Week 50-Bikes, Blenders, Booty

Gooooooooooooooooooood morning class!

My, my, my, are we in for a great week or what? Every chance I get, I take a trip on my bike. It's such a wonderful addition to the workout routine, only it makes me more nostalgic about my childhood and camping days and less about my thighs burning! I don't care how old you are, there is something glorious and exhilarating about booming down a hill so fast that tears stream parallel to your wide grinned lips! If you don't have a bike, this is an incredibly good buy, especially when you begin replacing errands in your car with riding. Think about how far you drive to the grocery store to pick up a few things...if you live anywhere remotely suburban or urban, chances are there is a store within 5 miles of your home. Bring a backpack with you and grab what you need and tote it back! It really is that simple. Veggies and fruits are a cinch to drop in a backpack, try it out!

Here's a picture of my new bike! It's a Nishiki from Dick's Sporting Goods

If you are just getting into a workout routine, a bike ride is an excellent way to build up your muscle strength and endurance, in addition to you walking and attempting to run longer distances. I only wish I hadn't waited almost a year to get one. Sometimes, I lack the drive to go for a 4 mile run, but will now gladly do 8 miles on a bike.

Another product I recently got that I now claim as the most glorious appliance ever made, is a Hamilton Beach "Stay or Go" blender. I am a big homemade smoothie maker, especially when you cannot trust the vast majority of smoothies made at restaurants as they either have a TON of sugar, use crap milk, are stacked with calories, and claim to use real fruit when in actuality it's a flavored syrup. Add enough roughage to a smoothie and you will quickly learn that you keep having to push the leaves down toward the base of the blender and continually need to keep adding liquid. Say no more if you've been in this situation (never mind about ice not getting crunched down enough). The solution for ALLLLLL your problems is this blender I just purchased.


The 'stay or go' element is what has me most riveted. I generally make my smoothies for breakfast and then chug it along my morning commute. So I blend first then have that awkward 'please don't be so thick that you decide to come all out of the blender at once and get all over the kitchen counter' business. There is RARELY a time I don't have some sort of spill clean-up after I make a shake. But this blender comes with a smoothie cup that's bottom can attach to the base of the blender and you can blend right in the cup you intend to hit the road with! It's a time saver, a clean-up saver, and basically the coolest thing out there to buy. The blades are designed to pull the contents of the glass down to the bottom, the ice turns magically into little slivers, and I have yet to have any chunks of leaves un-blended. The ease of it has made me get more and more into packing a juice with me when I leave every morning. And priced around $30.00 (Target), you really cannot go wrong.

This week, I have been watching my foot and taking it easy when I can to ensure it's healthy for the 1/2 marathon next Saturday (June 2nd). I'm still getting in cardio and following the training, but subbing out parts of the running with the bike. As the days get closer and I see the training ease up, I realize that I am a mere 9 days away from the big day. Wow......look how far I've come. I am anxious and nervous, of course, and I'll probably talk all about it next week in anticipation for the run, but I must admit that I look forward to jumping back into some fun classes, like zumba, when I am finished training. Although you cannot quite beat the cardio benefits of running, I know I'll need to take a break (if only for my foot's sake) from it for a few weeks to allow my body to heal and distracting my mind with pumping music and being surrounded by a bunch of people sounds like the perfect medicine.

Onto the weigh in for the week:

This Week:

Weight: 164.4 (down 43.4 total)

Percent of Body Fat: 36% (down 8.3 %)

BMI: 27 (-7.2 pts)

Water Weight: 46.7% (up 6.7%)

Weeks to Meet Goal: 29

I've lost another two pounds this week and I feel like perhaps my plateau is finally giving me a break (even if a small one). I don't know why, but I have been stuck around that 40 lb area for MONTHS now. And with all this 1/2 marathon training, I was certain I would've dropped at least 10 pounds as a result...yet here I am-stuck. Dang, it can be so darned frustrating.....'just keep swimming, just keep swimming' is all I can tell myself to keep the end target in focus. Perhaps getting into a "I run at least 3 miles every day" routine will help me shed this highly unwanted weight. I am now just 1.4 lbs shy of weighing the average weight of women in America. Sadly, this number has increased 11 lbs (10%) over the past decade and so I do not count myself as 'average' until I get to the old valuation of 152. It does go to show how much our food industry, portion sizing, and eating habits have grown over the past decade, though. 

Looking to next week, I'll be winding down the training and giving you a break down of what I expect for the run. I'll likely post following the run to let you all know how it went, my thoughts on it, etc. 

Love w/ all my bum,

CH