Friday, October 26, 2012

Those One Step Forward Two Steps Back Moments

I think this is one of those. After my friend Sam encouraged me a month ago to run the Turkey Trot again I really couldn't say no. It's become a nice tradition now, something I can share with my dad and a way to get my Thanksgiving morning off to a good start. I was actually kind of excited to get back into running again and give things another try. I even decided I'd be smart and do the couch to 5K so I could try to run the whole thing this year.

Things started out strong. I got through the first week and did my three days of running alternating between 1 minute runs and 2 minute walks for 20 minutes. I even increased my speed during that time. Then I went home for the weekend and started noticing how bad my shin splits were again. I can rub my hand over this bump on my shin and it just shoots pain... so that's probably not a good sign. And then right when I came back to Kalamazoo I did something to my knee. I'm thinking I over extended it, because it's the back of my knee that has the most pain and I can feel things straining when I bend or walk on it. Then there's a bump on my patella too... kind of like the one on my shin (I just don't know what is happening with that).

So I've just been laying off and hoping things get better on their own. I'd really like to do the Turkey Trot but right now I'm just playing it by ear.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

I'm just gonna leave this here for ya'll

Today my friend sent me a link to "Losing Weight in the City's" post about not making excuses and why you can do anything you want to do. I've only read Theodora's blog a handful of times but I really loved this post. Her words got me thinking about how many excuses I've been making lately... and how many times I've thought to myself "I can't do this". Pretty much everything she's mentioned is something I've used as an excuse to mope around and not try any harder than I've wanted to.

This summer I was doing really well with exercising and losing weight. My old roommate Amanda kept me motivated to do Insanity every day and so did the bike trip. With all my hard work I was noticing a difference and so was Amanda. But after I got home from the bike trip and started school, my motivation to exercise has been put up on a shelf and been collecting dust. I know it's time to change my habits again because I'm reverting back to old ways in not only the physical sense but the mental as well. I've always known how important exercise is, but this was just a reminder to myself.

So no more excuses. I can do it!

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Fall 2012 Playlist

Stuff I've been listening lately. Some new and some older stuff (pretty typical). Here's a link to the 8 Tracks Mix I made of this.

  • Live and Die by The Avett Brothers
  • Here I am Alive by Yellowcard
  • Hopeless Wonderer by Mumford and Sons
  • Love Lost by The Temper Tramp
  • Sleep Alone by Two Door Cinema Club
  • Warm Whispers by Missy Higgins
  • Fuck This Place by Frightened Rabbit
  • Demons by Imagine Dragons
  • Somewhere in Neverland by All Time Low
  • Local Man Ruins Everything by The Wonder Years
  • Maps by The Front Bottoms
  • Torn by Natalie Imbruglia
  • Lovers' Eyes by Mumford and Sons
  • Everyone's Waiting by Missy Higgins
  • Radioactive by Imagine Dragons
  • Lakehouse by Of Monsters and Men
  • Angela by Missy Higgins
  • My Heroine by The Maine
  • Carried Away by Passion Pit
  • Dirty Paws by Of Monsters and Men
  • Sun by Two Door Cinema Club
  • Autumn Leaves by Ed Sheeran

I feel like I'm leaving out a ton of stuff I've been listening to, but I tried to choose those songs that I've been replaying a lot or songs that aren't exactly the songs played on the radio but I think are excellent songs by that artist.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Bike Trip Motivational Thoughts

I told you guys I would post this... even though it's been a few weeks.

1. Biking 5 or 6 hours a day left a lot of room for thought. My dad would always say: it's more of a mental battle than a physical one.

2. I've mentioned it before but there's one motivational quote that I use to get me through every challenge in life. It's the last two lines from the poem Invictus: I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. To me this just means that I can do anything I set my mind to. I won't let anything stop me from achieving what I want to achieve. For a while I would just repeat this in my head over and over again, but then I started trying to remember the whole poem (which took a lot of thought and kept me distracted when I wanted to be).

3. The next motivational thing is the poem Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman. I sort of discovered and fell in love with this poem when it was on the Levi's commercial. I tried to remember and repeat the first few stanzas of this poem too. Eventually I had to look it up one night because I knew something was off and I couldn't seem to remember the end of the second/beginning of the third stanza. I had tried to memorize the poem in the past so I knew a little of it, but the poem is kind of long and I was never actually successful in memorizing the whole thing. The second stanza was really the part I kept repeating in my head as a sort of battle cry.
"For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!"

Of course everyone didn't depend on us to finish the bike ride but you get my drift... it was motivational.

4. Encouragements from the crowd. I was a little worried that I'd get really bored without any music to listen to, but for the most part we kept each other company. Since a lot of the roads we were on were pretty empty, we were able to ride side by side and talk. This made things seem to go by a bit faster.

5. When we rode on busy highways and had to ride behind one another my main motivation was to get off that road as quickly as possible. My dad always laughed when I would ride 15 mph all of the sudden instead of the steady 11 or 12 I was at for most of the trip (yeah I know I'm slow).

6. On the last day we started getting bored and tired and my dad began singing "99 bottles of beer on the wall." It went on for a bit too long so in my head (and eventually out loud) I started singing Stu's Song from the Hangover. Yup desperate times call for desperate measures and this was the first thing that popped up in my head (I have no idea why).