Whew! What a week! I feel like I always declare that a week is going to be a little bit easier, but something happens to change things up. My strategy worked though as I hit my total weight loss goal by Friday, and then had an awesome race today (more on that below).
Weekend meal and workout planning with my busy work and family schedule. It’s hard but necessary in order to make sure we can stay on track.
I had originally planned to do a somewhat light workout week in preparation for Rock N Roll Raleigh on Sunday, but of course, that didn’t happen. Here’s how my workout schedule looked:
- Monday: Cycle Beat and PiYo Live (morning), run/power walk (evening), 22MHC
- Tuesday: Interval class (morning), Ramblin’ Rose triathlon orientation and training kickoff (swim/evening), 22MHC
- Wednesday: Total Body Strength (morning), walk (evening), 22MHC
- Thursday: Treadmill run, Ramblin’ Rose swim/spin training class (morning), 22MHC
- Friday: Pilates, Run, Zumba (morning), 2 hour Zumba Night Out (evening), 22MHC
- Saturday: Was exhausted from Friday so actually took a rest day (what?!) from classes and just did 22MHC in the evening. Compared to what I originally had planned, this was huge.
- Sunday: Rock N Roll Raleigh Half Marathon!
A couple of my girlfriends joined me for ZNO – they were new to Zumba but did awesome! It was so fun dancing with them.
Group photo with my Zumba Night Out instructors.
Saturday was actually spent running around with the family, running errands, shopping, and just playing together. It was really nice to get some relaxed time without any major deadlines or appointments. The weather was kinda crummy (it was ridiculously windy) so we pretty much stayed inside except for some outdoor shopping complex errands.
Family time on Saturday.
Sunday morning was an early wake-up call to get downtown for the half marathon. I was up at 4am after a pretty restless night of sleep. I was excited, nervous, and a little anxious about the race, so I just had a hard time getting my mind to calm down at the end of the night on Saturday. The weather forecast was stressing me out (all week it was saying race day would be around the 50s but Saturday night I looked and it was 30s/40s). I had to rethink what I was going to run in and I HATE that. I don’t like dealing with uncertainty on race days. Thankfully, I made the right call – long sleeve workout shirt under my short sleeved main shirt. I then wore a light windbreaker type running jacket over it and some running ear muff/scarf items that I was able to shed as I warmed up.
After the race with my girlfriends Stephanie and Rachel.
Before the race, I had set an aggressive 2:20 time for myself to complete it. My last half in New Orleans was 2:28 and I thought I could beat that this time with the various hill training I had been doing in the last month since. I had never run this course before, but heard from everyone that it was hilly and awful. While it didn’t necessarily disappoint, it also wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it. The hills weren’t too painful, and I’m thinking it’s because I had really incorporated hill training into my routine since the beginning of the year. My girlfriend, Rachel, met up with me at mile 5 and helped pace me to the end of the race – I was actually able to finish even before my mental goal at an awesome 2:09:57 (talk about cutting it close). 18 minutes faster than my last race! I felt fantastic (but exhausted) at having beat my goal by so much, and it was great to finish strong with a friend. Rachel was terrific about keeping me motivated through the second half of the race, and I just felt like I was in a really good state of mind after running the half.
Afterwards, I was able to get some rest when I got home as my hubby took the boys out for a long walk since the weather had warmed up a little. Then it was back to errands to prep for the rest of the week and family time since I had been gone all morning. It was overall, a really great weekend. While there were some things that I just couldn’t get to unfortunately, time with the family was the most important part with everything else that’s been going on recently.
Post race haze, admiring my medal before hanging it on the wall.
So! Onto this week. Another busy one, and my first week ‘maintaining’ instead of focusing just on losing weight. I’m going to do a bit more toning/strength training instead of my normal cardio heavy routine. I also don’t plan on weighing myself on Friday like I normally do – I’m going to try to start doing my weigh-in every other week to go along with my ‘maintenance’ state of mind. I don’t want to be obsessed with it like I’ve been in the past but will continue to focus on planning my workouts, meals, and making healthier choices. I’ll keep you posted on how all of that goes.
Here’s the meal planning for the week:
- Sunday: Went out to Brixx for dinner with the family. Split the salad with hubby and half of the pear and gorgonzola flatbread.
- Monday: Homemade spaghetti sauce, brown rice and quinoa noodles, peas
- Tuesday: Grilled cheese, soup (Tuesday is apparently National Grilled Cheese Day)
- Wednesday: Salmon, rice pilaf, asparagus
- Thursday: Savory chicken (recipe from Bobby Deen), roast potatoes, broccoli
- Friday: Chicken, Trader Joe’s gnocchi, butternut squash soup
- Saturday: Turkey burgers, zucchini, homemade mac and cheese
What’s in store for your week? How do you plan on keeping on track this week?
