As I added into my last post, I completely messed up what day our photoshoot is! I thought it was Saturday, but it is actually Sunday! Sweet :) I was pretty happy to find that out!
I called Eric and told him and he replys, “Yea, I knew it was Sunday…”
I think I am a bit over excited, perhaps?
The good news is the weather is supposed to be fantastic all weekend. Sunny and Warm. Sunday is supposed to be sunny and almost 50F (yes, that is WARM!) and I am relieved because I will have to be outside in nothing but a tiny wedding dress to clothe me! Thank God it isn’t supposed to be –10 or something equally bone chilling because I would have frozen my veil off! :)
I don’t know why buy my throat has been killing me all day. It is in a weird spot too, on the top of my mouth near my tonsils. I hope I am not coming down with something! I think I am starting to lose my voice a bit. :\
The Post-Injury Talk:
I haven’t really talked much about how I am feeling since I started exercising again, but it honestly feels amazing to be able to workout daily again. When I was injured, I felt like a piece of me was missing. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t be active. I literally sat for 7 weeks straight. I guess I am just lucky that the injury didn’t happen over the summer!! At least it was during the winter when I don’t go outside much anyways. I will be ready to go this Spring and Summer which is a nice feeling! I love being outdoors in the warm weather, and I exercise outside as much as possible.
With that being said, I just don’t think it is possible for me to train for the half marathon that I signed up for on May 10th. It is too soon and I don’t have enough time to prepare for it. When I do get back into running, I will be starting very slow. While I am hugely disappointed that I won’t be able to run the half on May 10th, I don’t want to risk the chance of injury once again. Depending on how my training goes, I will consider changing my race from the half marathon to the 10k or 5k race option. We shall see!
Here is my post-injury plan (PIEP):
Since I got the go ahead that all was clear from my Sports Doctor, I have been doing no-impact exercise for the past two weeks. I have been doing about 35-40 mins. of elliptical, with some stairs thrown in for a mix. This has been working well for me and I have already noticed that my aerobic fitness is improving again via my Heart Rate Monitor’s readings.
My plan is to gradually and slowly add impact exercises to my non-impact exercise. The past few days I have added about 5 mins walking on the treadmill at the end of my workout. Over time, these treadmill (i.e., impact) exercises will increase in duration and my non-impact exercises will decrease. Eventually, I will be doing mostly impact exercises on certain days of the week, however I will still have all non-impact X-training days in there as well to give my joints a rest.
I am going to take the same approach to running again. I am going to start out all walking on a slight incline (4-5%) and gradually increasing the incline. Once I feel comfortable with that, I will start introducing running intervals in my training. I am just going to listen to my body and probably only start with 30 second running intervals, and gradually build my way up.
I am not sure how long it will take to integrate myself back into running for 100% of the time, but I would expect it will be at least a couple months.
Looking back on my groin pull, I think the reason why it occurred was because I did those crazy speed runs and Army Fitness Tests. Remember when I was doing the 2-mile Army Fitness Tests? You run as fast as you can for 2 miles. I definitely gave it 110% and I am almost positive this led to my injury. Unless you are a conditioned professional athlete , it is probably not a great idea to run at 110% effort for 2 miles. I definitely over did it. My Sports doc said that Speed Runs are the #1 reason how people get injured! Not a surprise there.
You probably noticed that I took my Charity page down a while ago. I did this because I didn’t want anyone donating to the marathon when I may not even run it. Luckily I only had donations from family and not from the website, so I don’t have to worry about that. What I am going to do is change the donation page to reflect a NEW race and a NEW race date (likely sometime in the summer). I will be posting about it as soon as I figure everything out! When I do start running again I hope to be smarter, more experienced, and wiser. Sometimes the best lessons in life are the ones that hurt the most.
Glo Bakery Makes Apple Cake:
I tested out another recipe creation for Glo Bakery! It turned out fabulous. I know, I know I haven’t been doing the no sugar thing since Day 18, but that’s fine. I need to test these things while they are here before Eric gobbles them up! :)
Tonight I made Apple Cake…and it was so moist, savory, and wholesome tasting. I couldn’t have asked for more!
I based this recipe off of this one here and changed the quantity of ingredients as well as the types of ingredients. I changed my recipe to include Natural Cane sugar, Turbinado sugar, more apples, NO oil, etc. It turned out better than I could have expected! This apple cake would be amazing paired with ice cream.
So that makes 4 recipes that I am 100% sold on for the bakery. Sweet Wheat Sugar Cookies, No oil Apple Cake, Black Bean Brownies, and No oil Pumpkin Raisin Loaf. The rest of my recipes I need to keep testing…slowly but surely I will have a bakery’s worth of selection I hope!
Alright, I think Eric and I are going to watch a movie. I am going to do some yoga first though! It is called Crunch Workout Yoga. Has anyone tried it? We were thinking of going to a movie, but I haven’t been paying attention to what is in the theatres.
Has anyone seen any good movies lately??
See you tomorrow morning for a fun giveaway!!