Sunday, June 6, 2010

Japan Day 4M, P90x and Vegetarianism

I haven't written one of these in ages!

Anyway, I ran the Japan Day 4M at Central Park today. Boy, was I unprepared for the humidity. By the time Chris and I left the house at 6am it was already 72 degrees and muggy. It must have hovered around 80 by the start of the race. We got to the park, got our numbers and headed over to the starting line, where we went into my corral rather than his. Normally we'd just head to the back since we're slow pokes, but this time people ushered us forward since they wanted to fill in the gap.

When the gun went off, I just naturally drifted with everyone around me. I felt I started off fast, and I was right. My 1 and 2 miles hovered around the 11 minute mile mark, which was fast for me! By mile 3 I got overheated and felt twinges in my hamstrings, so I eased up a bit. For some reason mile 3 was the hard mile. I kept chugging along the twists and turns. Thankfully most of the race was downhill and, there was a flat stretch towards the end, but it was still a bit of a struggle to keep focused. I think mantras work well for me. I kept repeating certain phrases to push myself and negative thoughts out.

Running has never come easy for me, and I always felt like I wasn't built for it, (particularly now that I'm a few years older and a few pounds heavier!) When I let it go, I ballooned up to my heaviest, about 20 pounds over what I felt comfortable, and had to put myself on a diet. I did a 3 month stint with Nutrisystem and lost about a dozen of that back, and now I'm back under the threshold. Right now I'm probably 5 from my 'natural' weight, and about 15 from my 'glamour' weight.

A buddy of mine recently posted a pic of himself after 90 days on P90x, and he is insanely ripped now, so I'm wondering if I need that sort of disciplined workout. The prospect of spending 1 to 1.5 hours a day on exercising is daunting, but this may be the type of thing I need to do, spend every waking moment scheduled with some sort of activity or goal in mind in order to get back into it.

Again, this type of stuff just doesn't come easy for me. But I think it's time to rethink where I am, and take stock of how I want to look and feel as I head towards the next phase of my life. I've also been thinking about switching slowly to becoming a vegetarian, and have started to cut out fatty foods, additives and have moved to organic whenever possible. I suppose this is what you'd call a lifestyle change. I guess I'm just tired of seeing my friends' Facebook wall posts filled with photos of food as if that's the only interesting thing there, and miss the support I used to feel when I knew more runners. Whatever it is I'm going through right now, it's making me take stock. Weird, but perhaps this is the sort of thing that becomes a turning point.

Anyway, that's enough rambling. Next race is an easy 3 Miles down on Wall Street. Should be fun!

2 comments:

Petraruns said...

Hey this is all great stuff - thanks for sharing!

I think a lot of us have struggled with our weight and healthy eating and it takes a mental jump to change things. But you can TOTALLY do this. Have a look at 101cookbooks.com for inspiration on healthy, natural food. You'll love it! Focus on it being a positive change, rather than deprivation..

peter said...

Way to go to get the 4 mile race in. Exercising an hour a day would be hard to keep up!