Week one

January 30-February 5

Monday: Kettleworx core workout with Jason

Jason and I completed the core workout after we had dinner on Monday. Right now I am using the 5 pounds Kettlebell and Jason is using the 10 pound weight. The workout was hard for me but not undoable Jason thought it was easy. My abs hurt until about Thursday where was Jason said he never really felt anything.

Tuesday: Ran with Ashley

This run was HUGE for me! For you to understand why you have to understand the back story which goes like this a couple of times now I have started the Couch25K workout program where for nine weeks you alternate running and walking then by the end of the nine weeks you are able to run a 5K. However, each time I have started this workout I end up giving up after two or three weeks because I'm bored, I feel like I can do more but yet I want to follow the plan. I had been doing the week one workout each of the four times I had ran in January until last Thursday when I decided that instead of doing my planned workout I was going to do a five minute walking warmup then run for as long as I could and I was able to run for 6 minutes before I had to stop and take a break then I alternated walking for three minutes and running for as long as I could then walking again for a total of a 20 minute workout with a five minute warm up and cool down. 

Ok, back to Tuesday. My goal for today was to run for six minutes and thirty second which would be thirty seconds longer than Thursday however was I ever surprised! I did my five minute walking warm up then started my run. The first time I looked at my I had run for eight minutes! Ah! I was so excited and thought well I feel pretty good I can probably make it to 10 minutes so I kept going. Then I got to 10 minutes and realized I was only three tenths of a mile from running a whole mile and thought that should be less than three minutes so I kept going and ended up running a WHOLE MILE! I was so proud of myself and it felt so good!
Workout: 5 minute warm up walk, ran 12:30, walked 3, ran 2, cool down 5 minute walk total 2.2 miles and 322 calories burned

Wednesday: Kettleworx resistance workout with Jason

The resistance workout was pretty easy for me but Jason thought it was a little more difficult. This could be because I have been working out with my trainer all last semester so I probably should have used a heaver weight but either way still pretty easy.

Thursday: Ran with Ashley

The run today was not the best. I forgot my inhaler at home so this was a real test of my lungs. I was probably overly caution but I also didn't want to have an attack. I felt good about this run but also a little a little disappointed that I couldn't follow up with another mile run.
Workout: 5 minute warm up walk, ran 6, walk 4, ran 6, walk 2, ran 2, cool down 5 minute walk total 2.2 miles and 291 calories burned

Friday: Kettleworx cardio workout with Jason

To be perfectly honest I was very scared of the cardio DVD. In the intro they show these super fast-paced moves and that was what I was expecting but it really wasn't that bad. Maybe we will work up to that pace but for the first week it wasn't too bad. A lot of the moves were things we had done earlier in the week then we would do them "double time" so it got your heart rate up. My heart was beating pretty fast after the first set and by the end of the second set I was short of breath but it felt great!

Saturday: Ran with Ashley 

This run felt pretty good but again I was disappointed I was not able to run for as long as I would have liked. I was happy with the first seven minute run because I pushed myself about two minutes further than I thought I could go. At five minutes I was starting to feel tired but I decided that I could go a little further and each 30 seconds I kept telling myself 30 more seconds and finally when I got to 7 minutes I really was tired. After that I should have recovered for a little longer and I think I could have run further than 3 minutes bu then I finished strong with a 5 minute run so that made me happy.  
Workout: 5 minute warm up walk, ran 7, walk 3, ran 3, walk 2, ran 5, cool down 10 minute walk total 2.2 miles and 332 calories burned

Sunday: Rest

Sunday was spent having family time and resting for next week!

Two lessons of this week:
1) I need to make sure I drink at least 64 ounces of water everyday but especially the day before I run. I really feel like that helped me on Tuesday be able to run for as long as I did. 
2) I need to watch my diet A LOT better!

The plan

Sorry this is going to be a little long but I want to share the whole story with you all so I am sorry in advance! 

The story of a new year, a new me begins on December 15, 2011 when my co-workers and I were sitting at Carlos O Kelly's celebrating Ashley's birthday when we start tossing around the idea of some health challenge for 2012. We talked about making sure we were drinking 64 ounces of water each day but the more we talked about it that was going to be too complicated then we started talking about how we all wanted to run more so we came up with the 425 challenge. There are four of us in my office and each of us said how many miles we thought we could complete between January 1st and May 4th which is the end of the spring semester. The break down was Mike 150, Pam 100, me 100 and Ashley 75.

This all sounded great in theory, I was thinking there are 18 weeks in that time period which would mean 5.5 miles per week and I was planning on running three times a week so that would mean 1.85 miles per time, not too bad right?  I had come up with a great schedule:
Monday, Wednesday, Friday: run over my lunch hour
Tuesday, Thursday: workout with my trainer

Well that would have been grand except for there were a couple of bumps in the road in January which breaks down like this:
First, my job is pretty flexible, I have certain meeting that I have each week and each week is different but I can somewhat block off time in my day for lunch or whatever so I thought this running over lunch would work out great. This sounds great in theory but I also have lots of students that just stop by my office, which I love, but it tend to happen over lunch so I was not getting out of office when I planned therefore I didn't have time to get a full workout in so I just didn't go. And here is how the rest of January broke down: 

1-8: we were still in Kansas and spend three days in Texas for the Cotton Bowl then drove back to Iowa on the 8th so I didn't run at all.

9-15: 9th was my first day back in the office after 24 days off so I was dead tired, 10th was the first time I ran and got in 2.5 miles, 10th was working on stuff for the retreat I was holding for my students that weekend 11-14th at the retreat with my students so no running.

16-22: 16th MLK day so gym was closed, 17th Kinley got pink eye so I spend the day at home with her and didn't want to go to the guy and infect anyone else, 18th I got 1.5 miles in and the rest of the week no workouts!

23-29: I got one run in on the 26th for 2 miles.

***Let me just draw this picture for you so in the month of January when I should have completed 22 miles I completed 6! Yes, that would mean at the end of the first month I am already 16 miles behind! When I finally sat down and looked at the numbers I realized it was time for change! I needed a change, I needed a different schedule.

At the same time I was attempting to come up with the new schedule my friend was telling me about the Kettlebell workouts she had been doing. She had bought the Kettleworx DVD's to do at home and after she finished those she started taking a Kettlebell class at our local gym. Since she had already completed the six week program she let me bring the DVD's home to try so I wanted to incorporate them into the schedule as well.  And after reevaluating this is the new schedule I have come up with:
Monday: Kettleworx core workout with Jason after work
Tuesday: lunch work out with my trainer and after work run with Ashley
Wednesday: Kettleworx resistance workout with Jason after work
Thursday: lunch work out with my trainer and after work run with Ashley
Friday: Kettleworx cardio workout with Jason after work
Saturday: Kinley has swimming lessons which Jason and I alternate days we get in the pool with her so days when Jason gets in I will run during that time and days I get in I will run after her lessons.

My goal is to post each Monday about how the previous weeks workouts went and things I learned during that week!

A new year, a new me

This is a week late but I wanted to share with you my starting point.

In the beginning:

January 30, 2011

As a side note I finally gave in and got a Pinterest account, you can find my pins here, so many of the things I will be blogging about have come from the great ideas I found on there.This is one of those ideas:

I made two jars as you can see. One says Pounds to go and the other says Pounds lost. To be at the ideal weight for me, in my eyes not the eyes of that stupid height weight chart, I would like to lose 60.5 pounds. Each stone in the Pounds to go jar represents half of a pound so there are 121 stones in that jar. Hopefully each week I will be able to move stones over to the Pounds lost and soon enough all the stones will be in that jar!

To blog or not to blog...

Well hello there! My blog and I have had a very distant relationship since June, I decided that I was going to take a little break from blogging but little did I know it would mean a seven month break. There are several reason for the break but the two main reason are:
1) a lot of the things going on in my life since June were things I wanted to blog about but not things I wanted to share publicly. 
2) This is my second blog, and I was trying to keep up both and I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue with both or even one of them.

For those of you waiting on the edge of you seat I have decided to keep both blogs. I'm going back to the root of why I started both blogs. I first started  The Stinson Family Adventures to capture the changes that were about to happen with Jason and I when we found out I was pregnant. I wanted to document everything that has happening for us and for our family. Since we live six hours from our closest family members we wanted to keep them all updated on all the fun. Then this blog was started to write about my journey to fit and fabulous. I started this blog the day I went back to work after having Kinley, you can read my very first post here. I wanted to blog about all the things I was doing to lose the weight I had gained while I was pregnant and all the healthy things I was doing in my life. Well somewhere along the way those lines got a little jumbled and I pretty much was only using the family blog for monthly updates and this blog for everything else. Anyway, long story short I'm going to try keeping both for the original reason they were started and hopefully keep you all updated on my journey here and on the family blog keep everyone updated on our lives! Feel free to follow either one or both depending on what you would like to hear about!