Fun and Nonsense from an Eau Claire Ingenue
Does anyone remember in July when I confidently announced that I had set a goal not to eat out for the entire month? No? Well, that makes sense because that goal was wildly unsuccessful and, naturally, I never spoke of it again. And why was it unsuccessful? Because let me tell you, y’all.. What I needed to do was add something.
Hello my beautiful friends! I know you’ve been wondering where I’ve been… what I’ve been doing when I’m not writing in this space… well, if you’re on my instagram, you already know. I’ve gone for a walk every day, for at least 30 minutes, for a month.
I have to give credit where credit is due – I absolutely got this idea from Kayla Nelson. She described walking for 30 minutes as the key to health and, hey, I was done my barre challenge so why not take something else on? (Sidebar: I discovered Kayla’s youtube channel just over a month ago and I’m officially obsessed. I love her realistic approach to fitness, food and wellness.)
I think we’ve all read about the cardiovascular and muscular benefits of walking, so I’m not going to belabor that here, I’m just going to do what I do best – talk about my own experiences!
I have to admit that I didn’t exactly set out to brand myself as a non-fitness girl, but the more I think about it, the more accurate it seems. I’m just a girl who likes to move her body sometimes. (And always feels better when I do, as much as I don’t want to a medium percentage of the time.) And speaking of liking to move my body… I feel like a solid second Fitness Friday post is an old classic – my Fitness Routine.
Well well well, my friends. Here we are, two weeks into January, and I return to my blog, full of inspiration and 24 spam comments to delete. What else is new?
I didn’t intend to take a break after Blogmas, but it was super nice and refreshing. Plus I probably should have expected it… the first two weeks back at work after the holidays are always crazy for me and this year was extra crazy, with the Omicron of it all. No matter how hard I work before the break to get ahead, there are always things that come up that I have to deal with when I get back. And I’m somehow always a little bit surprised by it.
But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about…
Yes. I am, like so many bloggers before me, going to do Fitness Fridays. It’s going to be a limited run for now, until the end of February, but who knows where the inspiration will take me!
It might seem like a misstep that I haven’t done this before. After all, “Fitness” is one of the five categories I picked when I first started this blog six years ago. (Oh dear… I don’t love that math.) The number of fitness posts I’ve actually written can fit on one hand, if you don’t count the one about my barre studio closing down. However, there is a very good reason for this…
I had a “What I Read in December” post all locked and loaded, ready to go today. And then, as it often does, real life intervened. (And by “real life”, I guess I mean social media? Yikes!) Today is Barre Body Studio‘s 8 year anniversary.
Oof. Look at this girl go – restarting a blog and missing a week almost immediately. What can I say? I had a paper due last week. After doing a deep dive into reflexivity and the need for a community developed code of ethics for adult educators, my brain was toast. 3500 words is so many words. But anyway, I digress. I was gone, now I am back, and I want to talk about Elevate, a little program that I’ve been doing at my barre studio for the past month.
In a shocking turn of events, I’m delayed writing up my Week Two Recap and it’s already Wed, Oct 31. Halloween! I’m a deer! (If I get a cute picture and not just a poorly lit picture in my office, I’ll post it on the A Flimsy Plan insta.) With this spoooooky season coming to a close, let’s hit up another recap of my Fit Girls journey! (Syntax? What’s syntax? I’m not fixing that sentence!)
If there’s one thing my readers know about me, it’s that I’m an actress. Oh no, wait, that’s not what this post is about… Let’s start over. If there’s one thing my readers know about me, it’s that I love challenges. Challenges are essentially the only way I actually achieve anything in life because I truly thrive on external validation. (Hashtag, maybe not the best quality? Hashtag love yourself?) Anyway, today is a not a deep dive into my psyche, today is a recap of the first week of my most recent challenge – Fit Girls Guide‘s 28 Day Jumpstart.
For the past few months, I’ve been quietly training for a 5k Night Race, using the Couch to 5K program. During May Long Weekend, my lovely and beautiful (and very fast marathon running) friend Lynn texted me to ask if I wanted to do the Night Race with her and, if there is one thing I’ve learned from my constant announcements that I was going to start running it is that I need external motivation to do anything, so I immediately said yes.
And then immediately panicked.
I’ve been announcing that I was going to start running for forever, but my cardiovascular fitness is not awesome and I still get mini-PTSD from childhood activity-induced asthma. What if I couldn’t do it? What if my cardio limit was the little 2-3 minute cardio bursts in barre classes? Yeah, I can elliptical and recumbent bike with the best of them and I can make my way through a 50 minute spin class only sort of turning bright red, but that is all totally different.
I had to do it, though, because there was an end event. And someone else involved. So I quietly threw myself into the training program, without telling many people just in case I fell flat on my face.
The Couch to 5K program is awesome, though. It builds up your cardiovascular fitness in such a consistent, subtle way that you don’t even realize that you’ve improved until suddenly it tells you to run for 20 minutes straight and you can do it. It never stops being just a little challenging, which is great, because that is how you keep getting better… and also what appeals to my competitive nature.
So, I no longer dread running days. That is awesome! (I still like to wear my “I Hate Running” shirt while I run though.)
It wasn’t all fun and light – I did used to get some really serious runner’s rage at the beginning, until one of my friends at work who is an incredible runner, pointed out that I was probably running too fast and not long enough to burn off all my aggression and stress. I spent a few runs on the treadmill, figuring out what my ideal pace actually felt like, then I was ready to take it outside again.
On Thursday, the beautiful Lynn and I hit Prince’s Island Park to run a sample 5K. Full disclosure, we only managed 4.8 km before all the Pokemon Go-ers got in our way and we had to walk. Still! We were ready to go for our 5K!
Yesterday, we met at around 6pm, grabbed our race packs, picked up a ton of glowsticks (so much fun) and enjoyed a delicious dinner at The Chopped Leaf. We were double ready to go!
And then the monsoon hit, lighting so bright that it was like daylight and thunder directly overhead. We got so soaked walking to the race booth to see if it got cancelled that my mascara made me unable to see. Obviously, the race was cancelled.
So I still haven’t run a 5k.
