In Every Run That Must Be Done; There is an Element of Fun (comments welcome)

[avondale]

I like the description of the hot day in your app.

That skeleton outfit with the skirt is...disturbing, in a funny way. The skeleton looks far to accurate, and then it's really weird to see it with a skirt. I think it looks great as it is - sure, you would normally run with a top, but that might take too much away from the skeleton.

 

[Herding_Cats]

I agree with avondale about the skeleton costume.

That Lilo dress is SUPER cute!

 

[Naomeri]

74 Days Until: TC Loony Challenge

I got out and ran after work today. The temp was a bit lower than yesterday because it was cloudy for a couple hours in the afternoon (but, sadly, not during my run) and it was kinda windy. I kept my 30/60 intervals from yesterday, and it worked well. I ran my neighborhood route in the opposite direction to get the harder and hotter half of it finished first, and that also worked well. After my run, my grandma and I went to see Thor: Love and Thunder, and I liked it a lot.



2022 workout data to date: 181h 55m 1s of exercise; 78,277 active calories burned; 95,183 total calories burned

 

[Naomeri]

I like the description of the hot day in your app.

That skeleton outfit with the skirt is...disturbing, in a funny way. The skeleton looks far to accurate, and then it's really weird to see it with a skirt. I think it looks great as it is - sure, you would normally run with a top, but that might take too much away from the skeleton.

I agree with avondale about the skeleton costume.

That Lilo dress is SUPER cute!

I think the skirt on the skeleton costume will look less weird when it’s paired with a top of some sort

 

[Herding_Cats]

HAAHAH!! I need to read more carefully. I think that *also* adding a top will make the skeleton costume be too covered up. I 100% understand the desire to wear the skirt (which I think goes really well with the theme)

 

[Naomeri]

HAAHAH!! I need to read more carefully. I think that *also* adding a top will make the skeleton costume be too covered up. I 100% understand the desire to wear the skirt (which I think goes really well with the theme)

Ah. I’m planning to add just a very minimal top, since I obviously don’t have to worry about it actually functioning as a top and covering me

 

[Dotluvsdisney]

So awesome!!!! I love seeing your journey to get moving. I had a rough patch the last few years, working too many hours and taking care of too many people plus pandemic stress. I’m finally able to enjoy regular exercise again. Starting slowly with walk/jog, yoga (), swim and weights. Have you ever thought of doing a sprint triathlon? I did one in 2019 and it was amazing! Clermont, FL, not too far from Orlando has several beginner friendly ones.

 

[Naomeri]

So awesome!!!! I love seeing your journey to get moving. I had a rough patch the last few years, working too many hours and taking care of too many people plus pandemic stress. I’m finally able to enjoy regular exercise again. Starting slowly with walk/jog, yoga (), swim and weights. Have you ever thought of doing a sprint triathlon? I did one in 2019 and it was amazing! Clermont, FL, not too far from Orlando has several beginner friendly ones.

I would be terrible at a triathlon of any sort I haven’t done any swimming in at least a decade, same with a non-stationary bike.

 

[Dotluvsdisney]

I would be terrible at a triathlon of any sort I haven’t done any swimming in at least a decade, same with a non-stationary bike.

I get it! The swimming is what prevents most! I grew to love it. A lot of triathlons also offer a duathlon option with bike and walk/jog. I’m slow at everything but just enjoy the motivation of that goal race!!

 

[Naomeri]

69 Days Until: TC Loony Challenge

So…it’s been a few days

Wednesday, I did a barre workout on my Sworkit app. Thursday’s run got skipped because I needed to help my grandma with yard work, and while walking up and down the hill in the woods a million times, my left ankle/heel got a little sore, so I decided running on it was a bad idea. Friday was a yoga day. Saturday was supposed to be a 6 mile run, and I ended up with 2. If you happened to see my QOTD over on the running thread, you’ll know that this failed run (the most recent in a number of failed runs) gave me a little crisis of confidence. But getting some advice from everyone got me through it.



I realize now that non-running stressors have been affecting my running more than I thought. And the heat has just been beastly. The forecast is much better this week, so I think that issue is solved, for the short-term, at least. Another suggestion was to change up my runs a bit, so I figured out how many weeks I had left until the Loony Challenge (10 weeks), and looked for a 15K or 10 Miler plan that fit. I actually ended up with a half marathon plan because that’s what I found with 4 days of running, but that’s okay too, since I’m doing W&D a month after Loony. It gives me more varied mileage on the weekdays, so it might make things more interesting.

Tonight, I did 36 minutes on the stationary bike while watching Black Bird on AppleTV+. I think it’s going to be good—it’s always enjoyable to watch Taron Egerton.


Miscellaneous pictures from the last few days:

One of this year’s baby chipmunks that has finally figured out that “nice human lady”=“easy tasty treats”



A beautiful butterfly that actually cooperated with me and my camera





3 pileated woodpeckers on the maple right outside our porch window



2022 workout data to date: 184h 42m 43s of exercise; 79,382 active calories burned; 96,517 total calories burned

 

[Naomeri]

68 Days Until: TC Loony Challenge

I am feeling SO MUCH better about my running. The weather was absolutely perfect, and it even got cloudy for 99% of my run. WTForecast summed it up well:



To go along with my new training plan, I’ve also joined @ColoradoLime ’s Diet Bet challenge to get my weight loss goals back on track, and also to that end, I’ve started using MyFitnessPal again, which I kinda hate doing, but I also know that it helps me keep my calorie intake at acceptable levels.

In an attempt to be a more responsible runner, I set up a short, 6 minute stretching routine that I’m going to do before all my runs, instead of my usual nothing. It’s all standing stretches of one kind or another, so I can do it in my garage or in a trail parking lot or wherever.

I probably wasn’t supposed to go so fast today, but it just felt so good to not be in awful heat for a change that I just went ahead and went with it.




Over the weekend, I finally finished an abstract mixed media painting that’s been sitting on my studio table for almost a year. I had originally layered paint-covered and scrunched-up tissue paper on this canvas, but it looked really awful, just weird blobs of various shades of green. Then I poured white paint over the whole thing, and that made it look pretty interesting, because you could see just a touch of the green through the white, and the whole thing sort of looked like a 3D topographical map. But that’s the way it’s sat since last August.





I wanted to lean into the map-like aspect, so I poured on blue, green, and brown paint and used a miniature leaf blower (no, really—it’s called the world’s smallest leaf blower) to blow it around and get irregular coastlines and such.



The white texture is showing through the newest layer of paint, and I really like it. I’m going to be experimenting with this style more in the future.






2022 workout data to date: 185h 18m 36s of exercise; 79,700 active calories burned; 96,893 total calories burned

 

[ColoradoLime]

Glad to have you in the challenge!!

 

[HangWithMerida]

Your costumes are adorable. You could 100% use that Lilo dress in the parks. Super cute!

I’m glad to hear you are feeling better about your running as well. FWIW, while I don’t log daily since I meal prep, I use myfitnesspal and have for years. It’s not a perfect system but it works if you can approach it in a non obsessive way. I figured out a long time ago that my relationship with food isn’t healthy. My mom had a really poor relationship with food and I was raised in that environment. I have done a lot of work to address that relationship but one thing I figured out is that I am horrible at feeling when I have had enough and knowing what serving sizes are. That’s probably why meal prepping works so well for me. Anyway, MyFitnessPal keeps me honest since it’s so easy to look up serving size, calorie counts, etc. Mostly now I use it to build recipes and am part of a running group over there as well. Good luck to you!

 

[Naomeri]

Your costumes are adorable. You could 100% use that Lilo dress in the parks. Super cute!

I’m glad to hear you are feeling better about your running as well. FWIW, while I don’t log daily since I meal prep, I use myfitnesspal and have for years. It’s not a perfect system but it works if you can approach it in a non obsessive way. I figured out a long time ago that my relationship with food isn’t healthy. My mom had a really poor relationship with food and I was raised in that environment. I have done a lot of work to address that relationship but one thing I figured out is that I am horrible at feeling when I have had enough and knowing what serving sizes are. That’s probably why meal prepping works so well for me. Anyway, MyFitnessPal keeps me honest since it’s so easy to look up serving size, calorie counts, etc. Mostly now I use it to build recipes and am part of a running group over there as well. Good luck to you!

My problem is that I’m extremely picky, and most of the food I eat is not really good for me, so I have to watch calories and portion sizes. I’ve used MFP in the past to track calories, and if I track for a month or two, it will reset my brain on what works and what doesn’t.

 

[Naomeri]

67 Days Until: TC Loony Challenge

Another good run today. I had planned to go run on the Luce Line for a change of scenery, but it decided to pour rain in the middle of the afternoon, and I didn’t want to run on muddy gravel, so I just did an extended neighborhood loop. But I’m terrible at math I wanted to figure out how far I needed to extend outside my normal route to get the extra ~.6 miles, so I figured out how far it was from the end of my cul-de-sac to the west end of the neighborhood, and then when I did my normal little out-and-back on the road outside the west end of my neighborhood, I checked my mileage and subtracted that from 3, and then subtracted the distance from my road to the west end, and divided the remaining distance in half to figure out how far I needed to go outside my normal route. But my stupid brain decided to be off by .1 miles, so I had to run my cul-de-sac out-and-back twice at the end of my run, which sucks because I think that’s the steepest incline on the whole route. But I survived, and it just makes me all the more impressed by everyone on the Marathon thread talking about how they do math while running




Since it was more humid today, I was trying to slow my pace. About a quarter of the way through the first mile, I looked and I was on track for an 11:51 mile, and I was like “no, we can’t be doing that today” so I tried to slow down, and was happy to see 12:22 pop up at the end of the mile, so I maintained the pace I was at for the second mile, forgetting about the fast beginning of the first mile, so the second mile was a bit slow, but I got the third mile back up. I’m gradually getting the hang of running a little slower.

I got kind of great confidence boost today. My grandma ran into one of our neighbors at the grocery store today, and they were talking about what their kids (or grandkids) were up to, and I guess the subject of my running came up. The neighbor said she didn’t realize it was me at first, and said to my grandma “she’s really fast”

After my run, I went to see Nope, and I highly recommend it if you like scary movies that aren’t super gory.

We had twin fawns in the yard today!! Their mama was deeper in the woods and watching, but the does know that our “park” in the woods is a safe place to let the fawns race around a bit.




I’ve decided to name the baby chipmunk Hazel. I don’t know the gender of this chipmunk, but according to Richard Adams and Watership Down, Hazel can be a male’s name among woodland creatures



2022 workout data to date: 186h 2m 58s of exercise; 80,082 active calories burned; 97,342 total calories burned

 

[azrivest]

Over the weekend, I finally finished an abstract mixed media painting that’s been sitting on my studio table for almost a year.

Wow you are really talented. Congratulations!

 

[striker1064]

I really love all the animal pictures you post, but the chipmunks are my favorite.

 

[HangWithMerida]

But I’m terrible at math I wanted to figure out how far I needed to extend outside my normal route to get the extra ~.6 miles, so I figured out how far it was from the end of my cul-de-sac to the west end of the neighborhood, and then when I did my normal little out-and-back on the road outside the west end of my neighborhood, I checked my mileage and subtracted that from 3, and then subtracted the distance from my road to the west end, and divided the remaining distance in half to figure out how far I needed to go outside my normal route. But my stupid brain decided to be off by .1 miles, so I had to run my cul-de-sac out-and-back twice at the end of my run, which sucks because I think that’s the steepest incline on the whole route. But I survived, and it just makes me all the more impressed by everyone on the Marathon thread talking about how they do math while running

Nope, when I say I do math while running, it is exactly like this^. Ok, subtract 3 from whatever. this little bit is 0.5. I'm off by 0.8, divide that by 2. add that onto whatever is on my watch. Then get to end and I'm off by 0.3. Of course I am. Running math is hard!

 

[Naomeri]

65 Days Until: TC Loony Challenge

I finally actually looked at a pace calculator yesterday, and figured out how fast (or slow, actually) I should be training. It gave me 14:35 for easy/long pace, and 12:20 for tempo, which means I’ve been training at tempo basically always So now I have to learn how to run slow. It’s SO WEIRD!! I had to spend a lot more time looking at my watch and making adjustments. I’m happy I’ll still have Tempo Tuesdays to just run basically like normal.



Strava was happy with my run too:




VERY exciting news from the woodlands: we have monarch caterpillars!! I went out about 10 after 1 this afternoon, and found this big guy just going to town on one of our butterfly bushes.



After dinner, I took my grandma down to see, and the big guy invited a little friend! And there was another little bitty one on another butterfly bush that I didn’t get a picture of.



2022 workout data to date: 187h 27m 18s of exercise; 80,645 active calories burned; 98,028 total calories burned

 

[Herding_Cats]

I can completely sympathize with the "figuring out the paces" feeling because I feel like that's what I spent all of last year doing. And when I run continuous for my WU/CD/EA paces I'm taking the tiniest little steps and I'm SURE I look completely ridiculous to people that drive past me. But it completely works out once you figure out what your body is supposed to be doing at the slower pace and the runs become soooooo easy. Nailing my EB pace is what made me quit hating running because it was no longer difficult and uncomfortable and I didn't dread anything over 4 miles.