Life After Marathons: A Running/barre3/Coffee/Life Journal

[SarahDisney]

More on this next week once I'm back in NYC, but I think I'm going rouge with the February goal and doing something meal planning related. It will start next week because I'm not home right now. Also, I'm gonna be at my parents' for at least a few days, maybe even over a week. So not the best month to focus on meal planning. But I was really bad about meal planning in January and I want to get back into it, so I'm gonna try.

To follow up on this. I was pretty bad at meal planning (/sticking to my meal plan) in January, so I decided to do a meal planning goal in February. But I wasn't home last week and I'll be at my parents for a bit later in the month (possibly over a week, not sure yet, will depend on how I feel during my quarantine), so I really won't be in meal-planning for much of the month.

So then I thought maybe a sleep goal. But I actually was decent at sleep for most of January - a lot of nights with 7+ hours in bed, which is really good for me (although the last week of the month I slept less than 6 hours most nights). I considered a work-life balance goal, but honestly, I don't think last month as the worst for work-life balance.

Thinking about it a bit more, I think I'm going with a self-affirmation goal. I'm not sure if y'all have noticed this, but I beat myself up a lot. I'm very hard on myself. So for the rest of February, starting today (I can't really go back and do this for the beginning of the month), I want to write down one thing each day that I did well that day. I may or may not share these as part of my weekly recaps, I haven't decided yet.

 

[SarahDisney]

2021 Activity Tracker Week 5 - February 1st, 2021 - February 7th, 2021

Monday:

• Rest Day

Tuesday:

• barre3 with Katie Livestream - 60-minute class

Wednesday:

• Rest Day

Thursday:

• barre3 Online - 30-minute class. I wanted to be at work "early" to get some things done, so I decided to do a shorter online class instead of a livestream.

Friday:

• barre3 Online - 30-minute class.

Saturday:

• Rest Day!

Sunday:

• Rest Day. I had contemplated an early run because on Saturday the streets had seemed clear enough to run on, but we had a late night Saturday night and the snow started early on Sunday, so no dice.

Total Running:
0 runs, 0.00 miles, 0:00:00 hours

Total barre3:
1 Livestream classes
0 Pre-Recorded classes
2 online class
Total time: ~ 2:00 hours

Walks:
0 walks

Active Minutes: 0 + 60 + 0+ 30+ 30 + 0 + 0 = 120 minutes
Total 2021 Active Minutes: 1855/7800 (23.8%)

This was a very low activity week. Which I somewhat expected just from being on my sister's schedule, but also the snow meant no running time (her complex does have a treadmill, but I didn't want to go outside in the snow to get to the gym). I'm actually pretty happy with how the week went. And it was nice to spend some time with my sister. More time than anticipated because she had snow days Monday and Tuesday (and I already knew that she was taking Wednesday off).
But I do not understand teenagers (/post-teenagers? The two kids I ate with are 19 and 20, so older teenagers) at all. And I'm not talking behavior or anything ... I did not understand the words they were saying.

 

[FFigawi]

Thinking about it a bit more, I think I'm going with a self-affirmation goal. I'm not sure if y'all have noticed this, but I beat myself up a lot. I'm very hard on myself. So for the rest of February, starting today (I can't really go back and do this for the beginning of the month), I want to write down one thing each day that I did well that day. I may or may not share these as part of my weekly recaps, I haven't decided yet.

Sounds very similar to what some of my friends do for their mindfulness practice. They write three things down every day: a rose, a thorn, and a bud.

Rose = A highlight, success, small win, or something positive that happened today.
Thorn = A challenge you experienced or something you can use more support with.
Bud = New ideas that have blossomed or something you are looking forward to knowing more about or experiencing.

 

[SarahDisney]

Sounds very similar to what some of my friends do for their mindfulness practice. They write three things down every day: a rose, a thorn, and a bud.

Rose = A highlight, success, small win, or something positive that happened today.
Thorn = A challenge you experienced or something you can use more support with.
Bud = New ideas that have blossomed or something you are looking forward to knowing more about or experiencing.

Ooh, this is a really good idea for the future. I think too advanced for where I'm at in my mindfulness, but a really good way to become aware of successes, struggles, and opportunities.
Thank you for sharing this!!

 

[TheHamm]

Ooh, this is a really good idea for the future. I think too advanced for where I'm at in my mindfulness, but a really good way to become aware of successes, struggles, and opportunities.
Thank you for sharing this!!

Not too advanced! You can prune it (as you would a rose?) and stick to the rose and thorn in written or verbal form which ever is less intimidating. Even my 7 year olds do this really well- topics do not have to be big, just acknowledged.

 

[Sleepless Knight]

Thinking about it a bit more, I think I'm going with a self-affirmation goal. I'm not sure if y'all have noticed this, but I beat myself up a lot. I'm very hard on myself. So for the rest of February, starting today (I can't really go back and do this for the beginning of the month), I want to write down one thing each day that I did well that day.

I really like this goal. It's one thing to be honest with ourselves about how we can be better today than yesterday, but it can be absolutely disastrous to be excessively hard on ourselves. We can always be better, but we are probably better than we think are.

 

[SarahDisney]

Not too advanced! You can prune it (as you would a rose?) and stick to the rose and thorn in written or verbal form which ever is less intimidating. Even my 7 year olds do this really well- topics do not have to be big, just acknowledged.

I'm not doing so great with what I have so far, so ... definitely too advanced for me.

 

[TheHamm]

I'm not doing so great with what I have so far, so ... definitely too advanced for me.

That is why you set a target for new behavior, to change! Even if you do not meet the goal completely any movement can be helpful.

 

[SarahDisney]

2021 Activity Tracker Week 6 - February 8th, 2021 - February 14th, 2021

Monday:

• I was originally planning to do a cardio kickboxing workout with work (in honor of Black History Month - our black culture employee group is doing themes every week and this week's was health and wellness), but I got paged 20 minutes before it started and spent an hour troubleshooting the page, so that didn't happen. Finally got in something before bed.
• barre3 Online - 30-minute class

Tuesday:

• barre3 with Katie Livestream - 60-minute class

Wednesday:

• barre3 with Jenna Livestream - 30-minute class - the studio has started introducing some shorter classes in the morning, and this was my first 30-minute livestream. It was no less intense than a 60-minute livestream.

Thursday:

• barre3 with Kelly Livestream - 60-minute class

Friday:

• Rest Day. I was originally going to do an online barre3 workout and also bake banana bread and also cook chicken and potatoes and eggplant ... and I didn't sleep well and didn't want to get out of bed so I skipped the barre3 and the banana bread.
• So Friday's positive thing was giving myself the grace to take things off of my to-do list.

Saturday:

• Nike Training Club: Full Body Goal Crusher - 16-minute class - my first strength training in a long while. It wasn't the worst, but I still don't love strength training. I did thing because I wanted something different and it was definitely different than my normal workout routine.
• Nike Training Club: Quick-Cool Down Flow - 12-minute class

Sunday:

• barre3 with Vicky Livestream - 60-minute class. I missed the first few minutes of class because of technical difficulties but all's well that ends well.

Total Running:
0 runs, 0.00 miles, 0:00:00 hours

Total barre3:
4 Livestream classes
0 Pre-Recorded classes
1 online class
Total time: ~ 4:00 hours

Walks:
0 walks

Active Minutes: 30 + 60 + 30+ 60+ 0 + 28 + 60 = 268 minutes
Total 2021 Active Minutes: 2123/7800 (27.2%)

This week, y'all. What a week to be in quarantine. Work was a little hectic and it wore me out a lot. I'm on call and got paged about 10 times (maybe only 8? but there were two bugfixes in two different places plus my team doing a bugfix for something else and it was a lot). I also discovered that my body doesn't respond well to doing the same exercise every day. It's a good thing I never wanted to run every day, because I don't think I would like it. By Thursday barre3 felt like torture. But I took two days off and was much better on Sunday.

But ... I wrote down a positive thing every day except Thursday and today (and there's still time for today, so I'll hopefully do it before bed). I was gonna share them but I didn't save them (or write them down in an app that auto-saves) and I had to do an emergency computer restart before barre3 today, so ... they are lost. Maybe for next week my goal will be to write the positive things somewhere permanent? Or maybe make my goal to actually do it every day and when I succeed, then do it somewhere permanent. I'm going with baby steps here.
(And since someone is definitely going to say "you can start with the more ambitious goal and understand that you might fail" ... I have two words for you and the first one is not duck, despite what autocorrect might think. I know myself well enough to know how to set my own goals and make my own plans, and I'm sorry for sounding whiny because this has very little to do with this group, but I really wish people respected the fact that I can make my own goals and own decisions about what I'm doing now and looking to do in the future.)

 

[jmasgat]

(And since someone is definitely going to say "you can start with the more ambitious goal and understand that you might fail" ... I have two words for you and the first one is not duck, despite what autocorrect might think. ...

I nearly coughed out my shredded wheat reading this! Too funny, too right. You do you. You know you best.

 

[C.beara]

Friday's positive thing was giving myself the grace to take things off of my to-do list

Love this! I need this reminder often, nice to hear I’m not the only one

I really wish people respected the fact that I can make my own goals and own decisions about what I'm doing now and looking to do in the future

I can also relate to this, and totally appreciate where you’re coming from. Love my family but wish they wouldn’t always stick their nose in with unsolicited advice/opinions.

 

[Sleepless Knight]

(And since someone is definitely going to say "you can start with the more ambitious goal and understand that you might fail" ... I have two words for you and the first one is not duck, despite what autocorrect might think.

Can I quote Yoda here? Or should I just save myself the trouble and duck? You can always throw a virtual baseball at me if you need to. (Attempting to be funny here and not at all serious.)

Being serious, I think it's important to set goals that reflect where you are right now. Setting ambitious goals that are not currently right for you can make things much worse.

 

[SarahDisney]

Can I quote Yoda here? Or should I just save myself the trouble and duck? You can always throw a virtual baseball at me if you need to. (Attempting to be funny here and not at all serious.)

I'll allow Yoda because it's Yoda .

Being serious, I think it's important to set goals that reflect where you are right now. Setting ambitious goals that are not currently right for you can make things much worse.

Yep. Ambitious goals can be nice sometimes, but it's important to recognize that there's a time for ambitious goals and there's a time for more realistic goals. The first step to setting goals is realizing where you are and starting from there.

 

[Sleepless Knight]

I'll allow Yoda because it's Yoda .

Oh good. Because I commonly refer to him as a very old friend of mine. So here's the full context and I think it gets even better.

"Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is."

We can certainly learn a lot from our failures, but it can also be extremely beneficial to learn from our successes. A healthy self worth stemming from achieving a realistic goal and then perhaps moving onto a more ambitious goal is likely to have more long term benefits than beating ourselves up over an overly ambitious goal that was not right at that time. Beginning where you actually are is more likely to yield long term success than trying to achieve that long term goal at the very beginning.

 

[SarahDisney]

2021 Activity Tracker Week 7 - February 15th, 2021 - February 21st, 2021

Monday:

• barre3 Online - 30-minute class - told myself that if I finished my to-do list by 9p,, I’d do a 30-minute barre3 video; if not, rest day! Finished everything at 8:30ish.
• Positive Thing: Slept in! Put my to-do list aside for a few hours and just slept. Didn’t start my day until after 9. Didn’t feel bad about it at all.

Tuesday:

• barre3 with Jenna Livestream - 60-minute class
• Positive Thing: Agreed to present a project I just worked on to a large group (the 70ish people?) with only a few hours notice.

Wednesday:

• barre3 with Jess Livestream - 30-minute class
• Positive Thing: Felt very successful during a short but intense barre3 class.

Thursday:

• barre3 with Kelly Livestream - 60-minute class - Just didn’t connect to this class. Maybe it was because I kinda wished I was doing my traditional snow day treadmill run (the treadmill is dead). I dunno.
• Positive Thing: I helped out with the shoveling! (Did I mention that I'm at the house?)

Friday:

• Rest Day. I didn't want to do barre3 but also wanted to do something. I tried to do a gentle stretching routine but just didn't connect to it. So, unplanned rest day.
• Positive Thing: *crickets*

Saturday:

• Rest Day.
• Positive Thing: *still nothing*

Sunday:

• 2.57 mile run, 33:26 minutes, 13:02 min/mi avg pace. My first run in over 3 weeks. I did it in the afternoon and there were people. Not a fan. But other than the people, it was all good.
• Positive Thing: *nope*

Total Running:
1 runs, 2.57 miles, 0:33:26 hours

Total barre3:
4 Livestream classes
0 Pre-Recorded classes
1 online class
Total time: ~ 2:00 hours

Walks:
0 walks

Active Minutes: 30 + 60 + 30 + 60 + 0 + 0 + 33 = 213 minutes
Total 2021 Active Minutes: 2336/7800 (29.9%)

Looks like I'm not doing so great with writing down the positive things. It's something I want to work on. March's goal will be hydration-related, but I think I'm going to keep the positive things as a secondary goal to see if I can actually get into the habit of making it a regular thing.

 

[TheHamm]

• Rest Day. I didn't want to do barre3 but also wanted to do something. I tried to do a gentle stretching routine but just didn't connect to it. So, unplanned rest day.
• Positive Thing: *crickets*

Trying something and realizing its value is limited takes awareness that can be a positive thing.

 

[SarahDisney]

Trying something and realizing its value is limited takes awareness that can be a positive thing.

Fair point. Probably would have made a good positive thing if I had bothered to take the time to think about it when it happened (I'm trying to do the positive things as reflections on the day, not finding all of the positives at once at a later time).
Although I do think I probably should have tried to get in some other exercise, but that's more a lesson to learn for next time.

 

[SarahDisney]

2021 Activity Tracker Week 8 - February 22nd, 2021 - February 28th, 2021

Monday:

• barre3 with Allison National Members Livestream- 45-minute class - this was a livestream run by the parent company of my barre studio for members of studios around the country. It was cool to work out with 800+ people and it definitely felt like a celebration of the studios, but it also wasn't my favorite class.
• Positive Thing: I showed great self-awareness at work by acknowledging that my hesitation to do something stemmed from managing impressions.

Tuesday:

• barre3 with Kelly Livestream - 60-minute class - kept my camera off the whole time and that was 100% the right choice
• Positive Thing: Acknowledged that every day I feel different and the things that serve me one day do not serve me other days

Wednesday:

• 3.77 mile run, 52:15 minutes, 13:51 min/mi avg pace - there was some walking on black ice that slowed down my pace, but it was also just a slow run
• Positive Thing: Remembered to check the water reservoir in the not-Keurig before making my coffee (look, some days its the little things).
• Also, because we haven’t talked coffee here in a bit, I have to share that the Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce K-Cup gets an A++ rating from me. I think that’s my favorite K-cup that I’ve tried so far. The various store brand Salted Caramel ones I’ve had are also good. I mostly make regular Donut Shop which is ok but nothing special.

Thursday:

• Rest Day
• Positive Thing: Made good progress on a work thing, but also understood when it was time to put part of it aside because the amount of effort I was putting in wasn’t worth the payoff.

Friday:

• Unplanned Rest Day.
• Positive Thing: There was definitely a positive thing, I just didn’t take the time to write it down. So progress in acknowledging that there are positive things that happen every day, but negative in that I'm still not taking the time to remember it every day.

Saturday:

• Unplanned Rest Day.
• Positive Thing: Noticed some growth in myself – I’m getting better at accepting changes in my schedule and acknowledging that it can be okay to swap one enjoyable or necessary activity for another.

Sunday:

• 3.10 mile run, 41:15 minutes, 13:18 min/mi avg pace
• Positive Thing: Did my unpacking shortly after I got to the apartment instead of delaying it!

Total Running:
2 runs, 6.87 miles, 1:33:30 hours

Total barre3:
2 Livestream classes
0 online classes
Total time: ~ 1:45 hours

Walks:
0 walks

Active Minutes: 45 + 60 + 52 +0 + 0 + 0 + 41= 198 minutes
Total 2021 Active Minutes: 2534/7800 (32.5%)

So ... two unplanned rest days this week. One of them was me just delaying and delaying and I'm not thrilled about that. The other one I spent the time reading instead of doing a barre3 class and I don't regret it at all because over the last few years I haven't spent as much time as I used to reading and that sucks because reading is the best. So yay for reading, even though it meant an unplanned rest day.

 

[SarahDisney]

March Monthly Goal and February Check-In​

This is gonna be a quick one because I'm writing it during my "lunch break" (aka the 45 minutes between meetings when I have to squeeze in posting my DisneyBound for today's challenge (see picture below), writing this, taking my laundry out of the dryer, and making lunch).

For February, my goal was to spend a few minutes at the end of each day reflecting on something positive that I did that day. I tried, but didn't do great. I do think I got better as the month went along (last week I only missed one day!), and I do want to continue that momentum and keep reflecting, so expect to see positive things in the weekly updates this month too.

One thing I noticed in the middle of February was that some days I was feeling really lethargic, and upon reflection, I thought it might be related to dehydration. I decided to focus on getting more water, but that focus kind of fizzled out after a few days. So I decided to make that my March goal.
Here are the specifics of how I plan to implement:
1 - Track water intake each day (in Garmin Connect)
2 - At least 1 glass of water before my morning coffee (I had at one point tried for 2 cups, but that delayed the coffee too much and I wound up drinking less water later in the day).
3 - Minimum of 8 glasses of water per day for the first half of the month, will reevaluate mid-month and either keep it at 8 or up it to 9.

Expect to see a water goal update for each day in the weekly updates (not sure if I'll put number of cups of water or just if I hit my goal).

And, as promised, today's DisneyBound, Cruella De Vil (from the live-action 101 Dalmations with Glenn Close):

 

[TheHamm]

March Monthly Goal and February Check-In​

This is gonna be a quick one because I'm writing it during my "lunch break" (aka the 45 minutes between meetings when I have to squeeze in posting my DisneyBound for today's challenge (see picture below), writing this, taking my laundry out of the dryer, and making lunch).

For February, my goal was to spend a few minutes at the end of each day reflecting on something positive that I did that day. I tried, but didn't do great. I do think I got better as the month went along (last week I only missed one day!), and I do want to continue that momentum and keep reflecting, so expect to see positive things in the weekly updates this month too.

One thing I noticed in the middle of February was that some days I was feeling really lethargic, and upon reflection, I thought it might be related to dehydration. I decided to focus on getting more water, but that focus kind of fizzled out after a few days. So I decided to make that my March goal.
Here are the specifics of how I plan to implement:
1 - Track water intake each day (in Garmin Connect)
2 - At least 1 glass of water before my morning coffee (I had at one point tried for 2 cups, but that delayed the coffee too much and I wound up drinking less water later in the day).
3 - Minimum of 8 glasses of water per day for the first half of the month, will reevaluate mid-month and either keep it at 8 or up it to 9.

Expect to see a water goal update for each day in the weekly updates (not sure if I'll put number of cups of water or just if I hit my goal).

And, as promised, today's DisneyBound, Cruella De Vil (from the live-action 101 Dalmations with Glenn Close):
View attachment 559838

(1) I love the disney bounding!
(2) I found managing my water intake to be more challenging than food intake. I used to put a piece of masking tape on my water bottle and make a hash mark everytime I got up to fill it. Having the visual reminder in my face was more effective than other things I tried. A side-effect is that you will be forced to pause from work and go to the restroom more often, which I found to be better for my body but not productivity. Good luck!