Excuses & Working Out

It’s cold outside, I ran out of time today, I’m tired, we live in the county, there is no gym close by, HD didn’t cooperate…..Excuses, excuses, excuses.  Ok, I’m done with the excuses!  HD is 13 months old and I still haven’t gotten rid of all the baby weight that I gained.  AND my sister Morgan is getting married this summer AND I’m her Matron of Honor.  AND both of my sisters are really into running and they keep suggesting that I run some races with them.  AND they both look great, are very physically fit and healthy. Me-I want to be like them.  🙂  

We live in the country on a gravel road on top of a hill surrounded by other hills.  It’s the perfect workout.  The only problem is–I hate running.  If you ask a co-worker of mine, Steve, who just happened to be my high school track coach, how much I like to run, he would probably just laugh.  I hated it (past tense since I’m trying to think positively about it now).  I used to run anywhere from sprints to middle distance in high school and didn’t do too bad.  But I only ran because the coaches made me.  After high school, I pretty much quite running.  I like to walk and would do that once in a while.  Anyways, exactly two years ago, I started getting back into running.  My cousin Angela made me sign up for a 5K with her the end of June, so I downloaded this app onto my iPod called C25K (Couch to 5K).  It started me out basically walking more than running and within nine weeks it had me ready for a 5K.  Or at least that’s what it said. 

So the day before the big 5K race I found out I was pregnant.  I still ran the race, but didn’t push myself as much as I maybe would have had I not been pregnant.  I had lost 18 pounds up until that point just getting outside and walking and running the hills and watching what I ate.  Most people don’t believe that I actually lost that much, I must have been hiding it well.  But I did.  And I felt great and thought I look good too!  But then the pregnancy weight started.  It started out slow, but when all was said and done, I had gained quite a bit more than I wanted.  So, now I’ve decided that it’s time for it to go bye-bye.  I think that my sister’s wedding on July 9th and the nice weather are great motivating factors.  

So as of today I have 14 weeks to look and feel better about myself.  Now that it’s nice outside, I really don’t have any excuse not to get outdoors and workout.  If I go north out of my driveway and go to the stop sign and back it is right at 3.2 miles.  I did that Tuesday, Thursday and today (Saturday) this week and I’ve already cut 5 minutes off my time!  What I started out doing is walking up the hills and jogging down the hills and on the flat part (not much of that though!).  Each day, I tried to run a little bit more going uphill.  And it has worked out well so far!  

Next week, per my sister Megan’s suggestion, I’m going to run up the hills and walk down them.  We’ll see how that goes!  

I was pretty sore Wednesday and Thursday, but feel pretty good now.  It’s only going to get better from here on out…..right?  

My goal is to look and feel better about myself.  I really don’t care what the scale says (ok, I do a little bit) as long as I start to fit into all of my pre-pregnancy clothes again I will be happy!  I have a whole stack of jeans and a large plastic storage tub that I just recently found when I was spring cleaning that has all my tank tops, tees, etc from before I had HD.  So I can’t wait to get them all out, just in time for summer!