Here's the skinny: I've been near 300 lbs. for years and need to lose weight. I'm married to a wonderful lady, and we have a family. One of our boys often asks if I'll run with him. I've always had to tell him, "No." In August of '09, my wife learned about a couch-to-5k running program, and I agreed to try it with her. This blog chronicles our progress on that training program. I hope I'll soon be able to surprise my son by telling him, "Yes, I'll go running with you!"

Monday, November 30, 2009

Quitting

No - don't worry, running is the only thing right now that I dont want to quit. I know its a season but seriously I'm ready to give up on most everything.

Tracking calories and eating less is just plain hard. And the gain last week, really made me just want to give up. Thankfully, I still enjoy the running, so Im not completely sabataged.

Life is hard sometimes and I'm in a stage where I need to make some order out of chaos. My natural inclination is to hide and avoid. Thats really working well, I tell you.

I cant seem to get myself to do the pushup challenge either. I defitinely want to quit that! I managed to do the first two days of week 1 and havent done any since. Sigh ... I know I need to get back to it. It just feels like its one more thing for me to do. And I definitely have enough of those "things" to do.

I did get out for a run on Saturday. I was having a hard time, so it felt good to take it out in the form of exercise. I decided I was just going to run. I didnt have a watch or my mp3 player or even a specific goal in mind. I just started running. I ended up running the whole segment of trail and back and thats 3.3 miles. I briefly thought bout going on further until I remembered that I have to get back to the car lol!

One hour runner just doesnt feel challenging enough for me. Right now Im finding I want to run further and longer. Mr. F acknowledged too that hes nearly running an hour already. Im thinking bout creating our own plan. Both of us want to increase our distance, so we may work on that. Im just not sure and Im open to suggestions. I like the idea of following a program but OHR just doesnt seem to match well. I was thinking of first, running 3 miles, 3 times a week. Then adding in 1 mile runs on the off days, 1 extra day per week. So first week would be a total of 9 miles, then the 2nd week would total 10 and the 3rd would total 11 and the 4th then 12. So then, we would be running a total of 6 days a week. Still not sure on that though.

I find Im liking the longer distances. It takes a while for my body to find its stride and just run. So I think thats part of it.

Hope y'all have a great week, keep on running
Mrs. F

6 comments:

  1. And my homework and general schedule craziness has largely kept us from doing any of this together. I think that's one of the big issues inhibiting both of us in our health/exercise efforts, though you've been better at sticking to the running.

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  2. When things get overwhelming, it is definitely not the time to add new things on to your plate or you will just quit altogether. It sounds like the push up challenge is bad timing for now. Why don't you just concentrate on maintaining what you have going, try to keep your weight steady through the holidays and stay on a regular running schedule.

    Once Christmas is over, you can get back on track with losing weight--maintaining will be hard enough through the holidays.

    I have started adding a half mile to the distance of my weekly runs, and that is going great. After my 5K I started running 3.5 miles for a week, then up to 4 miles at each run for a week and this week I am up to 4.5 miles for each of my runs. Maybe you could try something like that. I plan to reach 5 mile runs and then start training for a half marathon once the New Year hits. You have to find what works for you and give yourself a break--you have a lot going on!

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  3. Hi! I am still running three times a week but only about 1 mile each time. I decided to do the push up plan. This is supposed to be the third week for me but I bombed out last week with the family being off work/school and Thanksgiving. I'm somewhat back on track this week for pushups (repeating 2nd week), and I found the best time to do them is after a run before the kids get up. Believe me, I'm right there with you on how hard it is to get food on track and calories under control!

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  4. Oh no no!! You don't get to inspire me to take up the pushup challenge (and the squat challenge and the situp challenge--and inspire a bunch of people to do it with us) and then quit!

    Let's go, big guy, hit the deck!

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  5. Thanks for the kick in the keister, Danie. I'll pass it on to Mrs. F for you ;-)

    I'm still working 100PU, but have been delayed by grad school craziness. I was up until 2 AM last night (which will be the topic of my next post), and have two more papers to finish over the weekend.

    I think Mrs. F and I need to get back to working out together. We need each other!

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  6. I agree with Danie- I started doing the push up challenge b/c of this blog too... I wrote out the sets on a calendar, cut it apart and put them in my advent calendar! I am doing the push up and sit up challange, so 3 days is pu, 3 days is su, one day is a treat.
    No, I don't know what I'm going to do after Christmas!

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