Cupid's Undie Run

The Cupid's Undie Run, February 15th, is really just a drinking event for charity, with a short little run to make it interesting.  The run was probably less than a mile.  The drinking event consisted of two bars in Washington, DC, near Capitol Hill and the Marine Corps Barracks.  The bars were about 25 feet apart and only runners (ahem, runners, really?) with wrist bands showing they paid, were allowed into these two bars.


I ended up being the highest fundraiser for our team, Booz Boxers, and that didn't even count the other donations that friends and colleagues made accidentally to other team members.  Not that I care that they donated to other team members.  I hate soliciting and only did it to help out the team captain, and because it was for a good cause: The Children's Tumor Foundation.  But really, there are SO MANY GOOD CAUSES out there that we get solicited for so I hate doing that.  I'm good at it though, I admit. 


I should work for some foundation. When I get into it, I really get the enthusiasm going.  What helped with my donations, I believe, is that I'm older (almost 55) and this run (drinking event) is actually more for the 20's and 30-somethings. 


So I came up with a costume that wouldn't show my old lady-ness: a full body unitard, flesh colored, wearing a white pillow slip pinned around my butt like a baby's diaper, and white feather wings on my back, and a red plastic bow and arrow.  All but the diapers were bought on Amazon.com.  Love Amazon.com.  Hate shopping in malls or stores physically, but LOVE perusing Amazon.  OK, got off the subject there a bit. 


Back to the Cupids Undie Run. I think I was able to raise decent money because I posted pictures of me in my costume just a few days before.  I did this on Facebook and sent some via email to colleagues. 


It was snowing/sleeting the day of the race, and quite a bit leading up to the race so we were a bit challenged getting there, but as I like to make LemonAid out of lemons, we did snow angles along the run route.  That was exhilarating. Hell, the entire run was exhilarating.  It was cold.  Yes.  We were drunk.  Yes.  Not exactly a fitness event.  But then, they plan the run for a cold month, plan it so the costume is your bee vee dee's, your next-to-nothings, and put you in bars for about 2 hours after the last opportunity sign-in to get your wrist bands and there is nothing to do in those NICE WARM BARs but drink and see the freak show.  Pretty cool. 

Progress Report

Just got back from a weekend trip where I did a lot of forking off. But Sunday morning, I got back on the program and am already feeling better.

Here's my status from my commitments listed in my last post.

I looked at the Insanity recipes and meal plans and discarded it. It uses too many processed foods for my taste.  Not as many as most Americans probably eat, but too many for me.  Also, it is not Paleo and I'm mostly a Paleo girl these days. Many people don't think of breads and pastas as 'processed' foods, but they are.  I almost never do breads of any kind unless I'm cheating.  It's as if my body is allergic to them but not in the traditional sense of getting rashes or other aches or pains.  Just fat.  That's what happens to me when I eat breads and pastas.  I get fat.  And hey, that's why I put so much weight on over the holidays.  Too much cheating with the processed foods.

I have started eating more salads for dinner again. Today I'm making butternut squash soup.  I'm using all fresh ingredients.  Some of the ingredients were frozen, but purchased fresh.  Yippy!  It will taste good tonight. I am using up stuff in the freezer since we are a few weeks out from moving into an RV with a tiny fridge and even tinier freezer.

I am drinking more hot tea in the evening instead of a glass of wine, though when we go out to dinner, I'm still having that glass...or two. This was not a commitment listed in the last post, but one that I think is the right thing to do.  Hot tea, especially on cold nights, is soothing.  I've learned that I can't do it in the morning though on an empty stomach....or maybe it was that particular brand.  For some reason it gave me a slightly nauseous feeling, like I get when I take a vitamin on an empty stomach.

I started the 100 pushup challenge and on the third day I pulled something in my right side and it was painful enough to be a conscious thing for a couple of days, and still mumbling to me a week later at night when I'd roll over in bed. But as of this last Monday, I started again, and now I am bracing my stomach more when I do the pushups.  I learned that from the Insanity workout tape my daughter and I did a while back.  They talked about tightening up the core, and I don't think they just meant tightening it up by exercising it.  They meant tightening it up while exercising.  I think that will keep me from pulling something if that makes any sense.  Pulling that muscle or straining something, whatever I did,
made me feel old.  I almost never, in my life time, have had things like that happen to me.  I've always felt I was nearly invincible.  Not that I always thought I was strong or fast or that kind of thing.  But that I almost never had injuries like all the elite athletes get from training so hard.  I have always been a plodder.  I get the job, I persevere.  I'm still there working out years after others revel in their glory days.

No Loose-y Goose-y Goals

OK.  I can see I was too loosey goosey with my plans in the last post.  And no, that isn't cutting it.

Here's the deal:

Tonight: I am going to boil eggs for breakfast the rest of the week.

Tonight: I am going to find the Insanity recipe/eating guide that my daughter bought and study it.  Speaking of Insanity, I did the level one Insanity work out with my daughter last Friday and my calves hurt more than since I was in Airborne School in the Army as a 22 year old. I think maybe I even hurt worse than after my 50K. I guess that would be good advertising for Insanity, huh?

Tonight: I will have a light salad for dinner.

Tonight: I am going to buy fresh veggies and roast them for lunches and dinners and research recipes for green smoothies/juices.

Yesterday I started the 100 pushups program and printed it out and put it on my board at work.  I am checking each set off, and each day, so I'll stick with that.

Tomorrow: I will check back in with you on my progress.  I need to keep myself on this program.

I signed up to do a one mile run in DC on the 15th of February; the Cupid's Undie Run which raises money for the Children's Tumor Foundation. I committed to running in a nude body suit wearing not much else but Depends, wings, and carrying a bow and arrow.  I'll wear running shoes, of course. But with all the weight I put on over Christmas, I am not feeling good about my weight, have rolls and blubber when I lean forward, and a general bloated belly when I lean back.  My butt and thighs, and arms feel bigger and almost none of my clothes fit.  Yuck.  I hate this feeling.  I haven't been this big and out of shape in about two years.

And just think, I ran a 50K in November.  And I want to stretch out my distance to a 70.3 in June.

140 & Swearing Off Sugar

Yes, I am writing "140" on my palms and have it written on my dry erase board at work.

Why?

Because that is what I want to weigh eventually.  I haven't given myself a deadline yet, but I do have a plan to get down about 10 pounds over the next month or so.  I want to get back, at least to where I was pre-holiday, by Valentine's Day.  I don't know what I weighed pre-holiday since I don't normally weigh myself.  But I will know by how my clothes fit.

Right now I am about ready to bust out of my beloved NorthFace double lined, waterproof, winter hiking pants....and we can't have that.

I also read some of Food Babe's advise.  One of her "rules" was to swear off sugar.  To just do it.  So I did.  I won't be taking the ice cream maker, granite slab for making fudge, and my big-assed KitchenAid with me in the 5th Wheel when we pop smoke in a couple of months.  I don't like how I feel when I'm fat.  It adds to the stress.

So I choose to be thin. I choose the lifestyle of a runner, an athlete, a slender, fit person.  Yes.  I choose that.  I will be that.

Celtic Solstice

I was supposed to run this race in Baltimore at Druid Hill Park on Saturday morning.

Instead, I stayed home and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned to get ready for showing our house to a couple from the DC area.  Initially Dave and I were both going to go to the race and have brunch afterwards at Gertrudes at the Baltimore Museum of Art (close to Druid Hill Park).

Love the BMA.  Love Gertrudes, named for Gertrude Stein, a former Baltimorean, or as I call us, Baltimorons. She is the one who penned the phrase, A rose is a rose is a rose.  She was an author, art collector, doctor (I think she finished med school...I know she attended, and this was back in the day where it was rare for women to be docs). She was an ex-pat in Europe and hob knobbed with the mukkety muck well know writers and artists there during the Impressionists era.

Hmmmm.....gotta get a run going.  Gotta start doing planks again.

15K with the Annapolis Striders

Got it done.

15K on Sunday morning at Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis, while a nice snow started falling.

Initially there were a few flakes as we were getting ready to run.  Then nothing.  Then as we were around the 3 mile mark, miniature snowballs started landing on us.  I wanted to look at them through a microscope, or at least a magnifying glass, thinking of Rachel Carson's quote, "Some of nature's most exquisite handiwork is on a miniature scale, as anyone knows who has applied a magnifying glass to a snowflake." Later, great big fat sloppy snow kisses landed on us.  It was awesome.

I'm still sore.  I haven't taken any naproxen.

And I'm still not out-running my fork.  I've put on winter weight.  Too many nachos, too many pizzas, too much ice cream and cheesecakes.  I put on a pair of pants this morning that usually have a bit of a sag in the butt and are almost too long, but now there is no sag as the material is stretched across my wide behiney and thighs, lifting the length from the floor as I flow outwards.

I joke to people as I get older - and our spines compress, causing us to get a bit shorter, that I am melting, melting into a pear with feet.

On another note, there was supposed to have been a Snowy Owl sighted at Quiet Waters the day before our run.  I was hoping to see it.  No such luck.  I went for a walk before the snow, before the race and here is what I saw:

Thanksgiving Forking & Next Challenges

So for Thanksgiving, I didn't really fork off that much.  I brought two desserts: Pumpkin Cheesecake that I'd made for the first time (it was awesome) and a pumpkin cream cheese roll that I've made for years and is also awesome.  I'd have made several other dishes but one, a five layer white chocolate, red velvet cheesecake that is on the front cover of the December 2013 Southern Living magazine, was a total disaster.  Not sure why.  I followed the recipe very closely.  I need to study this some more to see if it was my fault or a bad recipe (got it on-line).  Surely, the cover photo recipe is not a bad one.  So it was probably my fault.  I admit it.  But I still don't know where I went wrong, and on multiple fronts.

Anyway, I'd have made more dishes yet, but simply ran out of time.

My husband and I went for a nice walk about the day after Thanksgiving (what others call Black Friday, which was  a beautiful day to me).

For the future, I'm signed up to run a 15K this weekend in Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis, and the Celtic Solstice in B-More the following Saturday.

Yes.