Four Days In and NOT Feeling Like Flo Jo Yet...

It is 11:29 pm on a Thursday evening. Typically I will have been asleep for about 2 hours by this point but tonight I am awake because I just got back from the gym. See, earlier I almost pulled an "old me"--it's cold, I had a really stressful day at work, I was tired, my boyfriend Reza is really cute and I just wanted to stay home and be cozy on the couch with him. At about 8:45 I felt myself nodding off, without having gone to the gym yet today. No! Bad Chubby Bunny! So, I put on my sneakers and yoga pants (side note: yoga pants are very slimming, and every girl should own a pair... or 10. I feel like Sporty Spice when I wear them, so I do, constantly, even when I have no intention of exercising) and promised myself at 9:00 I would drive to the gym and get my run out of the way.

Even though I started writing this blog 2 days ago, I actually started training last Sunday....but gave myself a full 48 hours to back out. See? What a wuss I am!!! Now, 4 days in I realized I.Am.Committed....so I stuck to the program. And I live in sunny San Diego...how does anyone who has to brave an actual winter get their bums off the couch to the gym?!? (Shout-out to Jess in Ohio...somehow you do it, you brave girl.)

I signed up for a free membership on a website called Beginner Triathlete, which allows you to create customizable workout plans. It's easy, fun, and only mildly embarrassing when you have to print out a schedule filled with goal-times of 12 minutes miles. Flo Jo eat your heart out.

Here is my workout schedule for Week 1:

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday		Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Week Tot.
	Run (med)	Swim (med)	Bike (long)		Run (long)	Swim (long)	Bike (med)
Week# 1    2011-02-06    Base	R: 1.20 miles 18m	S: 950 Yd 23m	B: 8.10 miles 30m		R: 1.50 miles 23m	S: 1150 Yd 29m	B: 6.50 miles 24m	S: 2100 Yd 1h 08m B: 14.6 Mi 1h 12m R: 2.7 Mi 54m

So on Sunday, also known as Day 1, I mapped .6 miles from my house on my nifty I-phone, which happened to conveniently be exactly the distance to a liquor store in my neighborhood. I walk there all the time (to buy ummm....milk, and eggs, certainly not wine and definitely not delicious local micro-beer), and figured a quick jaunt down the road and back would be easy. I made it about .3 miles without stopping to walk. HOW DO PEOPLE RUN SO EASILY???? It hurts!!! And it's really hard. Somehow I got through my first training session of a 1.2 mile run, and it took me about 20 minutes. I made it home, bursting through the front door like a rabid moose, wheezing, coughing, out of breath, my face the color of a tomato, and headed straight for the bathroom. (Editor's note: if any of my gentle readers suffer from constipation, ditch the prunes and go for a run. It works like magic!)

Monday, Day 2...Swim Day. Yay!!! My workout schedule consisted of 950 yards. An average lap pool is 25 yards across, so that equates to 38 laps. One of the greatest perks about swimming is you can really stretch out your muscles, which I needed because my right calf was sore from my run. And yes, smart ass...you can be sore from a 1.2 mile run. Swimming is the 1/3 of this race that I might actually beat one another competitor at, so it's fairly important that I do push myself in my training. I decided to start with 30-seconds per lap, or 2 minute "100's." That seemed to be a fairly doable pace, which I managed to keep up. Probably burned about 400 calories--wahoo me-- soooo I went home and ate 4 Girl Scout Cookies, @ 70 calories per cookie. 70 x 4, munch munch munch = I should have swam longer. :(

Day 3: Bike Day!!!! 8.10 miles on a stationary bike....OR, 50 minutes of spin class.  Lazy me on Day 3 moved too slowly and missed spin class, so I rode extra hard in the "Random Hill" workout on the bike, varying between a Level 10-15. Ok ok ok....on the hills I was definitely at Level 10, occasionally an 8. Only once a Level 5...for like two minutes, so it doesn't count.

Something else I should mention that makes this training process even more painful than it needs to be: the gym I go to happens to be a college campus gym. So I wait in line patiently for the elliptical or the treadmill or the bike, while skinny, perfectly tanned sorority girls in designer gym outfits take their sweet time on the machines, jabbering away on their cell phones, burning away loads of calories they are surely not eating anyway. Harumph. (There is only room for one bunny at this gym, and Chubby Bunny has taken over. Hop along.)

Wednesday--Day off!!! Taco night! Yay!! Very fun and relaxing night with Reza and friends. Felt mildly guilty for stuffing my face with guacamole on a non-workout day....but not guilty enough to stop doing it. Haha. While clearing the dishes off the table, I danced over to the sink, 3 feet away....and yes, I am counting that as a workout.

Thursday--today: Day 4: Running. Again? UGH.  Waited too long. Not feeling it. Tired. Finally put on slimming yoga pants and forced myself out the door at 9:15 pm. Entered gym to see lots of college kids working out like it was 8 am. Ohhhh that's right--college kids don't sleep! Outta my way, sonny...Gramma needs to warm up on the bike. The nicest thing about the stationary bike is that you can plug your headset into your own personal TV while you work out and pretend you're at home being lazy. Brilliant! Oooh Lifetime Original Movie is on! Don't judge me, you know you watch them when you're home alone.

After a brisk 8 mile warm-up on the bike, I made my way over to the treadmill. My theory was that positioning myself next to a really strong runner would motivate me to keep up, but I quickly learned I just end up feeling even more pathetic and clumsy. The gazelle next to me never even broke a sweat, and after sneaking a peek at her mileage counter I could feel my previously enthusiastic face fall as I saw that she had run 5 miles already. What an over-achiever!!! I am forced to hate you on principle. Here is a photo of how far this overachiever went without stopping to walk:

 .71 miles running the whole time.  It only took me...10 minutes. The same amount of time it would take a Ugandian to run a marathon. Uggggh. Wheeze. Cough. For the record, the speed of 4.0 you see was when I slowed down to walk. My running speed was 5.5 and it felt really Speedy Gonzalez fast, until I realized that still equals about a 10.9 minute mile. I am no Flo Jo....Fo sho. I eeked my way through the remainder of my run, vacillating between wanting to pass out and wanting to vomit, and then trying to force myself to smile as I remembered that this torture was self-inflicted. Splotchy skin and greasy hair is hot huh???

Yeeesh. My heart rate was 180 at its highest, and I sucked in huge breaths of air while blasting music on my trusty I-pod. I kept waiting to feel a "runner's high" but after awhile called B.S on that whole thing...what does that mean anyway???? Let's Wiki for a minute:


"A publicized effect of endorphin production is the so-called "runner's high", which is said to occur when strenuous exercise takes a person over a threshold that activates endorphin production. Endorphins are released during long, continuous workouts, when the level of intensity is between moderate and high, and breathing is difficult."

Please believe this Chubby Bunny when she says that the statement above was written by a smug runner. A heartbeat of 180 is definitely considered "strenuous" and I may or may not have had the munchies after my workout, but that's about all I have that resembles any sort of  high. Boo.

Tonight's workout was made possible by the truly fabulous Sophie Ellis Bextor. "Murder on the Dancefloor" gets me shakin it every time....

 Till Next Time,

Your Chubby Bunny