Last Chance Workout

I rejoined WeightWatchers two weeks ago.  I stopped going about a year ago when my husband lost his job, thinking I could keep track myself and it was one way we could cut back expenses.  I'm sure you heard that they've revamped their program, focusing not on calories, but more on the healthy value of food.  Basically it is designed to encourage you to eat more  fruits and vegetables.  One hundred calories of chips does not feed your body the way one hundred calories of strawberries does.  I wanted to learn about the new program and start paying attention to what I was eating.

My weekly mileage has been reduced to about 20 miles a week since the marathon and I need to get an idea of how much I should be eating. I had hoped that I would loose weight while  training for a marathon, but no such luck, it made me quite hungry.  My weigh in day is Saturday morning, but I had a race scheduled this past weekend and needed to move it to Sunday morning instead. Saturday then became my last chance workout before the big weigh in.

I ran the local Lady Track Shack 5K, for ladies only and had a great race!  I set a new PR of 25:35!  I wasn't sure I could beat my old time of 26:10.  I knew I needed to run faster than 8:26 min/miles.  I started out doing well, but tired out about halfway through.  At that point I was hoping to have enough energy to finish strong.  I did slow down throughout the race, and was quite exhausted at the end. Which you can tell by my face after I crossed the finish line.  I made the mistake of not eating enough before the race.  I typically don't eat more than a handful of dried fruit before my morning runs and did the same today but expected a great performance.  Looking back, I think eating a banana that morning, would have been a better idea.  I did not have enough energy and felt a little dizzy during the race. Thank goodness I didn't fall out!  I made up for it after the race with a half banana, strawberries, gatorade and water.  We even stopped for a bagel on the way  home.

Because I am training for a half marathon in April (Iron Girl in Clearwater, FL) I was scheduled to run 8 miles Saturday.  Once I got home, I had to go out and run the last 5 miles.  Andy and I started running together, but he was only running 3 miles, so we parted ways as he headed for home.  The last 2 miles were a killer.  I was wiped and ended up walking some of it.  I was a relief to be done!

Our day of activity was just warming up, as we had planned to get in some biking too.
We loaded up the car and headed out with the promise of lunch at a new favorite spot.

We traveled to the West Orange Trail in Clermont, about 40 minutes away.  The trail is great for biking and we hadn't been there in almost a year.  We headed north on the trail, the other way is very hilly and after all that running, I didn't want to kill myself.


The trail intersects with many roads, although very few are highly traveled.  Of course we slow down at each intersection to see if cars are coming and if  not we don't come to a complete stop.  You know, we want to keep the momentum.  We came to one intersection and were approaching it as a car was too.  I adjusted my speed so I would not have to stop, but would be able to cross after the car passed. My plan would have worked out fine, but this woman, obviously had a control issue because instead of  moving through the intersection, she kept hesitating and finally stopped just before the path to tell us we needed to stop.  I couldn't believe it.  I was so unprepared for this, that I had to quickly yank my clipped shoes out and stop.  I did get my foot out of the pedal, but my shoes slipped on the gravel and I ended up falling right there!!   Fortunately I landed on my butt and did not scrape up my arms or legs.  She was such a jerk.  If she had only kept going like she should have... it would have all worked out.

So what is worse than falling?  Having other people see you fall of course!  At the time I didn't know how many people saw me until after it happened when the driver of another car asked me if I was all right as did walkers on the trail. That was no nice of them and it warmed my heart :) after that fiasco. Yay for nice people!

We rode out for about 10 miles and then turned around to head back.  With 7 miles left to go, the clouds broke open and rain poured on us. We were wet and cold when we finally returned to the car almost two hours after starting.  We cranked the heat in the car and headed for lunch at Troy's Cuban Cafe.  We discovered this great place for cuban sandwiches as it is right next to the bike shop we go to.  We were still so cold we ate lunch in the car with the heater on.

Tired and full we headed for home - the workout was over!  It really was a fun day and I can't wait to go bike riding on the trail again.  My weigh in on Sunday yielded a small step in the right direction with a .6 weight loss for a total of 2.4 lbs for the two weeks.

Have you ever fallen in front of other people?