Shrinking Jill

The Philly SheRox triathlon is less than 2 days away and I’m a bit jittery, mainly about the bike portion of the tri. I still don’t feel 100% confident on my new wheels but since there won’t be any traffic on the route the worst that can happen is I’ll fall off my bike (been there, done that) and scrape myself up.  Of course I could always hit a slippery spot on the course and wipeout in a spectacular crash taking down all the other riders around me.  But since I’ll pretty much be right at the back of the pack with the other newbies I don’t think that’s too likely!

To help control my jitters this evening I headed over to the pool in my planned tri outfit for one last dry run – a quick swim immediately followed by an easy bike ride.  I guess technically that’s more of a wet run than a dry run, but you get the picture.  Anyway, as soon as I was done swimming I hopped out of the water, whipped off my cap and goggles then ran outside to my car still wearing my swim gear (and soaking wet).  I yanked my bike out of the trunk, threw on my helmet & gloves, flung my flip flops into the backseat, dragged on my socks and shoes then jumped on my bike, remembering to lock the car remotely just as I was riding away.  The whole thing took only a few minutes and I noticed a few people looking on in amusement when I left a puddle of water behind me!  After a short ride I felt comfortable that I could easily transition without forgetting anything critical and rode back to my car to dry off and head home.  Mission accomplished.

One thing that I found surprisingly challenging over the past few months is deciding exactly what clothing to wear during the triathlon.  There is no privacy in the transition area (and public nudity is frowned upon by the race organizers), so whatever I wear for the swim will be what I wear for the rest of the race.  As a more – ahem – well-endowed gal, this means a sports bra underneath my swim gear.  And since I have no desire to ride my bike wearing just a swimsuit (bra or no bra, nobody needs to see that) I will swim in my bike shorts and shirt – which means anything made of cotton is completely out of the question unless I want to emerge from the water 10 pounds heavier than I started!  Also, experienced triathletes have told me that padded bike shorts absorb a lot of water during the swim – the feeling has been likened to a wet diaper.  So I think I’ll risk a bruised booty and wear unpadded shorts.

After a lot of trial and error I settled on this tankini top from Junonia, an Enell sports bra and black Danskin bike shorts.  The top is made of a nice stretchy swimsuit material and fits snugly to my ribs, then flares a bit to loosely cover my hips.  It is tres comfortable and also has the added bonus of not floating up over my head once I get in the water (like I said, this has been a trial and error process – mostly error).  The Enell is incredible, a feat of modern engineering.  If you are looking for complete lockdown during high impact activities, the Enell is without question the best choice.  Unfortunately that type of structure and strength is not sexy by any stretch of the imagination and is best covered up by cute workout clothes – fortunately my new tankini top fits the bill.

Finally, if the water temperature is below 84F, I’ll wear my new X-Terra Volt sleeveless wetsuit over my clothes.   This means I’ll have to struggle out of my wetsuit in addition to getting my bike gear on while still soaking wet.  But I have my fingers crossed that it will be cool enough because:

1. I love my wetsuit – it’s fun to wear and makes me feel like Catwoman!
2. It keeps me afloat without even having to tread water – a big advantage if I get tired during the swim.
3. It makes me swim faster
4. I feel like more of a triathlete with it on.
5. Did I mention it makes me feel like Catwoman?  Raaaawwrrr!

All of those advantages outweigh the extra time it will take to get the suit off before I hop on the bike.  And who am I kidding – if it takes me an extra 2 minutes in transition it’s not exactly going to cost me a podium finish!

After the swim I’ll put on my Balega Lady Enduro socks (OMG, these are the BEST socks I have ever worn and they hold up incredibly well in the washing machine), and my Forte cycling shoes that I got uber-cheap from Performance bike.  After the bike I’ll wear my Brooks Adrenaline GTS10 running shoes which I absolutely love.  Post-race I’ll be wearing a plush robe and slippers after a hot bath with a glass of champagne.  And maybe a pepperoni pizza.

Tomorrow I have to pickup my race packet and attend an information session.  There’s also a race expo where vendors will have lots of gear and goodies – I’ll definitely bring my wallet because I’m hoping to pick up some new gloves and maybe a new helmet.  After that I’m going to get my gear bag organized and packed and get a good night’s sleep.

CAN’T WAIT!

Yes, yes, I know – it’s not Wednesday.  It just took me a day to get up the courage to post this week’s weight.  I’m happy to report that my business travel is over and done for the summer (I hope) but the last few weeks have been stressful…and I think you know what’s coming next.  I allowed myself to fall right back into old habits and the result was as expected yesterday morning.  The scale read 241.  Yup, you read that right.  241.  Back in the 240′s .  Up 8 pounds from a few weeks ago.

Sigh.

I feel tired, headachy, and just generally foggy from eating processed food, sugar, fat and salt for a couple weeks.  Although I made an effort each day to eat some fresh fruit & veg, and kept up with my exercise no matter what, I still feel like crap.  The past couple weeks have really taught me just how damaging junk food is to the human body, and that a banana with my breakfast plus a few grapes for a snack just aren’t enough to overcome the negative effects of all that processed food.

So what’s next?  Get right back to it.  A lapse is just that – a break from routine, a time when I wasn’t making the best choices.  But a lapse isn’t permanent and there’s always tomorrow.  Feeling bad about my mistakes isn’t going to help my change my behavior – instead I’ll give myself a little pep talk to help generate some positive momentum.

The SheRox triathlon is in a few days and I’m pretty excited.  It has finally hit me that I’m a triathlete!  Not your typical triathlete, but perhaps that’s a good thing – I think I’m an example to all the women out there that think they can’t do it, especially the ones that are 50, 75, 100 pounds or more overweight.  No doubt I’ll be the heaviest woman at the starting line on Sunday (or at least close to it) and I’m kinda proud of that.  Not your average triathlete, but a triathlete just the same.  All 241 pounds of me!

Well after a long absence I weighed in again this morning.  Today’s weight was 236.  I can’t say I’m surprised, because although I’ve been fairly true to my exercise schedule, I have been sloppy with food:

• Mindless snacking during long meetings, or while watching TV at home
• Eating well past the point of fullness
• Eating a big lunch AND a big dinner – with a couple glasses of wine
• Eating in response to stress or boredom

I feel like I’ve been in a plateau forever – not the typical type where the scale won’t move despite watching your food and exercise – but more of a mental plateau.  Despite knowing how to change my habits and even managing to change some of them I seem to have stalled on my mental progress.

I will give myself props for not completely abandoning healthy habits over the past two months – the old Jill would have decided that traveling = no rules and just taken advantage of every opportunity to indulge.  I could have gained 10-15 pounds or more by now, instead of just 3.  Each day I strive to get in several servings of fruit & veg as well as some whole grains and healthy proteins.  Dinners have been a little heavy on the refined carbs, mostly because after a long day I tend to drift towards comfort foods.  I’m going to forgive myself for partially falling into old habits because I’ve also managed to hold onto many of the new ones.

This forgiveness doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working on improving myself, just that I’m going to stop beating myself up for not living up to my own expectations.  Clearly I need to spend more time exploring the reasons why I eat and continuing working on making permanent changes.  More on that soon!

Check out this great post from the Cooper Institute about the importance of daily activity vs. structured exercise.  This is a shout out to all you moms out there that spend hours running around after your toddlers and feel guilty because you don’t have time for the treadmill.

For those of us that spend the day tied to a desk, check out SqueezeItIn.com, a website with lots of ideas on how to get fit activity into your lifestyle without doing formal workouts.

Have a great Tuesday!

Hi everyone – many apologies for the very long absence – I have been traveling quite a bit for work and also trying to fit in my tri training – the result has been very little time for blogging.

Yesterday’s workout was a 3/4 mile open water swim at Lake Nummy (seriously, isn’t that the best name?!?) – this was part of a swim clinic designed to help beginner triathletes get used to swimming outside of a pool. I wore my brand-new wetsuit (a sleeveless X-Terra Volt) and completely rocked the workout, even after a 3 week absence from swimming.

Today I did my first real brick workout. A brick is 2 workouts done back to back, usually bike-run or swim-bike. The purpose is to get your body used to switching between activities. Tonight’s brick was a 15-mile bike ride on flat terrain followed by a brisk 3-mile walk. Although I’ve started running again (my hip has finally healed, yay!) I found it incredibly difficult to get my legs moving faster than a walk after a long ride. As a result, I’ve decided that I will plan to walk the entire 5K during the actual triathlon, and if I am able to jog parts of it that will just be a bonus.

The entire workout, including transition time from bike to walk, took about 2 hrs and 20 minutes. I can do the half-mile swim in about 25 minutes in the pool, but since we’ll be swimming in the river I’m anticipating a 35 minute swim time plus another 5 minutes in transition between swim and bike. That will put me at about 3 hours for the entire event and I have set this as my time to shoot for.

I’ll spend the next week continuing to work on my bike and swim. I really need more practice handling my bike because I put new tires on a week ago, and they are much thinner and smoother than the knobby tires I had before. As a result, the bike handles differently and I fell off it last week and ripped open my hand and elbow. It took awhile to pick out all the gravel and I’d prefer not to have a repeat of that scenario! Needless to say I have relegated myself to riding only in areas with no motorized traffic until my skills improve. But everyone has to start somewhere, right?

The week after next I will be traveling on business again (sigh) and won’t have easy access to a bike or lap pool. I’m going to do some research to see if I can rent a bike and also find a local gym that will let me use their pool. Don’t want to lose momentum 3 weeks before the big event!

I’m back from Japan – and the trip was amazing! However, we worked our butts off over there and I came back completely and utterly wiped out after getting very little sleep and then trying to readjust to the timezone change. I’m proud to say that despite having almost no choices in my daily food (lunch and dinner were provided for us each day and the menus were preset) I still managed to lose a little weight – the scale read 233.2 this morning! That’s a loss of 0.6 pounds from 2 weeks ago! The scale might not be moving quickly, but at least it’s moving.

I have one more week of travel this month – heading off on Saturday to visit my sister for the weekend then I’m off to another contractor site for all of next week. At least this time I’ll get to stay in the same time zone! I won’t be writing much til the next weigh in on July 7, but I will try to post a few pictures of my recent travels for you to enjoy.

I’m back from vacation and packing again for a business trip that starts on Friday – this time I’m off to Japan and can’t wait!  I’m hoping the food will be both amazing AND healthy, as well as allow me to keep of my weight loss over the past two weeks, because today’s weight is….drumroll please……

233.8!!!!!

Yeah!  I couldn’t be happier.  That’s a 2.8 pound loss from two weeks ago!

No weigh-in next week, of course, but if my schedule allows I’ll try to blog about Japan.  My goal is to hit 232 upon my return, which I think is a definite possibility.  Talk to you soon!

Today Ken and I are leaving for a 6-day trip to celebrate our 5th anniversary. Can’t wait! We’re going to London and Amsterdam and since there will most likely be lots of food, there will definitely be lots of walking. I’m hoping to pick up some fruit as soon as we land and have it on hand for snacks throughout the week. And I’ll be taking some cues from this article to navigate the friendly skies: Make Your Flying Calories Count

It’s likely that I won’t be posting too much over the next week – hope everyone has a great Memorial Day!

After reading this list, it’s no wonder to me how Americans got so hooked on candy bars – some of them were touted as health foods several decades ago: 10 Snack Foods Originally Sold as Medicines

Awhile ago I ran across an uber-cool website called Wordle.  This site allows you to enter a bunch of text, and then turns it into graphic art which you can customize.  I made one with words that describe where I’m trying to go with my life -click on the picture for a larger view: