What’s up goal crushers! Like the quote above I’m not going to waste time covering up a failure, I’m going to learn from it and go on to the next challenge. Earlier this year started the 100 day burpees challenge, I started off very enthusiastic but I did not finish the challenge. I could go on with excuses and explanations on why I didn’t finish the 100 day burpees challenge but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to accept the fact that I didn’t finish and plan to do it again. This is a common lesson in life, if you fail its ok, just try again.
Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It’s OK to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing.
-H. Stanley Judd
I will keep you posted on the start day of 100 Days of Burpees Challenge 2.0. Before I sign off I want to leave you with one last thought…. Once you let go of you fears you will be unstoppable. Do you want to be unstoppable? You owe it to yourself to be the greatest you that you can be.
This is a continuation of my trip to San Francisco. Check out my previous days in San Francisco… Coit Tower and San Leandro Marina.
After two beautiful days of running with my tweeps… Today is the day! I’m going to run the Golden Gate Bridge with @VonChunk. The best part though… It’s her first time running the Golden Gate Bridge too. I only have one word to explain what is about to happen… EPIC!
I wake up at 5:40 am. I’m excited, ready to run Golden Gate Bridge. I get a text from @VonChunk saying she outside. As we drive and get closer to the bridge you can feel the excitement in the car. We are minutes away from doing something epic. I step out of the car and the cold bay wind hits me in the face. I try to warm up a bit but all I can think about is running the bridge. Before we start running @VonChunk asks me if I had a penny. “A penny?” I responded. “Yes it’s for good luck, here take one.” I took a penny and we started our run. The wind was blowing at least 30-40 mph, we’re barely speaking, I don’t know if it because we were soaking in the experience or if it was cold as hell. We stopped about a quarter into the bridge took a picture together and threw penny into the water, as the sun started to rise simultaneously.
As we continued our journey over the bridge all you hear was ohhs, ahhs, and this is amazing as we admired the view of the city. We stop a few more times take pictures and eventually we made it to the other side of the bridge. The sun was completely up, when we started our trek back to the other side of the bridge. So many thoughts were going through my mind while running but the one that stuck out was, “If I never started running, I would have never experience this moment.” With that thought I leave you with pictures….
Sometimes we think we are alone in this weight loss journey but we are from it. Your immediate family and friends may judge and ridicule you for being the best you that you can be. It may feel like a lonely road but it doesn’t have to be that way because all the trials and tribulations that you are going through I can guarantee that there is someone else in this world growing through something similar or even worse than what you’re going through. Your purpose in life maybe to inspire and facilitate change in that person while you’re on your journey. That’s one of the reasons I created this blog… Social media has given us a platform to meet people who have similar goals and interest. If done correctly you will meet awesome people and experience things that you would have never experience, you might even change a life or two while you’re at it.
I want to thank @PavementRunner and @VonChunk for their warm welcomes while I was in San Francisco. Be sure to check out their blogs and follow them on twitter.
After my run to Coit Tower I got a text later on that day asking me if I’m available to go running the next day at the San Leandro Marina. I said of course!
The next day around 5pm I hopped on the BART, which is the subway system of San Francisco and rode it for about 30 minutes. I got off at the San Leandro station, headed downstairs and walked towards the street. A car pulls up in front of me and its @VonChunk! @VonChunk and I started our weight loss journey around the same time. We tweet at each other at least 3 times a week giving each other advice and support; it was amazing to finally meet her in person. So I hopped in the car and @VonChunk took me to her favorite place to go running, the San Leandro Marina. I get out the car and the view was breathtaking…. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…..
We talk a bit while running and it felt liking I was talking to a friend that I’ve known for years. After the run @VonChunk invited me to dinner with her and her best friend. But before we got there we had to take a pit stop by the 99 Cent Only Store which was a pretty big deal to me because I’ve seen it on the travel channel.
At dinner we sat, talked, laughed and ate; very similar to what I would do with my friends back home. After dinner they drove me back to my hotel but only after stopped to see the Bay Bridge. When we get to my hotel, @VonChunk tells me that she will be outside of my hotel at 6am the next day to take me running over the Golden Gate Bridge!
Stay Tuned to see how was my run on the Golden Gate Bridge. Until next time I’m 300 Pounds and Running
Last week I went to San Francisco for spring break. Most of my time there the weather was amazing. I finally got a chance to get some much-needed sun light, since I’m still battling this seasonal affect disorder. Anyways before I went to San Francisco I sent out a couple tweets calling all my San Francisco runners. I thought to myself I might as well seize the moment and I meet some cool tweeps while I’m out there.
@PavementRunner volunteered to go running with me on his lunch break since he doesn’t work far from where I’m staying. @PavementRunner is a fellow FitFluential Ambassador and he is working on my logo for the site (that should be coming out soon.) So I went down to do the lobby to do a little stretching before he came. I look into the crowd suits that were coming towards me and I see @PavementRunner running towards me. We had our formal introductions, decided a pace and went on our way. After the first block or so, I asked where we are running to? “Coit Tower it has one of the best views of the city from there, he responded. So we’re running in the middle of lunch time which resembles lunch time in NYC, crowed. We were asking each other question, having a good laugh then we come to the stairs to Coit Tower.
This is where it got real… it was about 400-500 steps to the top of Coit Tower. Whew! It really wasn’t that bad of a climb. When we got to the top, the sight was beautiful… I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Afterwards we headed back to the hotel and he headed back to work. It was an amazing run and I appreciate that @PavementRunner took his lunch time to take me running. Be sure to show him some love, follow him on twitter and check out his blog at http://pavementrunner.com/ … Tell him I told you all to stop by.
Later that day I got a text asking me if I’m available for a run the next day. ..Stop by tomorrow to find out who else I ran with while I was in San Francisco …
Spring is in the air! This morning I heard the birds chirping at 5 am. As much as I wanted to throw one of my running shoes at them, I just got up and started my day. Anyways I’m getting off task… Spring is near which means a lot are people are starting to think about getting more active and lose a few of those winter pounds. A about a week or so ago I got a tweet from one of my followers interested in starting running this is what the tweet said.
I gave her some tips right off back but I decide to write this post to give tips I wish somebody would have gave me when I started running.
First: Don’t be nervous! Take that nervous energy and turn it into excitement as you embark on a new journey. Congratulations for trying something new!
Shoes: Get the best shoes that you can afford the first time around. If you are serious about running this the most important piece of equipment that you will have, I suggest going to the local running store and have them measure your feet and analyze your gait (the way you walk). I know when I got my first pair of running shoes; I tried on at least 4-5 pairs of shoes and ran on the treadmill with each of them on. It’s an experience I suggest everyone go through at least once, It’s a great learning experience plus I’ve found that the smaller running store have better customer service than the big box shoe stores.
Start off slow: Once you have new running shoes you might be eager to hit the ground running (Yes, pun intended). Take it easy grasshopper especially if this is your first time getting active in a while. Sometimes ours mind (I know mine did) play tricks on us to think we still got it from our athletic days when we were younger. I don’t know how to break this to you, but you don’t have it anymore. If you have a smart phone I suggest an app called Couch to 5K or C25k there are different renditions of it but the free one should suffice. I’m telling you that from experience because I bought about five different ones and they are pretty much the same.
Keep the chafe at bay: I put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in this journey. Chafing is where most of my tears came from. If you have thick thighs and jelly rolls like myself chafing becomes a common problem you may have with your new active life. I suggest that you pick up some Body Glide or some other anti-chafe, trust me it will save you some tears.
Stay hydrated: One of the ways that you can tell that someone is a running, is to look in their kitchen cabinet and count how many water bottles they have. If they have more than 6, that person is more to be likely a runner. The normal convention is to drink 8 glasses of water a day. I feel like that convention goes out of the window when running or being more active. A good way to decide how much water to have is to take your weight, 300 lbs turn that number into ounces, 300 oz and drink half of that in water, 150 oz Another piece of advice is to have a water bottle on you at all times, fill it up, and drink up.Set a timer if you have to. If you have a problem with remembering drinking water, follow the #watercheck hashtag on twitter. When you see #watercheck in your twitter stream, drink up.
Don’t forget to stretch: One of the things I did not do a lot of was stretching and I paid for it with very very very tight muscles. Don’t follow my lead on this please stretch. The convention is to do dynamic stretching before you run and static stretching after you run.
There you have it folks a few tips for all you aspiring runners. Now it’s your turn to weigh in… What advice would you give a new runner? What advice do you wish you had before started running? If you are thinking about starting running soon what advice from today’s post do you think is the most beneficial for you?
What’s up Goal Crusher? This is time of the year when people start to fall off the wagon with their New Year’s Resolutions. People may have started off with great momentum but around mid-February to march the momentum start to fade. That’s why I’m totally against New Year’s Resolutions and all about smart goals. So luckily for me I don’t have to worry about losing momentum because my goals are all plane out to the “T”. I’m here today to give you an update on my 2013 goals.
Let’s start with the fact that I finally pick the first marathon that I’m going to run. However I haven’t pick a half marathon to run yet. But I’m expecting it to be around spring break nor at the end of this semester. As far as my race schedule is concerned I haven’t made one yet and that’s due the fact that I’m planning on going to 4-5 conferences this year. I really don’t have the available funds for registration fee. (Y’all have to remember that I don’t make much from a graduate student stipend.) However in a perfect world I would run a race a month from March to November, but I don’t know how realistic that is going to be. Somebody suggested that I run a couple of race bandit… Well that’s not my style.
As far as training is concerned, it has gone great! I finally found a training plan that works well with my schedule and that’s the Runner’s World Smart Coach Free App for my IPhone. Maybe I will do a review of it in the near future. My training schedule mainly looks like this: Sunday is long run, 1 mile farther than I did the previous Sunday. This Sunday I will be running 12 miles. Tuesday is easy run low miles (2-4 miles). Thursday is mid-distance (4-8 miles) or speed day (hill runs, fartlek’s, Etc.). I stuck to the plan almost all the way, until the blizzard hit the northeast. Side note: When I was in Michigan never heard of the northeast getting blizzards and hurricanes. Now it happens every year. It makes me miss Michigan just a bit more.
When it comes to CrossFit this is where I have been the most inconsistent. This is mainly due to the fact that we are in the middle of data collection with this study for my Master’s Thesis. Most of the time the participants schedule and my box (CrossFit gym) schedule usually conflicts. Hopefully as the semester progress we will be wrapping up the data collection part of the study so I can start doing CrossFit more regularly. However many of know that I’ve start the #100DaysOfBurpees Challenge and I have done that day in and day out. On the real… I have a love/ hate relationship burpees but it gets the job done. You can follow my journey through the challenge on YouTube. Below you can find a video of me doing burpees throughout a WOD.
As far as blogging is concerned I’ve been a little irregular on that also. I’ve had high hopes of posting 3 times a week, but that may not be realistic for me and my schedule now. But I will try my best to post something at least every week.
Lastly I’ve notice that I’ve hit a plateau with my weight loss, I’ve been hovering around 300 lbs. for the past 4- 5 weeks. I think it might be time to change some things around with my nutrition. Yup it’s time to go see a nutritionist. I’ll keep you posted on what I find out.
That’s all I got for today folks! Leave a comment below answering these questions: Why do you think people fall off their New Year Resolution by March? How are your 2013 goals coming? What are some things that are hindering you from accomplishing you goals? What can you do to overcome that hindrance? What successes have you had since making smart goals?
