My First 5K with pictures!!!

Saturday was great weather for my race! Sunny and in the 70s! I was really excited but I was also really nervous! I felt like I had to pee a hundred times!! lol. I knew I was going to finish the race, but I was afraid of being too slow I guess. I was just nervous!

About 650 people were running this race!! Yikes that was a lot! About 50 people from my gym were also doing the race. We all had on black tank tops or t-shirts with they gym logo on the back. It was pretty cool. We were everywhere! lol



Here I am with my friends from the gym. Getting ready for the race!



And we're off!! This is me at the beginning! All smiles!!

During the race I felt pretty good. I only stopped and walked two times. This was the longest I've ever ran!! I got to mile one by 12 minutes! That fastest I've ever ran a mile outside!! If I kept on pace I could maybe make my goal of getting under 40 minutes!!

Almost to mile 3 I started to lose steam. I was tired and HOT. The way the race was set up. You ran along streets and the last quarter was around a track. That quarter was just cruel!! It was brutal!! I was going really slow at this point. Then all of a sudden I saw my trainer. She came sprinting toward me!! She pushed me to run faster and to just concentrate on passing at least one person ahead of me.

I wanted to cry! How could I go faster?? I felt like puking! As we rounded the last bend, I could see the finish line and the clock. It was at 39:30! I knew if I sprinted I could get it under 40! So I took off, leaving my trainer in the dust!!



Here I am finishing the race! Still all smiles!!! My final time was 39:51!! YESSS I did it!!! If it wasn't for my running buddy and my trainer I wouldn't have done it!! I am so so proud of myself!



Here is most of the people from my gym after the race!



Here I am with my trainers. My running buddy gave me flowers at the finish line. How sweet is that?? I could cry!



Still all smiles after the race!

After the race, we all went to a local bar that's right on the bay. It was 10:30 and wasn't open yet! We talked the bartender into opening up for us and we sat outside and enjoyed some nice drinks. I was starving, but we had to wait until the kitchen was open at 11:30. I got the best burger and it was the perfect way to celebrate the day. It was so beautiful out! I got a pretty bad sunburn on my shoulders! lol. But it was totally worth it.

It was a great day. One that I know I will remember for years and years.

I can't wait until my next 5K, which is only 2 weeks away!! I guess I'm hooked!

Almost time for my 5K!!

This Saturday I will be running/walking my very first 5K!!! I can't believe it's almost here!! Time really goes by too fast sometimes. I am really excited about the race. I feel much more confident than I was when I first signed up.

I know I will finish it. I've run a couple of my own 5K and my average time is around 45 minutes to finish. I'm hoping to get under that the day of my race!

I know I can run for at least 8 minutes at a time before needing a quick 90 second walk. Hopefully the day of the race, with all those people and the adrenaline, I can run for a bit longer. But I won't be upset if I can't!

There a lot of people I know running this race. Plus I have a running buddy who promised to not leave me during the race!! Having someone to run with makes all the difference in the world to me. It makes time go by so much faster! She also pushes me when I don't want to push myself.

My friend's mom is going to be watching the race. I'm hoping she'll get a few pictures of me during the race so I can share with all of you!

EEEEK!! It's so close!!!

*I'm down almost 80 pounds!!!!!! I never thought I could get here. The last time I fit into the size I'm currently wearing, I was a Senior in high school. Which was 8 years ago!

Changes are a coming

A lot has been going on this week. Especially with work. I can't really go into right now, but it has been pretty stressful.

Hopefully next week I can talk a little more openly about it.

It feels like Friday to me, because this week has been so long. I hate that it's only Thursday and I still have to wait another whole day til the weekend! I just need to relax and decompress.

This weekend is going to be fun though. I am going to see Bridesmaids this Friday. It look so funny, I can't wait! Then on Saturday I'm going out for a friends birthday. We are starting at this bar that's right on the beach, which will be nice. Hopefully it won't rain. Either way it'll be great to be sitting by the ocean.

What are your plans for the weekend?

On to the next one

So my potential online date never e-mailed me back...

I'm not sure what happened. He just disappeared. I did e-mail him on Friday morning to confirm if we were still on to meet, and I just never got a response.

Usually I would take this kind of rejection really personally and give up on this whole online dating thing all together. However I know I did nothing wrong. Maybe he just decided he wasn't feeling it. Plus any guy who can't at least send an e-mail response back to a person is not someone I would want to spend my time with.

It's back to the drawing board for me. I'll keep on putting myself out there and hopefully will be able to meet a good guy soon!

Need Advice!!!

I decided to give online dating another try. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I'm locked into doing for at least the next few months. Whether I like it or not. The whole thing just makes me a nervous wreck though. I feel like I never know what to say or how to come across flirty and fun through my words on the page. I feel like I can never adequately describe myself when having to write about me. It makes me uncomfortable.

Then there is e-mailing people!! Ugh I never have any idea what to say or how to break the ice. Or make myself memorable enough to get a response. Basically it's really hard. Plus I haven't really told anyone IRL about it either because I feel like there is still a stigma about online dating. Even though it happens all the time now.

Anyway, I've been on the site for a couple of weeks now. Here's what's happened so far.

One guy "winked" at me. So I e-mailed him back this little paragraph and tried to be funny. His e-mail back to me? "Ur pretty i want to kiss u". Ummm that's it? Not even the words fully written out?? Plus WTF?!?!?! So that one went into the trash folder.

A second guy "winked" at me. But his profile was about his religion and his love for God, and how he tries to live for Christ. That's good for some people, but I'm not particularly religious. I believe in God, but that's about the extent of my religion. Also he lived in another state like 4 hours away. I didn't understand why he would even contact me.

A third guy e-mailed me. I wasn't really into it from his profile but I gave him a shot anyway. Because for all I know he could just have had as hard a time as me in writing these things. We exchanged a couple of e-mails and he seems OK but his grammar and punctuation was awful. I'm sorry but that is a huge pet peeve of mine. How hard is it to just quickly re-read what you wrote? Also he never capitalized the beginning of sentences. Ugh annoying. Anyway I overlooked all that because other than him, no one else was showing me any interest.

His third e-mail though, creeped me out so much I had to stop. He kept on going on and on about how he looks for girls to do certain things with him and how he was willing to do the same for girls, even if it involved fetishes. That what he wanted was his deepest darkest secrets and that he would tell them to me if I wanted to hear. Nope sorry. Not into fetishes like that. There was more and there was just red flags all over the place. NEXT.

Finally a guy winked at me and he seemed kinda cute and funny. So I winked back. Then he followed up with an e-mail that was reasonably written!! No text speak at all! We exchanged some e-mails and I was really liking what I was reading. The other day he suggested we meet for drinks. This is where I get nervous. I feel like it's a little fast to already be meeting. Plus he doesn't have a car so I will have to drive 45 minutes to meet him. I'm not crazy about that.

I pushed my fears and nervousness aside and agreed to meet this coming Friday in Hoboken which is near where he lives. That was on Monday evening. It's now Wednesday and I haven't heard from him since. We still have yet to pick a time or a place. I don't know what happened. Maybe he's waiting until Friday to pick the place and stuff? I'm a planner and I like to know ahead of time what's going on. I'll feel rushed if he waits that long. Plus I'm so nervous to begin with that I just keep on wanting to cancel. The more time that passes by with no response, the more nervous I get.

I don't know what to do. Should I e-mail to see what is going on? Wait it out? Cancel because I feel very uneasy already?

Ughh I hate this!!! Please give me advice!!!

Practice Run

I really love the gym I go to. They really push me and motivate me! For May they have an individual challenge. The winner of this challenge gets $1000!! Needless to say I want to win!!

This isn't the first challenge I've done with the gym. But it's the first time that I really think I can win. The winner has to have the best improved body composition in 5 weeks and also complete all the challenges they have listed. I'm not so worried about the body composition part. I'm still losing weight pretty consistently (I just recently hit 75 pounds lost!!!!!). It's the challenges I'm most worried about. They are CRAZY.

Here is a sampling of what needs to be done.

- Run 1/4 mile with a weighted vest on. (has to be done at least 4 times)
- Run a 1/2 mile (has to be done at least 4 times)
- Run a 5K (at least 3 times)
- Jump rope at least 100 times in a minutes.
- Do at least 25 burpees in a minutes.
- Elevated kettlebell squats with a 30 pounds weight for one minute.
- full situps with a 12 pound medicine ball for one minute. No stopping allowed.
- deadman's hang. You have to hang from a ladder for 60 seconds. I can only do 10 seconds right now!!!
- 4 bonus challenges. We don't find out the first one until next Sunday.

Believe it or not, there are a lot more challenges that have to be completed. I just can't remember them all. For all of the challenges you have to do better each time. So I got 104 jumps for the jump rope yesterday. Next time I do it, it has to be more than 104! I am the most worried about the deadman's hang and the bonus challenges. I cannot hold my body up like that for 60 seconds. The bonus challenges are usually brutal!!! Ugh it makes me nervous just thinking about it.

For all the runs we have to do, they are all outside!! Yikes!!

I decided to get one of the 5Ks out of the way yesterday. So me and my gym buddy went off and running. The trail is so hilly!!! I was really struggling during some parts. I basically would run for 6 minutes and then walk for 90 seconds. I finished in 48 minutes and 11 seconds. I was so mad that it wasn't under 45!!! I have been doing 3 miles in 42 minutes for a few weeks now, but I've been doing it on mostly flat surfaces. Those hills killed me!!!

I hope my time will be a lot better for the next run. My body is paying me back for it today too. I am so sore!!! My legs are killing me. Every time I sit or stand up I want to cry!!! I cannot believe how sore I am. I iced last night and have been taking advil round the clock!! I'm going to have to beg my trainer tonight to focus on arms and not legs! Ugh I will cry if she makes me do legs tonight! lol.

I am happy to have done the 5K. It was really good practice for the 5K I'm doing on May 21st. Hopefully this will help me improve my times!