Many people like to live life in a safe little box. They go through life doing the same things everyday, never making many changes or taking on new challenges. They are comfortable, and they are scared to take a step outside of that zone. Why? I'm guessing its fear. Fear is such a huge driver in our life. It is the reason you didn't set a goal higher than you though you could achieve. It was the reason you didn't apply for that job you were slightly unqualified for. It may have been the reason you didn't make a new friend. It is fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of embarrassment. Why should we live life in fear? And possibly miss out on experiences or opportunities? We shouldn't. It is so hard to step out of your comfort zone. I know that. I am definitely guilty of staying in my "comfort zone" in lots of situations. A new goal of mine is to step outside of that box a little more often. And I'm going to challenge you to do the same. You don't have to go crazy. Just set a new goal, that you know you will have to work your ass of to reach, or apply for your dream job, or maybe just approach a new person, lift a heavier weight, maybe even just trying a new food. You get the point. Whats the worse that could happen? You may not meet that goal, or you may not get that job. And then you will pick yourself up, and you will try again next time. You will realize you are stronger than you think you are, and you will gain self esteem. I am terrified about marathon training. I am terrified I won't meet my goal. I'm still going to do it though, and I'm still going to give it my all. And as much as I don't want to tell you my time goal because I am afraid of failure, I am going to. Why? Because it will push me harder. So here it is, my goal is to run my FIRST marathon, and to run it in sub 3:35 and qualify for Boston. And if for some reason I don't get it, I'm going to try again.
I'm going to share instances of stepping out of the box on a regular basis, and hold myself accountable to doing it. Are you going to join me?
Do you feel like you step out of your comfort zone on a regular basis? Will you join me in making an effort to do it if you don't already? What will be your first small goal?
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Early To Rise
I love getting up early in the morning. Its not always easy to get out of bed, but I love having that time to myself in the morning. Take this morning for example, I got up at 5am naturally with no alarm. I made myself a little breakfast, had a small coffee, and watched the news while messing around on the computer. I then headed out for at 5:50am for a 7.5 mile run. I got back just about exactly an hour later, and Shawn and Cori had just gotten up. By 10am I had cooked breakfast, washed dishes, showered, swept, vacuumed, and got all the general house cleaning done that I wanted to for the day. I just love having everything done and knowing I have the rest of the day to enjoy. Especially since we haven't seen the sun in a while and its finally back today!
Do you like to get up early and get your workouts done or do you wait until later in the day?
Once I start marathon training in a week and a half I will have no choice but to rise early to beat the heat and get in my runs before Shawn goes to work for the day! When I try to wait until the evening I find that I have no energy, so I always try to get it done early.
As promised, a recipe for the week. I made cookies with Devin yesterday because it was yet another rainy day and we needed things to do. We'd already done a foot soak and scrub and painted our toes, read books, and so on to baking we went. She has a new love for honey, so we decided on Honey Banana Oatmeal Cookies. They came out pretty good!
Honey Banana Oatmeal Cookies
1/3 cup of honey
1 banana, mashed
1 egg
1 1/4 cup of oats
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbs cocoa powder (optional)
Mix all of the wet ingredients, mix the dry ingredients separately and than add them to the wet. Put 'em on a cookie sheet and bake them at 350 degrees. I think the time was like 10-12 minutes, I could be wrong so check them often! Enjoy!
Do you use honey? What is your favorite thing to do with it?
Hope you are all having a great weekend!
Do you like to get up early and get your workouts done or do you wait until later in the day?
Once I start marathon training in a week and a half I will have no choice but to rise early to beat the heat and get in my runs before Shawn goes to work for the day! When I try to wait until the evening I find that I have no energy, so I always try to get it done early.
As promised, a recipe for the week. I made cookies with Devin yesterday because it was yet another rainy day and we needed things to do. We'd already done a foot soak and scrub and painted our toes, read books, and so on to baking we went. She has a new love for honey, so we decided on Honey Banana Oatmeal Cookies. They came out pretty good!
Honey Banana Oatmeal Cookies
1/3 cup of honey
1 banana, mashed
1 egg
1 1/4 cup of oats
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbs cocoa powder (optional)
Mix all of the wet ingredients, mix the dry ingredients separately and than add them to the wet. Put 'em on a cookie sheet and bake them at 350 degrees. I think the time was like 10-12 minutes, I could be wrong so check them often! Enjoy!
Do you use honey? What is your favorite thing to do with it?
Hope you are all having a great weekend!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Weekend fun + Switching it up a bit
So I talked about my upcoming birthday weekend in my last post, and it did not disappoint. I had an awesome time hanging with family at my cousins grad party and tons of fun camping with friends and relaxing on the river. And it really was relaxing. I didn't work out all weekend, and I got to lounge in a chair(I may or may not have had two little girls climbing on me while I was relaxing :) ) most of Saturday and Sunday while the kids played in the sand and splashed in the water. It was perfect. I wish we could have stayed more than just one night!
I want to switch the focus of my blog just a little bit. Of course I'm still going to blog about my journey to my first marathon, that's the whole reason I started my blog. I'm also going to start to incorporate at least two new workouts and two new recipes a week, in hopes that you will try them out yourself. I'd also love it if you would e-mail me any questions you would like for me to address in my blog posts.(Erin's E-Mail) I'm full of great fitness and healthy eating tips and I'd love to share more with YOU!
The first workout is actually going to be a series of a few short workouts. Some day's you just aren't going to have one big block of time to work out. That is O.K.! You can still fit in in, and something is better than nothing, right? This is what happened to me yesterday, and so I just did a few spurts of exercise throughout the day.
First I got up early while everyone else was sleeping and ran 4.5 miles.
Then I did 10 minutes of burpees, with a goal of reaching 100. I got to 126. Try it out, its only 10 minutes of your time!
And Next I did 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 of Overhead squats with a 25lb bar, decline push-ups with the stability ball, and jumping lunges w/ the 25lb bar (the last set of jumping lunges was 10 instead of 1).
Lastly, each time I walked by the pull-up bar in the afternoon I'd do 5 semi-assisted pull ups and 10 hanging knee raises. This was about 6x.
None of those workouts took much time, and I felt like I had gotten a great workout by the end of the day. There are tons of short workouts you can fit in during down time during the day. Try jumping lunges, jump squats, do a few push-ups, etc.
Next post I'll add in a recipe, for now I need to go make my little princess a yogurt parfait. :)
Hope you are all having a great week! Don't forget to send me any questions you answered!
I want to switch the focus of my blog just a little bit. Of course I'm still going to blog about my journey to my first marathon, that's the whole reason I started my blog. I'm also going to start to incorporate at least two new workouts and two new recipes a week, in hopes that you will try them out yourself. I'd also love it if you would e-mail me any questions you would like for me to address in my blog posts.(Erin's E-Mail) I'm full of great fitness and healthy eating tips and I'd love to share more with YOU!
The first workout is actually going to be a series of a few short workouts. Some day's you just aren't going to have one big block of time to work out. That is O.K.! You can still fit in in, and something is better than nothing, right? This is what happened to me yesterday, and so I just did a few spurts of exercise throughout the day.
First I got up early while everyone else was sleeping and ran 4.5 miles.
Then I did 10 minutes of burpees, with a goal of reaching 100. I got to 126. Try it out, its only 10 minutes of your time!
And Next I did 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 of Overhead squats with a 25lb bar, decline push-ups with the stability ball, and jumping lunges w/ the 25lb bar (the last set of jumping lunges was 10 instead of 1).
Lastly, each time I walked by the pull-up bar in the afternoon I'd do 5 semi-assisted pull ups and 10 hanging knee raises. This was about 6x.
None of those workouts took much time, and I felt like I had gotten a great workout by the end of the day. There are tons of short workouts you can fit in during down time during the day. Try jumping lunges, jump squats, do a few push-ups, etc.
Next post I'll add in a recipe, for now I need to go make my little princess a yogurt parfait. :)
Hope you are all having a great week! Don't forget to send me any questions you answered!
Friday, June 17, 2011
I'm a slacker.
Yes, I've been slacking at blogging. I've mostly been keeping up with reading, but as far as commenting and posting my own--not so much. I'm going to make a valiant effort from now on to post 2x a week. I'll admit its tougher these days because we have been spending all of our time outside!
I've been keeping my miles under 20/per week, with one longish run (7-8miles) to keep my base. I have my marathon training plan in hand and I am super excited to start. I'll be training for 12 weeks and I'm starting my training the second week in July! I've increased my strength training a whole bunch over the last couple of weeks and tweaked my nutrition a bit so that I can hopefully add some muscle before I began marathon training. This is really important, as its likely I'll lose a bit of muscle during training. In order to lose as little as possible I'm going to keep one heavy lifting day in my routine during training and probably 1 or 2 lighter days. Oh and I'm going to just eat all. day. long. :)
So today is m birthday...YAY! And we have a fun weekend planned out. I started my birthday with a 4 mile run and I'm about to do a crossfit wod called "small"--I am modifying it a bit because I don't have a rower and I'm not going to have time to do the prescribed meters. So here is my modification:
400m run (should be 1000m row)
50 box jumps
50 burpees
400m run (Should be 800m run)
Repeat 3x
Yes more burpees! I swear they aren't involved in all of my workouts---I do love them though! :)
So now you're thinking I just think its fun to workout all day on my birthday, but this is not true. This afternoon we're headed to Boston for my cousins graduation party. She just graduated from the Police Academy! ROCKSTAR!!! I'm so proud of her and can't wait to go celebrate. And then we are headed camping with friends tomorrow night! I love camping and I'm looking forward to relaxing with a couple of Sam Summers :)
I'll try to add photos in my next post, but for some reason I'm having trouble with it lately! :(
Hope you all have a great weekend! Any fun weekend plans?
I've been keeping my miles under 20/per week, with one longish run (7-8miles) to keep my base. I have my marathon training plan in hand and I am super excited to start. I'll be training for 12 weeks and I'm starting my training the second week in July! I've increased my strength training a whole bunch over the last couple of weeks and tweaked my nutrition a bit so that I can hopefully add some muscle before I began marathon training. This is really important, as its likely I'll lose a bit of muscle during training. In order to lose as little as possible I'm going to keep one heavy lifting day in my routine during training and probably 1 or 2 lighter days. Oh and I'm going to just eat all. day. long. :)
So today is m birthday...YAY! And we have a fun weekend planned out. I started my birthday with a 4 mile run and I'm about to do a crossfit wod called "small"--I am modifying it a bit because I don't have a rower and I'm not going to have time to do the prescribed meters. So here is my modification:
400m run (should be 1000m row)
50 box jumps
50 burpees
400m run (Should be 800m run)
Repeat 3x
Yes more burpees! I swear they aren't involved in all of my workouts---I do love them though! :)
So now you're thinking I just think its fun to workout all day on my birthday, but this is not true. This afternoon we're headed to Boston for my cousins graduation party. She just graduated from the Police Academy! ROCKSTAR!!! I'm so proud of her and can't wait to go celebrate. And then we are headed camping with friends tomorrow night! I love camping and I'm looking forward to relaxing with a couple of Sam Summers :)
I'll try to add photos in my next post, but for some reason I'm having trouble with it lately! :(
Hope you all have a great weekend! Any fun weekend plans?
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Life without a training plan
It's sort of weird not having a training plan, after following one almost exactly for the past 8 weeks. I must admit I'm enjoying the freedom, and I am loving that I can increase my strength training/cross training without worrying I'm going to be too sore and jeopardize an important run. I have done some killer Crossfit style and Bodyrock workouts over the past week and a half, and it feels great! If you are looking for an amazing total body workout I recommend giving the 400 Rep Burpee workout from Bodyrock. It looks like this:
Repeat 4x:
Since the race I've only done short runs of 3-4 miles. Coach Tara suggested I keep my mileage under 20 miles for the next 3 weeks to allow my body to recover from half marathon training before I start full marathon training. I'm going to split that between a few short runs and a longer run of 7-8 miles to be sure I keep my base. I will be starting marathon training at the beginning of July. And I CANNOT wait to start marathon training. I love having a plan and a goal to work toward. Goals really keep me motivated.
Do you find it easier to keep to a workout plan when you set specific goals? What is your current goal?
I think goals are super important, they can keep you motivated and help you to keep pushing your limits.
Thank you all so much for your sweet comments, especially after my race. I love love love comments, so if you come by and read please don't forget to leave a comment and let me know!!! Thanks!
I was going to leave you with a few race photos, but for some reason I can't paste them in today, so I'll try again in my next post!
Have a great Tuesday!!!
What's your workout for today?
Repeat 4x:
- 1) One Leg Burpee, 5 reps on each leg
- 2) Burpee Knee Raises, 10 reps
- 3) Side Burpee Knee Tuck, 5 reps on each side
- 4) Burpee Step Up, 5 reps on each leg
- 5) Burpee Roll Over, 10 reps
- 6) Sumo Burpees, 10 reps
- 7) Burpee Pull Up, 10 reps
- 8) Half Burpee & Jump Over, 10 reps
- 9) 2x Jump Lunge & 2 Taping Push Ups, 10 reps
- 10) Frog Burpee, 10 reps
Since the race I've only done short runs of 3-4 miles. Coach Tara suggested I keep my mileage under 20 miles for the next 3 weeks to allow my body to recover from half marathon training before I start full marathon training. I'm going to split that between a few short runs and a longer run of 7-8 miles to be sure I keep my base. I will be starting marathon training at the beginning of July. And I CANNOT wait to start marathon training. I love having a plan and a goal to work toward. Goals really keep me motivated.
Do you find it easier to keep to a workout plan when you set specific goals? What is your current goal?
I think goals are super important, they can keep you motivated and help you to keep pushing your limits.
Thank you all so much for your sweet comments, especially after my race. I love love love comments, so if you come by and read please don't forget to leave a comment and let me know!!! Thanks!
I was going to leave you with a few race photos, but for some reason I can't paste them in today, so I'll try again in my next post!
Have a great Tuesday!!!
What's your workout for today?
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