What's New....

Life is BUSY...that is not so new.  I am in the middle of the swim team season, and that along with teaching full time and trying to workout daily and keep up with taking care of the household, keeps me very busy.

Some new things going on right now:

GOWearFit:  
I got a gowearfit for Christmas.  Otherwise known as a BodyBugg.  You see the people on Biggest Loser wearing them.  It gives some very interesting data.  Sleep efficiency, number of steps, total number of calories burned, time at moderate activity and time at vigorous activity.  The website has a very good program for entering your nutrition data.  It works easily.

I find that it keeps me very attentive to my number of steps and my activity.  It is amazingly accurate when calculating sleep efficiency.  It shows you when you were lying down and what part of that time  you were sleeping.

It uses quite a lot of data points and seems very accurate.

I also got and Ipad for Christmas.  I am trying to find as many uses for it as I can.  Right now my girls play Angry Birds on it more than anything.  I have used the calender to organize all my workouts, and used it last night to type out a list of things to do today.

21 day cleanse:
I started on December 27th and so today is day 14.  I am trying to follow the plan in CLEAN by Junger.  It calls for a liquid meal for breakfast and dinner and a solid meal at lunch time.  With snacks in between, but only if really necessary.  There is NO alcohol, caffeine, gluten, animal products or added sugar.

I will say that I have not had a perfect day yet.  BUT...I am doing pretty well with it.  The biggest thing it does is keep me VERY conscious of what I am eating.  And very attentive to whether I am really hungry or just bored or doing habitual eating.

I have found that there are times when I think I am really hungry, but with a glass of water or even just TIME the hunger will disappear.

A typical day has gone like this:

Wake up and have some herbal tea
Drink a smoothie

AM snack of cashews/almonds/ dried apricots

Lunch of salad and brown wild rice

PM snack of apple and maybe a Larabar

I then get home from school and this is the time I find that I struggle.  I eat a piece of toast, or a cookie or something else that is definitely not on the plan.

Dinner is a liquid soup that I blend up in the Vitamix.  And from 7pm to 7am I try to stay totally away from anything except for water.

The scale was very nice to me the first week.  The second week has been not so nice.  Frustrating!

Workouts:
Workouts are staying about the same.
I am on the bike trainer three times a week, working through Jorge's plan.  These are interval workouts and last just under an hour.
I am running three times a week and will soon be upping the miles for Boston marathon training.  Right now my long run is at 8 miles and my shorter runs are 4-5 miles.
I am in the pool once a week, and also doing pushups and abs three times a week.

This is about all I can squeeze in with the other time commitments I have.  Coaching is over mid-February and that is when running will be ramped up even more.

Goals for 2011:
My A races will be:


Boston marathon in April-Last year I ran it to enjoy it.  I didn't worry about my time.  In training for it, I put in the miles but did very little speed work because I was not worried about my time.  I ran a 4:19.  After having qualified with a 3:51, that was a SLOW race.

This year I am hoping to go under 4 hours.  I turn 45 in a few weeks and so I need a 4 hour marathon to qualify for next year.  I need to focus on two things for this.  Getting down to a good race weight.  I would like to be AT LEAST ten pounds down from what I was last year.  And the second key, will be to put in a good amount of speed work.  Tempo run and Yasso workouts are what have given me speed (I use the word speed in a relative way here.) in the past.

Syracuse 70.3 in September-
I did Timberman 70.3 in 2009 with a time of 5:39.  I was in the top 15% of my Age group (40-44).  I was happy with my swim, and VERY happy with my bike (averaging above 19mph for the 56 miles).  I was NOT happy with my run, going over 2 hours for the half marathon run.

I did Steelhead 70.3 in 2010 with a time of 5:55.  BUT...20 minutes was spent on flat tire issues.  It was more than just your normal flat.  With my adjusted time of 5:35.  I was again happy with my swim, VERY happy with my bike (other than the flat).  My Garmin had my bike average above 20 mph for the 56 miles.  And again not happy with my run going over 2 hours again.

I want my run for Syracuse to be sub-2 hours.  I would like my race to be sub-5:30, but of course times depend on conditions of the day.  I would like to place in the top 10% of my age group (45-49).

This will take a lot of work!!!!
Hard workouts, good nutrition, mental preparation, and some good luck on race day!

Off to the basement for my bike workout for the day!!!

Thankful that the daylight hours are getting longer!!!