Reevaluating

Yesterday I did the 5K Run for Roses, and that marked the end of the Beginner Women Runners group. A couple people in my pace group and I decided to keep meeting on Saturday mornings to run together, and I'm glad for it. I've really enjoyed them and the group as a whole.

The 5K was good. My mom came to cheer me on and I was surprised to see her handing out water in the Brookside Gardens portion. I figured she parked there, saw the water stop and thought, "May as well hand out some water." (She said that's exactly what happened.) It meant a lot that she came, and it gave me the impetus to continue and finish the damn thing. My time wasn't great, but my feet started hurting in the middle, and I finished regardless.

I started re-evaluating my running goals while going the 3.1 miles. I decided against the Disney Princess 1/2 Marathon in February because I don't want to push my body faster than it wants to go and injure myself. I was considering doing the MCRRC 10K program in the fall, but I think I'm going to do the coed 5K one and work on getting really comfortable with that distance. I've got 2 5Ks in the fall anyway - the Color Run in September and the Run for Your Lives in October. The fall 5K program ends with a race on November 4. Once I'm done with that, I'll work on other distances and go from there. Maybe work up to a half marathon in fall 2013. The ultimate goal is the Honolulu Marathon at the end of 2014 for my 30th birthday. I have 2.5 years to get there - no need to rush it right now. Granted, it makes the web address of my blog a little obsolete since I have no current plans to run with Mickey, but what are you going to do?

My weight loss efforts are paying off. I'd be irritated if I did all this and saw nothing. I'm still frustrated with the scale, but I got a tech shirt at the Run for Roses in a size smaller than I usually wear, figuring it will fit sometime soon, and found to my surprise that it actually fits rather well now! Then I dug around in my closet for my old jeans in a size smaller, and those fit too! I can sit down and everything! 3 people in a 24 hour period told me I've lost a lot of weight, and my grandmother added to that today. So, even though I've only lost 7 lbs since I started, the inches are definitely going away. Thank you, running and BodyPump! And Weight Watchers. The thing that bothers me about WW is it's so focused on the scale, but I knew I needed to tackle the food as well as the exercise. I was up a pound this week, but that's most likely because I weigh in on Friday mornings and our pace group dinner was Thursday night at Mamma Lucia. I'd saved something like 30 of my points for that dinner and though I was within my daily and weekly limit, there just wasn't time for it to digest. As long as the numbers generally keep going in the right direction, I'm OK with that.