Sprinting - What I Look Like

There is nothing like finishing off your run with a good sprint.  You see the finish up ahead, you kick it in high gear, pumping your legs and arms as hard and as fast as they can possibly go.  It's a good feeling to finish well.

What I feel like I look like at the end of my run:

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What I actually look like at the end of my run:

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I fail. A lot.

I realized the other day that almost all of my running posts have been about my successes.  So let's switch it up a bit.  I definitely have not been feeling the success as of late.

If you come to my blog for reasons other than my running posts, I do apologize.  My blog tends to mirror what is prominent in my life at the moment.

Failure.

I've been dabbling in it recently.  Up until this last week I had been doing pretty good with what I eat.  Then Easter hit and with it all the irresistible sweets and carbs that I find a hard time resisting.  Long story short: I didn't.  I didn't resist.  The scale proved on more than one occasion this last month that it knows my secrets.  Dumb scale.

However, I did reign it in a little - you know, eating enough for two people instead of five - always look for the positive!

I had been doing pretty good running on the treadmill.  I was a little worried about meeting my goal of running my upcoming 5k without slowing to a walk, but was starting to come out the other side of, 

"I may run it slow, but I can do it.

Today I ran outside.

And every last ounce of positive thinking drained out of me as I crawled and inched myself around the block.

Seriously?

I knew it would be hard.  I knew it was going to be quite a transition from treadmill to outside.  That's why I was giving myself a couple weeks to adjust (yeah, don't laugh).

I just didn't realize it would be THAT hard.

So,  I am back to, "I really don't know if I'm going to meet this goal."

I'm sorry this post isn't more inspiring.  But I also want to keep things real here, and the truth of the matter is, some days are hard.  Some days just really suck.  Some days you just feel like you will never get to where you want to be.

The trick is not staying in that place.

You get down.

You wallow.

You feel sorry for yourself.

Then you move on.

I once read a post by an extremely wise person that said,

Movement is life.

He wasn't talking about running specifically, but the message can very easily be adapted to any area of life.  

I started running track in Junior High.  I believe it was my first or second race where I had a bad fall.  A hard core fall.  Like blood running down my legs, laid there for several seconds before getting up, fall.

I still don't remember what happened.  I didn't bump into anybody, my shoelaces weren't untied, I wasn't struggling to breathe.  My legs just couldn't keep up and I fell.  I was mortified.  I didn't want to get up.  I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.  When that didn't happen I did the only thing I could think to do.

I got up.

I ran (hobbled) to the finish line.

And I crossed it.

I didn't think much of it at the time.  I was so embarrassed by the fall in the first place that it was all I thought about.

Then I realized everyone was congratulating me.  Everyone was smiling and clapping and cheering!

I kind of wondered if maybe they didn't see my embarrassing performance, or maybe they felt really sorry for me.

But THEN I realized they weren't cheering out of pity.  They weren't cheering because they missed what happened.

They were cheering because I got up.

They were cheering because I kept going.

Because they all knew what it took to keep going in the face of failure.

And so, with this in mind, I will move forward.  I still have two and a half weeks to the 5k.  I'm going to give it my best shot, and my best is all I can give.

Week 7: Giving Up

I'm going to give up.

Then I think about how far I've come.

I can't run very fast.

Then I remember that I AM running.

I only lost one pound last week, and gained a pound the week before.

Then I realize I'm still 9 pounds lighter than when I started.

I have a health condition that makes it harder to lose weight.

Then I am thankful that this condition is manageable and I am not the only one who has it.

What we tell ourselves has more impact than we realize.  When you are chasing after a goal, or a dream, tell yourself the things you would tell someone else if they were walking in your shoes.  It is very easy to let your own negative messages take over when you are struggling through a rough patch.  For every negative thing you catch yourself thinking, follow it up with a positive thought.  I didn't get to this point by allowing my fears and my negativity to rule my mind.  Our minds are way more powerful than we realize.  Once you learn to control your own mind, you will be unstoppable.

Weeks 5-6: finding what works

I can't believe week 5 has come and gone and I am cruising through week 6 already!  Physically speaking, last week was a good week!  My runs felt great.  Two of the days I even ran for 20 minutes without stopping to walk.  That is the longest I've gone so far.  There were other obstacles to overcome, however.  The biggest one being my schedule.  See, our basement is gym slash toy room slash studio slash craft room slash guest bedroom.  Also, my usual wake up is 5:15am.  So, when Grandma came to visit, I decided that a 5:15 am wake up call to thudding, huffing and puffing, was not the most hospitable thing I could do.  It worked out fine, because I was just able to sleep in a little and then run during the kids' nap time, but I realized early on that this was not what I wanted for my normal work out.

When I first started five and a half weeks ago, the first full week of attempting to wake up early was a complete fail.  I just couldn't convince myself to shake off the sleep and do it.  This resulted in me doing my run during the kids' nap time, which would be fine...if all three buggers actually slept during nap time.  My soon to be five year old hasn't taken a regular nap in almost a year, and my three and a half year old just recently started nixing his own nap time.  I still make them have "quiet time", which is at least 30 minutes of quiet activity in their own room.  Perfect time for me to run, right?  Well, it would be, if my girl didn't need to come out of her room and down the stairs for "a certain book", or "a drink of water" or "my good crayons".  It's always something.  And the boy is curious.  He hears the girl's door open and then he needs to see what's going on.  Long story short, that first week I was finding it very difficult to finish a run without stopping to be on "mommy duty" or to try and have a conversation while at the height of exertion (I am so not a social runner!) while my girl asked me 20 million questions.  Instead of feeling relaxed and rejuvenated after a good work out I was just as stressed, annoyed, and in an overall bad mood.  It was clear it wasn't working out.  I needed this time to be alone.  So, after a few days of this realization setting in, I was finally able to get my butt up out of bed before the sun came up.  And it was the best thing I ever could have done for myself at the beginning of this journey.

Are you stuck?  Do you find that you really want to start a workout regimen, but you can't quite figure out how to get it done?  

Try it one way for a bit and if that doesn't work out, try another way.  Don't keep trying to establish a routine that doesn't really jive with your schedule.  

Also, try to always use the word "jive" in some way.  It's awesome.  

If you try to force a routine that doesn't work for you, you will continue to dread it and thus set yourself up for failure before you've even begun.  Give it a week.  If it's not working out, switch it up.  Keep trying till you find something that works for you.  Jon Acuff wrote a post the other day called How I work: 6 tips to getting up early.  The whole post was good, but one point really resonated with me.  His number 3 was to do something fun in the morning.  He said don't try to do something you hate because that will just give you more reason to not get up.  

So don't try to force a routine on yourself that makes you miserable.  It will just give you more reason to not start.

I am not a morning person.  I never have been.  

But I love to run, and I love having some time to myself to think and to read.  I love having some calm before the storm of chaos that usually surrounds living life with three very messy and energetic little people.

So for that, I can get up.  

Figure out what works, then do it!

Crafting with Kids: Potato Cow

My daughter loves to make things.  If she can see it in her head, she will attempt to make it.  Thats why, when I was at a consignment sale this past weekend and found this book, the question was not whether or not to buy it, but whether or not to give it to her now, or wait until her birthday next weekend.  I mean, the title of the book is Make It Yourself, which really could be her middle name.  I couldn't resist.  I knew she would love it and we are done buying for her birthday, so I went ahead and gave it to her.  She goes to sleep looking at it, and she wakes up asking me if we can do one of the crafts in it that day.  

We finally did our first one today: make a cow out of two potatoes.  

Materials Used:

1. White and black or brown craft paint

2. Two paint cups

3. paintbrush

4. One large potato and one small potato

5. Toothpicks

6. String/Yarn

7. Scissors

8. Pipe cleaners

We also did a video tutorial, and she was such a little natural in it, that I just completely forgot to take pictures.  However, it's pretty self explanatory enough, and I did take a picture of the pages out of the book after all was said and done.

I will update this post with the video link when I have it.  I think it was a success!  She's already talking about how she's going to add to the herd with more potato cows.  

DIY Carseat Recover

This project has been on my to do list for almost a year.  I am crazy excited that I've finally done it!  It was definitely a challenge.  It wasn't really that hard of a project, but what made it difficult was the bulkiness and thickness of it once it was close to being back together.

Here's how it all went down...

I took the cover off and studied it.  I also took lots of pictures as I needed to be able to put it back together once it was all ripped apart!

My plan going in was to rip it apart, piece by piece, discard the old, pink fabric and sew the new fabric onto the padding.  Upon studying the cover, it seemed most feasible to start with the brown fabric that went all the way around and actually folds over the seat with elastic to keep it on.  You can barely see a sliver of brown on the outsides of the seat in the above photo.  There is dark brown bias tape that is sewn across the front on the bottom, then it connects to the elastic with the brown from there and wraps all the way around and down to the other side.  I noticed that this piece was still in pretty good shape, that it matched my new fabric, and would save me a ton of time if I kept it intact and didn't replace it.  So that's what I did!  Then once I took that piece off I decided to work my way to the center in taking it apart.

Here is a picture after the stretch material with elastic was taken off.  Look at the color difference!  I think this seat was more than ready for a face lift!  At this point I also realized that this cover didn't actually have fabric to remove from the padding.  The padding was printed!  I was happy to realize this because this meant I would save even more time.  Instead of ripping the old fabric off the padding, I would be sewing the new fabric directly onto it.

Saving time is always a plus, especially if you happened to have lost your seam ripper over a year ago and somehow completely forget to buy a new one every single time you're in the store.  Seriously.  Every time.  So what I do, without a ripper, is just pull the material apart at the seam until it stops, then use my big scissors to clip the next couple threads, pull it apart again, and so on.  

Once I had all the pieces ripped apart I laid them out on the new fabric as a pattern.  

Used some pins to make sure they didn't move around while I was cutting.  On a side note, if working while your 20 month old is awake and toddling around, do not leave the pins on the edge of the table thinking that they are close enough to you to rescue if he gets it in his mind to investigate.  Because he will.  And his chubby little fingers will move faster than you thought possible, resulting in finding yourself two minutes later, on your hands and knees, picking up every. single. one. off the floor.  

Once I had them all stuck, I cut them out.  

I started getting excited with this step, seeing the new fabric on the shapes.  I love new fabric.

 

Now we're getting somewhere!  The next step I did was to sew a zigzag stitch all around the pieces, just so it wouldn't slip out of place as I was sewing the pieces back together.  I liked not having to worry about my seam allowance.  Since I could see where it had already been sewn together, I just had to make sure I stayed beside that line.  Then when sewing the pieces together it was like I already had a guide in place.

This part was a little tricky.  I originally thought I would have to sew buttonholes into the new fabric, but that's not what I ended up doing.  I realized it was much simpler to just sew a really tight zigzag stitch around the holes, then just cut the slit open.  Now, if you are an accomplished seamstress, or even an intermediate level, please be kind as you see the next few pics.  I realize they are not the neatest thing ever.  I will blame part of it on the fact that with the seat cover being so bulky it was very hard to see what I was doing and hard to make nice and neat stitching lines.  That said, I blame the rest of it on the fact that even after having my own sewing machine for a few years, I am still very much a beginner sewer!  So here we go:

I sewed it on my machine with the right side down, so that I could see where the hole was to sew around it.

Then folded it in half so that I could use my scissors to snip a hole.

Then I unfolded it and cut up to the stitching on both sides.

These tiny holes were really tricky to get neat....as you can tell.  This was the neatest one I did, if that tells ya anything.

Now I had all the fabric sewn on and all the holes made.  I was down to the last step of sewing it all back together and so excited to see the final result!

A little too excited, possibly.  This was not the easiest sewing I've ever done, due to the bulkiness of the cover.  I held it together as best I could, and sometimes it seemed like I was just shoving it under the needle.  My machine did something here and it scared the shnickles out of me.  In about .2 seconds I envisioned my hand being mangled under the needle and I jumped about a foot, jerking my hand back, and catching it on a pin.

After I calmed down I sewed all the sides together, then worked in the reverse order of how I took it apart.  

Oh, and remember how I said I got all the holes sewn and cut?  Yeah, not so much.  When I finished the cover I excitedly got the seat out and started putting the cover on, only to realize there were no holes for the belt to come up through.  Back to the machine.  Did the two last holes and THEN it was finished!

My intent in doing this was so that my little boy didn't have to ride around in a pink butterfly car seat (even though at 1-2 years old he could really care less).  When I finished it and asked my 4 year old if she liked it she said, "It looks like a girl seat".  Ah, oh well.  Better than the dirty butterflies, anyway.  

It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought as far as trying to sew something so bulky, and yet it was really quite simple.  So that's it!  Looks like a brand new seat!