My Early Morning Run and a Healthy (?) Self Image

I was up late last Saturday night finishing my husband’s Father’s Day gift. (More about that later.) I saw a commercial for Jillian Micheal’s website. I don’t have anything against Jillian Micheal’s. In fact, I think she is one bad trainer, and not bad as in…”eww, she’s bad” but bad as in..”whoa, she’s baaaaad.” She’s beautiful and tough and probably doesn’t have an ounce of body fat. In the commercial, there was an invitation to a free body and fitness test to see if you need to lose weight. (Like you can’t tell.) For some reason, the sleeping part of my brain decided it would be a good idea to do this test. I was told by Jillian Micheal’s that, “Dude, you are overweight.” She also went on to tell me that I need to consume only 1000 calories a day to lose wight.

The problem with these sites and tests are that they only ask for your weight and height, not taking into account muscle mass. I wear between a size 6 and 8 pant, depending on brand. I run, strength train and recently took up crossfit. I am by no means overweight. Does that mean I couldn’t stand to tone up some and lose a little off my waist and thighs? Heavens, no! I could stand to lose an inch or two off my waist and thighs, but overall, I am pretty happy with how it’s all shaping up.

So how does this apply to my early morning run? I guess mostly because it was on my mind this morning as I ran. In my post “The Best 5K So Far” I talked about why I like to run and why so early in the morning. I like the quiet, I like the dark and I don’t like being hot so I run in the wee early morning hours.

Did you check out the time I left the house this morning? That’s 4:50 AM to those of you who are night owls. I am a morning person and usually in bed by 10pm or 11 if I am feeling spicy.

Here’s the street by my house I started on.

To prove how quiet it really is, I stood in the middle of a usually VERY busy street to take this picture. Can’t you just FEEL the quiet?

I take different routes different days so I don’t get bored and today I started uphill. For the locals, it’s Brackett Street Hill. It’s a steep hill.

I made it!! (Cue theme song from “Rocky.”)

The good thing about starting uphill is that the rest seems so much easier.

And what goes up must come down. That includes JUSTINE!

Running down State Street Hill is not only pretty but also refreshing, because I’m almost home and closer to a water bottle and a shower!

My dog, Hazel is my loyal running companion. She gets so excited when she sees me reaching for my ball cap. She knows that means RUNNING! When we start out I swear I can hear her excitement, she actually bounds the first few steps.

Okay, that second picture is kind of blurry but that goofy look on her face made me giggle and I couldn’t resist putting it on here. She’s a great dog and a great running companion.

3 and ½ miles. Check!

p.s. There is one week left to read and comment on the post “Coco, Custom Fit Slipcovers and Cuuute Skirts” to win a gift certificate!

Oops…I peed. (Again.)

I love my gym. I’ve been going there about 2 years. I love it because it’s totally outside my comfort zone and it pushes me to test my limits. There are also no mirrors. I’m sure if I saw what I looked like working out I would never have returned. My “concentration face” makes even the trainers laugh. We flip tires, climb walls, push and pull a thing called a stuvenator and other crazy things that look like they were made up by a bored convict. I’ve done “prisoner squats” (see? bored convict) and I used to think a plank was a piece of wood. I gave my trainers nicknames like “Cookie”, (long story) “Killer”, (he really was trying to kill me) “Igor”, (ummm….) and “Backstreet” (he had a very limited pallet in 80’s metal).

So I was getting pretty comfortable there. Time to shake things up, right? I walk in one evening and there are all these ripped, buff and hard bodied men and women walking around throwing huge weights. There is “rigging” up where harmless weights and weight bars used to be….

I’m sure my mouth fell open as I was thinking, “whaaaaaat?” Turns out, our gym is now Crossfit 715 and has 2 new owners that are very excited about crossfit. Crossfit? What the heck is crossfit? And why would I want to do it? They offered free classes for 2 weeks. I went one night. It started out harmless enough with some stretching and practicing lifting with a very innocent wood dowel. Then we walked over to some weights and did real lifting. ICK! I hated it. But wait, it was about to get better. Then we went back to some boxes and did box jumps and mountain climbers for about an hour. Not really, but it felt like an hour and I thought I was going to die. I seriously considered quitting the gym. I decided against it and was going to give crossfit a fair chance.

Here’s how my first class went….we started out with “Olympic style lifting” and I had the lightest weight in the class but it felt like I was lifting a truck. I can’t remember how many of those we did because everything got kinda fuzzy after that. We moved onto doing a combination of jumping rope and situps. For me (the beginner) it was 100 jump ropes (IN A ROW…100 OF THEM!) (in a row, did I say that?) followed by 20 situps with your hands over your head then touching your toes. Back to jump ropes but only 80 this time, followed by 20 sit ups. 60, 20, 40, 20, 20, 20, are you getting the picture? I haven’t jumped rope since probably the 70’s, luckily I still knew how and the nice guy beside me who probably felt pity on me gave me some pointers…which worked!

About into number 25 on the first set, I felt myself starting to pee. The thing is, I went before class even started. I thought, “it’s only a few drops, whatever, let it go.” It was a few, then a few more but we were being timed! I couldn’t stop to pee! Situps, jumping rope, situps, jumping rope…

At the end, I had fully peed my pants and came in dead last.

Class number 2, we ran around the building to “warm up” and I peed again. More jumping, more peeing. Dang! You’d think I have no control. I’m leaving for class number 3 in 2 minutes and stopped drinking anything 2 hours ago. Here’s hoping I don’t pee!

p.s. This is a picture of my “before” crossfit. ( if you look really close, you will see my pee pants) I took my measurements and will post another in one month.

(Also, I am new to crossfit, VERY new and may get terms, proper names and everything wrong, so please forgive and call Momentum Crossfit 715 for any questions you have regarding crossfit.)