Adjusted Reality

Welcome back, unless you are a spammer, then go far, far away and bother someone else.  My super uber Akismet spam catcher will smack you down.  If you’re not a spammer, then read on!

Although I will shout loudly at the mountaintops about how I was able to lose 80+ lbs using SparkPeople, a lot of the articles are sorta drivel.  The other features are great, don’t get me wrong.  Tracking what went into my mouth for the last year and a half has helped me become aware of what a normal human should eat and what foods work for me.  Logging exercise made me accountable when I didn’t want to pursue fitness for any other reason than losing the proverbial junk in my trunk.  Seems silly now that anyone would have to push me to workout, but times have changed.  Getting involved with the community provided me inspiration and an outlet when I used to blog over there.  However, the articles – meh.

That being said, since I’m on the site all the time tracking my foods and logging my awesome fitness minutes, I do catch some and once in a while they’ll really hit home.  A few weeks ago, I read this one.  If you don’t want to jump over there and read it all, I’ll give you the reader’s digest version…actually the article IS a summary so this is a summary of a summary.  How meta!

There are 5 different types of workout personalities: squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, and squigglies.

Squares are very rigid and like to have a plan and stick to it.  They are committed, but hit plateaus easily because they don’t change up their workouts.

Rectangles are like squares in they like a routine, but they are more flexible and also tend to be more social.  Since they’re more flexible they will resort to a Plan B (as in, planned to run outside today but it’s raining, so I’ll hit the treaddy at the gym), but if they workout alone, they aren’t likely to stick to it.

Triangles are competitive and very focused on improving and tracking that improvement.  They appreciate all sorts of improvement (even if the scale didn’t move, they’ll appreciate the new personal best on their mile time), but are likely to get frustrated without a higher purpose in mind.

Circles are the emotional, social people who couldn’t imagine working out alone.  Having gym time double as social time gets them there regularly, but they’re likely to spend more time chatting than working out.

Squigglies are the polar opposite of squares.  They abhor routine and value, above all things, fun.  They rarely see plateaus because they’re always changing it up, but are likely to get bored and drop out of a regular exercise program.

It really hit me here that I was fully and completely a triangle.  It’s not just my body shape (inverted triangle, at least), it’s my workout type!  This inspired me to ditch April’s planned experiment, which while it sounded FUN, it also sounded like a chore since it was super varied.  I really like a routine.  I like to make a list and check it off.  I definitely have elements of square (in that I like routine) and rectangle (that I’m ok being flexible, if it’s raining the treaddy is fine, or if I’m exhausted and planned a hard workout I’ll switch it to another day and do something lighter), but I am true and true a triangle.  Even before I was working towards a race, I was working on improving my times, my distances, using heavier weights, doing more reps, and the like.

So this gave me the oomph to actually put this half marathon plan into place, I think I wrote out the spreadsheet the very same day.  It still scares me but more than anything I’m excited.  I’m also signed up for a 5k in 2 days and a 10k next weekend because I realized – I love races.  I got myself a stopwatch to time myself because it was one more stat I could track.  Now that the article validated for me what I already knew (I thrive on competition), I’m rocking out with my new wicking socks out and embracing it.

What type of workout personality are you?  How do you embrace it and make it work for you?  How do you get over your weaknesses?

I do believe the spam is behind me.  Comments are open for now, testing the wonders of Akismet.  I still have tons to figure out about wordpress, but this should enable me to write in the blog and not scream with rage when my inbox fills up.

Thank you to Zliten and Manu for the help!  Regular ramblings will commence shortly, as I have tons of drafts waiting to see the light of day….

So the sinking feeling I had in my stomach when I saw 300 new emails was right – the spaminators found their way back to my site.  Comments are again disabled unless you log in, which is problematic in and of itself.  If anyone CAN comment here, please let me know, by, uh, commenting here.  For now, enjoy sheer cuteness (and get this song stuck in your head all day):

PS. Cat – the jalapeno bacon was just store brand at our local grocery. I’m pretty sure it’s just law in Texas you have to have a jalapeno flavor of everything. Seriously, that was the best bacon evar. 😉

EDIT: Ok, think I tweaked the setting so new users can be added. Thanks for the tip, Cat. 🙂

EDIT2: Not so much. Will play around with it when I can. Argh. Spambots need to go to a special place in hell. It wasn’t even as interesting as last time. It was 300 messages about viagra. Not even creative!!!

I mentioned a lot of these things in yesterday’s monster training recap, but I wanted to elaborate more.

1.  Saturday was an awesome day.  Well, it didn’t start quite so awesome but ended up lovely.  I didn’t go to bed until WAY late and had WAY too much to drink and woke up 4-5 hours later nursing a hangover.  However, I cooked us breakfast (batter blaster pancakes, two slices of jalapeno bacon, and hand grated hashed browns) and we set out on our epic day anyway.  Half an hour in, I felt great.  There is nothing like some moderate exercise and sunshine to cure all ills.  We rode down from our casa to Run Tex (12 miles), did their 4k walk, ate lunch, did the 4k walk BACK to the bikes, and then rode about 3 miles home before deciding AC was better than dripping sweat and rode the bus.

I kept thinking – if you told me 2 years ago that I would be taking a 12 mile bike ride to do a 5 mile (round trip) walk, I would have probably thought you crazy.  Now, if you would have said that the reason I was walking and not running it was because I had already done 4 runs that week for my half marathon training…I would have thought you COMPLETELY crazy.  Amazing how a year or 2 changes things…

2..  For some reason, it took until last Saturday’s ride to click, but I realized that I spend a lot of time in my workout clothes.  Especially since we started riding the bikes.  I had planned on getting SOME sort of new workout attire before the next race because I felt like a shmuck in what I was wearing (and it was my best workout clothes), but I really needed to replace pants and shirts I was wearing 50-100 lbs ago for regular workout wear.  It’s amazing how spiffy you feel wearing workout clothes that fit you and match rather than thrift store sweats and stuff that’s 3-5 sizes too big.  I also picked up a running skirt.  I’ll let you know what I think of it after I utilize it later this week.

3.  I chopped my hair!  If there’s anything that random people might have identified me with over the last 10 years, it’s “that chick with the long hair”.  My hair has been some flavor of length between small of my back to dangerously close to being sat upon, but it is now just a smidge under shoulder length.  I definitely used to hide under it.  Back fat is trivial when your hair covers it!  I might not keep it this short but now that it’s starting to heat up, it’s nice to have a ponytail that doesn’t even touch my shoulders.

Funny story about how it happened though – Zliten is my hairdresser (yeah, my hair is that low maintenance) and I asked for a trim.  As he was cutting it, a big strand curled up and he accidentally chopped it super short, so we just evened it out and now we both think it looks awesome!

4.  I am experimenting with different breakfast stuff.  I’ve been on oatmeal every day for a few month and just need a break.  I’ve been trying out different bars and also seeing whether more protien or more fiber is better for me in the morning.  This week, I’ve tried Luna Bars (tried chocolate peppermint and have a chai tea in queue) and Fiber One (have a box of chocolate mocha).  The Luna bars are about 180 calories, 5g fat, 9g protien, and 3g fiber.  The Fiber One bars are about 140 calories, 4g fat, 9g fiber, and 2g protien.  So far, I think I prefer the Fiber One bars, they filled me up more for 40 less calories.  I’m going to expand into some higher calorie bars and see if they take the edge off enough to eat into lunchtime calories, and I also want to see whether fiber or protien is more important in the morning.

Expect a full post on this sometime soon, but I’m open to any breakfast suggestions.  The requirements are:

-No prep beyond a microwave.  I would be grabbing this and bringing it to work.  I am also anti batch cooking for a week of leftovers for the most part but if it sounds REALLY good and is pretty easy I could be swayed.

-No eggs.  It can have eggs IN it, I’m not allergic, but I can’t be able to taste them.  About the most egg I can handle is egg whites in eggdrop soup and not-too-eggy french toast.  Omlettes and quiche are way too eggy.

-It has to be reasonably filling.  I plan on eating this on an empty stomach around 10am and I don’t want a peep out of my stomach until 12:30-1pm.

-Under 300 calories.  200 preferably, but I’m open to more as long as it rates high on the point just above (fillingness).

5.  I think I’ve settled on what the half marathon plan will be.  At first, I was thinking running 5 laps around my neighborhood would do me just fine.  Then, I started reading about this guy, Joe Hale.  I mean, the besides the obvious inspiration on raising a whole bunch of money for a charity he cares dearly about, and the obvious OMG he’s running way further than I can fathom – it really made me realize that I wanted to run an official race.  So today I started looking into the Seattle Rock and Roll Half-Marathon, and I got as far as looking into booking the weekend trip on travelocity – it’s just too expensive.  It’s definitely on the list for next year because I’ve never been and it would be a GREAT excuse to go.  Maybe even by next year, I’ll be running the full marathon!   Maybe.  I’m not entirely sure if I’m that insane.

After doing some additional googling, I found one a bit more reasonable – Carraba’s Classic Half-Marathon in San Antonio.  Instead of a flight/hotel/food/entertainment budget for a 5 day 4 night trip (which believe it or not was hundreds cheaper than a 3 day 2 night trip…) and 100$ race entry fee, I’m looking at an hour and a half drive, a one night hotel stay (which was 150 bucks for the jacuzzi suite and just goes down from there), and a 24$ entry fee.  Plus, there is also a nature walk Zliten can do instead of just sitting there waiting for me to finish!  It’s much more appropriate for a first race, me thinks.  Unless I decide I hate it though…I foresee more weekend trips coresponding with races.  Sounds like a great way to see more places.

Now, to get through the rest of the workday and attempt my first official tempo run tonight!  Pictures today courtesty of my new haircut because I am vain and want to see my mug plastered all up in this post.