90 sec walk/90 sec run/3 min walk/3 min run. Sounds downright scary if you ask me, but I think I can get through it, the only thing that gives me pause is getting through that last 3 min run. Yikes. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Yesterday I got a new office chair. This is significant because the old one was too big. Imagine that. It was a sweet chair though, one of those incredibly expensive, yet impossibly comfortable Aeron chairs I bought for $200 when the company I worked for went under and started selling off all it's office furniture. I got the largest size which was barely big enough and it lasted a good 6-7 years. At one point, I actually plopped down in it and the seat broke so I kind of rigged it up and it's been that way for like 3-4 years. Lately, it's been causing me a good bit of back and arm pain and despite my best efforts, I just couldn't make it comfortable so to retirement it goes. I can't really even give it away or anything because it's broken and I guess I could contact Herman Miller about a replacement seat or repair, but odds are the repair (not to mention shipping) costs would probably be greater than what I paid for the darn thing. The new one I just ordered works great, a few other folks in my company are using it and love it so I had the opportunity to test it out beforehand. Good stuff.

Last night I gave in and had a cup of senna tea because the constipation was getting really out of control, I felt somewhat miserable most of the day. It's funny how "senna tea" sounds a lot like "sanity", anyway, lots and lots of poop this morning. Thank God! I feel so, so much better. I'm down to 267.4 lbs, for a loss of 3.6 lbs for the month and 249.2 lbs overall. Not the whoosh I expected, but I think I know why. 'Member how I got that new scale, well, thank goodness I bother to weigh every day and record my stats. Since the beginning of the month, my weight has gone from 271.0 to 267.4 lbs, BMI from 38.3 to 37.9, body fat % from 48.3% to 46.1% (a loss of 7.6 lbs) and skeletal/muscle mass went from 63.4 lbs to 65.8! Pretty awesome! The only wonky number is my % of body water went from 28.3% to 29.3%. All in all, I lost over 7 1/2 lbs of fat and gained 2.4 lbs of muscle! Cool beans! Progress! I love it!