I ran the Miami ING Half Marathon exactly 20 days ago and its taken me this long to write about. Before January 31st the furthest that I ever ran was 10 miles.  I got to tell you that it felt good! Whenever I tell the story I am still refer to it as my first half marathon because I’m still unsure if I will EVER run that far again.  I will run again, I know that is true , but a half marathon, hmmm.  Most fitness things I do after I finish I’m so PUMPED to do it again. I got to tell you not this time. I was WIPED OUT! I just wanted to sit down and  get my shit together! Let’s go back to the beginning, why did I decide to run a  half marathon’  Well..

• I use to run about 6 years ago and a half marathon was goal of my and then my sciatica got to bad so I stopped. Read My Ass Doesn’t Do What’
• I ran in Falmouth Road Race (August and November) (7 mile race) and felt really good — I thought what’s 6 more’ Hmm boy was I naive
• I needed a goal to get me through the holidays
• It was something that my husband I could do together — which was AWESOME to finally a hobby together.
• The race was in Miami in January (I live in Boston) who doesn’t like a little warm weather.

My training included running in a snow storm, running in 20 degree weather and finally we caught a break our last 2 long runs we got to run in 40 degrees. I know a virtual heat weave in New England.

The first 10 miles of the run were good. Especially mile 6 when the drag queens were out giving a show, that kept me going for a mile.  Okay maybe 2. Then mile 10 hits and the walls come crashing down! I was DYING! My ankles were hurting and I had major heartburn from the GU.  At this point I was praying to any God I could think of help me get through the next 3.1 miles. Two things got me thorough.

1. my husband and I agreed to meet at the finish line and I knew if I didn’t finish within 15-20 minutes after him he would be worried
2. there was this women in front of me that didn’t look like a runner (for the record neither do I) and she was struggling just like me, but she kept going! So, I decided there and then if she keep running so would I.

Once I crossed the finish line I thought that I would feel this runners high that would keep me going after I finished. Well…. I’m still waiting for this runner’s high. I didn’t get it.

Everyone keeps asking would I do one again. I say maybe.  But here are some changes.

1. I would do short runs at marathon pace
   • this time I only did long runs, not doing the short runs really hurt me in the endurance
2. I would not do a race in the winter
   • motivating yourself to run on a cold and/or snowy day SUCKS out loud
   • I also like running in the AM, and running in the cold and dark SUCKS too
3. I would conserve my energy early in the race
   • Don’t try to fight my way through the crowd early on, take your time and wait for the crowd to think
4. I would run 12 miles as my last long run
   • Those last 3 miles sucked, and the runner’s high and crowds energy didn’t get me through so I would definitely add 2 more miles so I know how my body will feel and react

If you’ve run a half marathon I would love to hear any tips you would like to add. If you are new to the half marathon, good luck!

So, I’ve been on the sidelines for a while. I ‘ve been training for a half marathon, studying for my wellness coach certification and just working my butt to build my business. Okay those were just excuses, if I really wanted to stay on track I could have. Okay pity party over. Here are 6 ways I am going to get back on track for my next fitness competition. I will be competing in the NPC Jay Cutler Classic in Boston on May 2nd.  Time to get my game face on.

1. Schedule, schedule and schedule it. Every Sunday I sit down and mark out in my calendar when I will workout. I get specific like (Wed 7am cardio 40 min) I put it in my calendar and it is an appt that I cannot break. I move stuff around, but my workout does get done.
2. Pre-cook my meals. I go to the grocery store on Saturday afternoon and load up on veggies, lean proteins, chicken broth and lean diary products. Then on Sunday at 6pm I start cooking. Yes exactly at 6pm. (If you can’t tell I like schedules) I cook enough protein and veggies to get me through the week.
3. Get good music. My ipod doesn’t ever leave my gym bag! At least once a month I buy new music and mix up my playlist to keep it fresh. If you have any suggestions, please leave me comments and let me know.
4. Maximize my workout time. If I need to do a cardio and a strength workout, I do a metabolic circuit (a combination of strength and cardio) or just do a crazy interval cardio blast (every 2 minutes you change machine and increase the resistance)
5. Seize the moment. There are days when my schedule don’t allow a full workout, so I’ll need to break it up. So, somedays I will do cardio in the morning and then lift later in the day. That way there are no excuses and its in my schedule.
6. Involve your family. Training for a fitness show can be really intense and takes a large amount of your time! I make sure that I include my husband. We go to the gym together and plan (yeah I know, I can’t help it I have to schedule) to have lunch each Saturday at our favorite place The Parish Cafe.

Most people think because you are a personal trainer you are super human… UMMM NO.

image fitsugar

We have those days when we don’t want to work out and sometimes even when we set a fitness goal and get in the middle of training we say to ourselves, what did I sign myself up for.

That is me right now. Literally I signed up to the Miami half marathon. (I am registered, have a non-refundable plane ticket and hotel) Just 6 short weeks ago I thought it would be a fun challenge and keep me motivated through the holidays. WELP.. not so much. Today’s 19 degrees with a wind chill of 4 and I had to do 4 miles. Go ahead and call me a wimp, but this kid wasn’t going outside. So.. instead I decided I could suck it up and run on the treadmill for 4 miles how hard go it be.  In a word FREAK’N HARD!!!

Well.. even though the Jessica Simpson E True Hollywood story was on I still felt like a Gerbil on a wheel  so…4 treadmills, yes 4 treadmills every mile I moved one, because I was BORED out of mind and thought that would help not so much. This weekend I have to do 8 miles.. I really need to check the forecast… there is NO WAY I can do it on the treadmill.

So here I am 7 weeks away and wondering seriously who do I think I am. Should I be running a half  marathon’

Last week I ran my 1st Turkey Trot, just 4 miles through a neighboring town on Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving it was a nice day here in New England. I typically run mid morning, so this was my first early run, so I was testing what to eat. I decided on having a banana and a cup of coffee. Come on. I can’t leave the house without coffee, so it a must have! I ate it 1 hour prior to the race so that I plenty of time to digest it right!

Well at mile 4 I get sharp stabbing pains in my back, but I didn’t STOP I

kept going and finished the race in 39 min. My goal to run less than 10 min/mile and I did despite the stabbing pains in my back and having to pee. Yes, at mile 2 the coffee that I had to have needed to make an exit. So.. I guess my motivation to run a fast as I could was there.

Lesson learned for the Miami 1/2 Marathon — figure out my food and pee management.

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Tis the season for family gatherings filled with tasty and tempting treats. How can one not be tempted’ Here are some tips to help you stay on track!

1. Have a Fitness Plan: Every Sunday I set down and schedule in my workouts and treat them like an appointment I can’t break. So. go ahead and grab your calendar and schedule in your workouts. Without this written commitment it’s a slippery slope to not working out until after the holidays are over. So set a plan and STICK with. Need someone to hold you accountable, give me a shoot me an email.
2. Moderation: You can have a small taste, without blowing it! Allow yourself to indulge a little here and there, but limit your portions. When you are out make smart decisions around where you will indulge and most importantly don’t feel guilty about it.
3. Do Something Active Each Day: Even if you only have 30 minutes, you can go for a walk, short run, or take a group fitness class, but make sure you move! This will help burn off some of those indulgences and help reduce some of that holiday stress. (more…)

As I train for the Miami half marathon a good friend of mine and an amazing marathon coach, John Furey has told me the secret to running an injury free marathon is cross training and intervals.

I know interval training has been around for awhile and people have been doing them, but are you really getting out of your comfort zone! Really pushing yourself to that 9-10, when you push yourself to the limit. So.. why do we do it.  Interval training helps:

• boost performance, by making the heart become more efficient at pumping blood
• helping increasing our tolerance for lactic acid burn
• we can increase our intensity in a short amount of time without risk of burning out or injury
• most importantly we BURN MORE FAT!!!!  You read correctly… We burn more fat!!!

So I have know this for years, but have I really pushed myself to the 9-10 zone!!! Honestly speaking I think I have been hanging out in the 7-8 zone. So I have been cheating myself of all of the benefits. Okay let me be honest the benefit I really want is FAT BURNING. Okay I’m training for a half marathon, I’d like to be able to be able to cross the finish line on my own 2 feet and not be dragging ass! So.. interval training will be my friend 2x/week until January 31st.
Now my interval will be a combination of cardio machines and metabolic circuits using only my bodyweight and light weights.  If you have bodyweight circuit that you would like to share tell me about it, just write below in the comments

So, my first week went well..and the second week is going well. I just need to complete my last long run 5 miles for the week.

Now you may want to know what one of my interval cycles looks like.

• 2 minute warm up
• 1 1/2 min sprint
• 30 sec rest
• 2 1/2 min sprint
• 1 1/2 min rest

Repeat 5 times (should take you 30 minutes.
This can easily be done on any piece of cardio equipment, I did this on an elliptical.

Now here’s the plan for my third week  — November 22.

Monday — intervals and strength
Tuesday — 3.5 miles
Wednesday — rest
Thursday — Turkey Trot (4miles)
Friday — rest
Saturday 6 miles

So.. this morning at work we had a long discussion about Thanksgiving side dishes.  Here are some of the conclusions we came up with, but I would love to here your thoughts.

1. Macaroni and cheese
   • should not contain onions, bread crumbs or Velveeta or American cheese!
   • SHOULD contain — real cheese, milk, eggs and macaroni
2. Sweet Potatoes
   • should not be sliced
   • SHOULD BE whipped or mashed and baked in a pie, served as a side dish or if you need the extra fiber baked and served in the skin.
3. Stuffing
   • this was a VERY controversial issue! Some were all about it, and some were just say no! I am of the school that stuffing is nothing but WET BREAD would you eat wet bread on any other day’ Then why would you do it on Thanksgiving.
4. Cranberry Sauce
   • another controversial one
     • some were all about the chunky cranberry sauce
     • others were shake it out of the can with can marks and all
     • me.. it’s ALL NASTY and just say no!

So.. talk me what are you thoughts on side dishes, have a missed any, please share!!!

This week, I had an opportunity to see Suzy Welch speak. She opened her speech by saying that she can’t do it all. I repeat she said she can’t do it all and she doesn’t even try. Instead she picks what’s important and moves on. What a freeing way to live.  So, if you can’t get to it, you don’t dwell on what you didn’t do’ AMAZING. That statement felt like the glowing box in Pulp Fiction.  Since that day I’ve been really thinking about what she said and then yesterday I read a great post from Lululemon about what are you going to stop doing.  It stopped me in my tracks, because as women we are always trying to figure our how we can do more!! You know we have 24 hours in 1 day and how I am ongoing to do a million and one things to make everyone happy as well as achieving my own goals.

So now I thinking, I don’t have to it all, so what am I going to stop doing!!!

1. Stop being afraid. Yes, I know I me, afraid, but I am! I have been procrastinating on taking this test because I am afraid I will fail. Guess what if I fail I can take it again. So stop talking take ACTION!
2. Stop spending more than 30 minutes on Twitter and Facebook. I love you all, but I need to get focused on taking my test and growing my business
3. Stop purchasing things and not using them. Now this is going to be tough! I have purchased so many things that still have the tags on them or books that I haven’t even cracked the spine.
4. Stop wanting everything to be perfect. If I doing something just okay. That ‘s fine. At least I’m taking steps.
5. Stop feeling like I always have to do something. Say what…It’s a rare day that I can just sit and relax, so take more time to sit and relax. I think about my grandmother, she is 88 years old and I don’t think I’ve seen her sit down for more than 10 minutes at a time. So I don’t want to look back in 48 years and say that I haven’t sat down!
6. Stop multitasking!! That’s right I’m a professional multitasker, if I’m not doing 5 things with my hair on fire I feel like I’m standing still. Moving forward I will set an old fashion kitchen timer and work on 1 thing at for 30 minutes before I move on to the next activity.

So tell me what are you going to stop doing’

So, I’m going for one of my goals. I have been thinking about running a half marathon for about 10 years. I stopped running because of the pain in my ass. I started working with a great posture guy and I was able to run the Falmouth Road Race (7.1 miles) 2 times without pain. So now I’m going to go for it.  The race is on Sunday, January 31st and my half marathon training starts on Monday!

As I begin my half marathon journey I will keep you all updated on how I’m doing. Today was a rare warm November day in New England.  I decided to go for  a little mini run (4 miles) and right now I feeling like seriously, am I going to make it 4 miles were tough! Here is my training schedule for this week.

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Just kidding! Here we are on the cusp on Halloween and you trying to build your courage and willpower. I get it, you live in a neighborhood where there are a ton of kids and if you don’t buy a truckload of candy your house will get egged or on November 2nd you are going to walk in to find your office filled with candy landmines. Hear are 4 tips to avoid that’

1. Buy candy you don’t like. That way you are less tempted to nibble between trick or treaters
2. Can you go candy free and not the be the weird house in the neighborhood’ Could you have out granola bars or snack packs of nuts
3. Don’t buy loose candy. Trust me I love me some candy corn, but if I buy a bag it’s going down!!! As my coach would say jackass behavior is going to happen.
4. Heading to a Halloween party, how about bring the healthy appetizer or entree to share.
5. Just stay away, because they are small doesn’t mean that don’t pack on the calories. To find out how many calories, check this out.
   

Have you purchase an item specifically because a portion of the proceeds went to a breast cancer’ According to Cone Research 79 percent of consumers would likely switch to a brand that supports a cause, if all other things are equal. I’ll raise my hand I have done it each year I purchase a lunch bags from Lean Cuisine. The bags are great and I get a ton of compliments on them, and I feel good about buying them because money is going to breast cancer.  I look forward to every October so I can get new lunch bags. Well this year Lean Cuisine decided not to do them because they felt with the current economic situation they felt folks wouldn’t be inclined to purchase these lunch bags. Seriously… now more than ever people are bringing their lunch to work and the recycle bag is HUGE!  That’s just my humble opinion. This is how I felt until I read an article in last week’s Pink Overload on Yahoo.

Some cancer survivors and patient view October not as breast cancer awareness but breast cancer reminder month and some are outraged that companies are making money off of other pain and suffering. No other cause marketing has been as profitable as breast cancer merchandise.

Did you know that:

• a product with a pink ribbon is 74% more profitable than a product that doesn’t have a pink ribbon
• the use of the pink ribbon is unregulated
• a company can put a pink ribbon on its product just to “raise awareness”
• in MA you must give an update of total gross revenue generated from “cause marketing” — many companies don’t (shocking)

I am know that I am in conflict, I had a breast cancer scare and was grateful that it was just a scare and I’m glad that money is being raised for a disease that effects 1 and 8 women for when its not just a scare. So tell me below what you think’

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