Exercising, even moooooore!

As I have mentioned, group classes are excellent punishment, sufficient set appointments I can convince myself I have to be at, and also wonderful masses of social pressures not to wimp out and only half do the moves. I have twice now committed turbo kickbox suicide, and also kamikaze-styled my first spinning class, only to realize that spinning is an easy one to coast through, because only you know the resistance your bike is set at...dangerous! It took the bones in my butt a full week to recover, a good two days before I could sit on anything but the couch, and I could share more, but for the sake of modesty, I'll stop there. So far, I'm still in love with group classes, and I'm sure they will continue to be a staple of my workouts.

I have a lot of fun people watching while at the gym, which now that I write that, I realize people probably watch me back, creepy. Just the other day, I saw a woman, in her 50s, white, appearing to be affluent, on the treadmill in a JNCO cut off tank shirt....is that legal? I know for a fact, when I was in 7th grade, which was probably the last time I saw a piece of JNCO clothing, that this entire package ensemble was most certainly not legal, for just about every descriptive reason listed above. Is that judgmental? Perhaps, but what is people watching without judgement? Boring!

I have also learned that exercise also cures depression! This is wonderful news! Amazing! Because folks, I live in Spokane, and it's January, and I'm a full sun kind of plant, raised and thrived in the AZ desert. My first winter here, absolute hell! No, I'm sure hell is much warmer and brighter, what with all the flames and such, than Spokane in the winter. My second winter, I learned to self-medicate with a lot of sunscreen in the tanning bed. I would lather up and just lay there, letting the artificial sunlight permeate to my bones! Ahhh, it felt so good! My third winter was just an amazing mixture of adventure, nightmare and glee...see we got at least 4 feet of snow, that stuck around for MONTHS and temperatures in the single digits. Life was so exciting that I didn't have time to miss the sun too much. This winter however, has finally come to the grey dreary "did I move to Seattle?" winter that I remember. This coupled with the fact that I am (or shall I say WAS, YIPPEEE) unemployed, was depressing enough for me. On more than one occasion, I admittedly found projects I could sit on the floor in front of the couch with the TV on, and pretend to be productive. Finally 5:45 rolled around and I was up, showered, and off to catch the afternoon spin class. Nine minutes in to the 60 minute class, I realize once again that I am going to die, right here on the bike, and that there is no way I will be able to finish. Somehow I keep going, amidst absolute fountains of sweat (although in walking out of the class, I saw a bike that was literally sitting in a perfectly round puddle of sweat, and I was shocked, er, disgusted). And by the end of the class, I feel great! Literally! Like incredible! I turn on my workout mix, plug in the ear buds and hit the weights. And I am literally buzzing with energy! I'm ready to hit the clubs! (on a Wednesday, at 7 pm, drenched in sweat) This isn't the first time I've felt the literal endorphin high, and each time I feel it, it is wonderful and amazing. It's almost like caffeine jitters without the jitters, you can just feel raw energy pulsing through every vein, and you body just wants to move! Best of all, your brain! Talk about mood-altering! I can go from Eeyore to tripping in approximately 45 minutes. It's crazy!

Cooking healthy, the final frontier, eh probably not!

I am always posting my latest food creations on Facebook, complete with pictures and mouth-watering descriptions, designed mostly to mislead people into believing I'm this amazing talented chef only pretending to be normal. The truth is, I don't cook that often. And since I've started this whole "Ohmygosh I'm running a marathon and I can't eat THAT!" thing, or more realistically "I can't make that because I am too lazy to actually calculate how many calories are in it" I've been completely blocked when it comes to creativity in the kitchen. Growing up, my dad had this amazing ability to walk into the kitchen, open up the fridge, survey quickly the contents, and then like pure magic, here's dinner, healthy, unique and OUT OF THIS WORLD! And mind you this isn't mashed potatoes and mac and cheese amazing, this is like falafel with tzatziki sauce, quinoa salad, chicken curry, or any other multitude of dishes my spell check is underlining like crazy. I have dreamed all my life of being as talented as him in the kitchen, with a bit more of a traditional flare, meaning stuff you can pronounce and readily find boring recipes for, only mine are Extreme Recipe, Colleen Edition. Fundamentally, I desire the ability to create things that are healthy, that incorporate vegetables and not too much grease and fat, but that of course are just brimming with amazing flavor!

This long introduction is leading somewhere, I promise, and that somewhere is what my creativity FINALLY produced today! And I have to say, after not seeing my creativity in at least a month, I was positive it had a severe case of atrophy and was withered and dying somewhere I couldn't find it anymore. So, here's how dinner went. Hmm, need protein, oh I have frozen chicken tenders, let's grill those up, with a little Montreal chicken seasoning and a small pad of butter, PLEASE don't tell my thighs! Great, now I have some tasty chicken...should I make a wrap? Eh, no, to much of a mouthful of green leafy stuff, and way too much work. Chicken sits untouched on the counter for approximately 30 minutes while creativity weakly sits up and looks around. Hmm, maybe just an egg muffin sandwich. How boring, and I'll just put the chicken in the fridge. So I fry the egg, in the same pan as I grilled the tasty chicken in, yum, and toast the english muffin. WAIT! OH HOLD THE BORING! Here comes creativity! He's awake! There's that colossal bag of spinach from Costco that I have yet to finish before it goes bad, and...that's healthy! Let's see...there's a little bit of melted butter and seasoning left in the pan. Heat the pan up, throw in a few tablespoons of white wine in the pan, stir it around to loosen up the chicken bits. Let's put a tiny bit more butter in it, nice, and now that it's bubbling, sprinkle a spoonful of flour...make a nice paste, ah yes! Add a few tablespoons of cream, cause it's in the fridge and heaven knows I shouldn't be drinking it, although I do love to, and I've made a nice creamy roux. Now, grab the whisk, and the milk, and add just enough to make it a dark, rich cream. Ooh, and now for the healthy part! I wash and spin about three cups of spinach, and throw it in the pan on medium heat. This is where the adventure starts, because I've never wilted spinach before, much less even heard of it done in a roux before. I've heard of creamed spinach, but I don't want it that well done. So I grab the kitchen tongs and just pick and turn and pick and turn and watch as it gets bright green, coating with the creamy sauce, and slowly reducing in mass. And voila! Within a few short minutes, I have wilted spinach in a cream sauce! Whoa! So I grab my English muffin, slide the egg on, and pile the spinach on top of that, slip a piece of the grilled chicken and top with the other half of the muffin. At this point I'm staring at it, wondering if my creation is any good. My husband is studying in the other room, after turning his nose at my grilled chicken when he came home from work. So I figure, what do I have to lose, and I don't want to eat this if it's gross. I walk it to him, and say "tell me if it's edible." He takes a bite, and contemplates, takes another bite...and I'm like okay, how is it??? Hmm, I don't know...takes a third bite, including most of the delicious yoke of my egg before I realize what's going on. HEY! Back off my dinner! That's mine! To which he acts all surprised, this isn't for me? No, it's my dinner! You didn't want me to fix you dinner, remember? And I commandeer my dinner and march back to the kitchen. Guess that means I pass! My favorite part of the meal? It was healthy, 565 calories, and 44 grams of protein! Not too shabby for an entire dinner if you ask me, I was quite satisfied! And about 3 servings of vegetable! So, I'm recording this event in hopes that it will nourish and encourage my creativity to stick around and help me make it through the next 4 months without getting so desperate for good food that I'm eating out and and eating way too much, oh and spending too much, and eating the wrong things, etc.

More Whining...feel free to skip

So, I've been serious about this for almost 2 weeks. I don't go over 1200 calories a day, I exercise 2 hrs a day, at least 5 days a week. I could drink more water...but so far, the scale is not telling me what I want to hear. Clothes are not significantly more roomy. I look a little better, but maybe that's just my more positive frame of mind looking at myself knowing I've been working hard. I see results to save myself from discouragement. Yes? No? I don't know...

I have learned to utilize the group classes at the gym. They are the only thing that make me sore again. For some reason, I am not good at making myself hurt. My self-preservation must win out over my fitness goals. In a group class, the social pressures of other class members and the barking instructor telling me to "get those knees up, push it HARDER" certainly helps me to push past the pain. Yesterday I did a Turbo Kickbox class, and realized about a minute into it that I haven't done kickboxing since college and wow, is it buttkicking! My new fitness goal? To not be embarrassed about things protruding and shaking in an aerobics class. Looking at myself in the mirror is all the motivation I need to "push it HARDER!"

The pain after a kickbox class is back pain, upper arm pain, and is very uncomfortable. Leg pain is painful when you walk, when you stand up and sit down, but back muscle pain, that sucks all the time, when you're sleeping, sitting, showering, all the time. At the same time, why am I complaining? Because I am sore, I know I actually pushed myself, I'm actually growing.

Oh, the one thing I have noticed? I only have to give my hand a few hard shakes and my wedding ring flies off! So...at least my fingers are thinner...right?

Here goes nothing!

I've never thought my life was blog-worthy, no kids to talk about, no crazy life circumstances, just me, and my plain white bread life. However, recently I signed my husband and I up to run a marathon, yes a FULL marathon. Yes I can hear your nay-saying as you read this, and I'd love to hear it! Fires me up even more to head straight to the gym! Anyway, the day of reckoning is May 30th, until then you can find me in various stages of exhaustion, self-doubt, and occasional excitement. I am learning a lot about myself, and this is where I share it with you!

Lessons I've learned so far while training for a marathon

1. To go to the gym without showering, blow drying and the minimal foundation and mascara.

2. To sweat in public, A LOT, and to bring a towel to the treadmill, cause I'll need it!

3. I now judge every song I hear by the bpm's followed by a calculation on how many mph's that translates to on the treadmill. Anything under 130 bpm's is NOT going to work.

4. The BEST painkiller for sore muscles is, surprisingly, an hour of cardio!

5. I will be perpetually sore from now until possibly the second week of June.

6. The first 10-20 minutes of the workout are killer! Make it through, and you could go for hours.

7. 6 miles on the elliptical = 4 miles on the treadmill = 2 miles on actual land.

And like I mentioned, I am exhausted. But I still have one more workout to get in today, two-a-days are awesome!