In which Bonster returns and joins a gym

Hey everyone, I'm back!!
I know you all missed me right? Okay probably not. But I got sick of not working out and blogging helps me keep on task so here I am :) It's been four months since last I blogged, and it's pretty much been four months since I worked out (I know...awful right?). Well, that's not entirely true, I went for a little jog or took my dog for short walks here and there, but nothing too regular or strenuous. I just got so immersed in schoolwork that the time was flying by and I lost track of my fitness goals. BUT, worry not, I haven't given up. On the day after Thanksgiving my brother told me that the gym he goes to was having a great deal, so I joined!! I have only ever been to a gym once in my life and I just did the cycle with my friend so we could watch the CMAs (which was super fun) but I was still a little scared to join the gym. But I decided to do it anyways, and so far I love it!! It's great because when I'm at home and I try to work out I always know that right in the next room there's a fridge full of food, and right upstairs is my lovely bed. The gym, however, is full of equipment and people working out and no food or beds or temptations to quit. It's so much easier to be in the work-out zone when I'm there, especially when I work out with my brother! He usually works out for an hour or two pretty much every day, so when I go with him I definitely have to pace myself and not go too hard to quickly. Or if I'm feeling lazy I just take a separate car so I can leave after 30-45 minutes. Either way I kinda feel super awesome when I go. Granted pretty much everybody at the gym is running laps around me, but if I stick with it then six months from now I'll be right up there with them!
So far I've only worked out there three times (but I only joined last Friday so it's acceptable :). The first time I did an hour with my brother, we started with the Elliptical. We went 20 minutes and I thought, hey this was a nice work out, my heart rate is up, I'm sweating, looks like I can go home right? Wrong! Apparently it was just a warm up. So then we spent 20 minutes stretching, and then we lifted weights and did lunges and those platform-stepper things and I finished on the bike while he ran on the treadmill. Then I had a really hard time walking up the stairs for the next two days. Then we went again on Tuesday night, and did pretty much the same things but with a little less stretching and a little more lifting, and he worked out for about an hour longer than I did. Then today we went again and he tried to teach me how to play racquetball, which I pretty much fail at, but it was still fun and a great work out! My face hasn't been this red in a long time!!
So that's about it, I'm pretty stoked to belong to a gym and I'm ready to get back on the working-out bandwagon. Also, in honor of my new gym membership, I bought work out pants. From Wal-Mart. For 9 bucks. And I LOVE THEM. They are so light and comfy :) I think I will wear them every day from now on.
That is all. :)

On Being Home, Family, and Push-Ups :)

Hey guess what? I'm back!! I spent an awesome month in Idaho with my brother and his family and even though it was super amazing and I'm going to miss them all terribly, I was pretty happy to be home. I missed my family and friends like crazy!! And now I have about a month left of Summer vacation before I start my senior year in college!! So crazy. Anywho, I will spend a lot of this month working and saving up money for school, but I also want to spend it working hard to get in shape and improve my running! Which brings me to some awesomeness:
1. Remember the healthy-habits competition in my last post? (If not, see last post :). Well we didn't end up tabulating points or anything, but I'm pretty sure if we did my sister-in-law would have beat me by a long-shot :) But it did give me the incentive to watch what I ate and stay active while I was up there, and I actually ended up losing a couple pounds which was a cool bonus. We were keeping track of points for the first couple weeks but then things got a little crazy with the new baby and all that jazz so we sorta slacked off on that. But we all decided that we would try again in August, even though I'll be back home. I'm not sure if they're actually planning on doing it, but I'm going to try and do it on my own in any case :)
2. So apparently whilst I was gone, the rest of my family decided it would be cool to be healthy too, so when I got home everyone was in health mode! My mom and some of my brothers have been working hard to eat healthy and exercise and have been losing weight and getting fit! Another of my brothers who lives out-of-state has been working on getting in shape with his wife and they have both been doing awesome! She has been running and he has been taking a Krav Maga class (Israeli self-defense, so awesome!). He was already a black-belt in Tae-Kwon-Do, so now he knows about a bagillion ways to kick butt :). So it's pretty awesome that everyone in my family wants to be healthy because it makes it so much easier to stay on track when everyone else is working towards the same goals!
3. I did 50 push-ups this morning!! The aforementioned brother who kicks butt is visiting with his family, and this morning he asked me if I wanted to do sit-ups and push-ups for an hour. At first I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't, so I thought, aw heck why not? (It should be noted that currently my muscles are screaming a very good reason why not, but I didn't think of that till later). So we turned on a Harry Potter movie and warmed up with 20 Hindu squats, and then alternated sets of 10 sit-ups and 10 push-ups. I decided to do knee push-ups (otherwise known as the "girly" kind, but hey, I'm a girl :), but he did the real kind. I didn't keep track of how many sit-ups I did, but it was somewhere in the 50-60 range, and then my push-ups total was 50. I was pretty impressed with myself because I have zero upper body strength, but as you would expect my brother creamed me and did 100 push-ups. Because he is crazy awesome like that. After we finished I felt like Jell-o, but he felt like it was time to lift weights and have a boxing lesson. Both of which we did. So now I feel like oober-Jell-o, but at least I know how to punch someone in the face correctly, and I can feel all the pride of accomplishment of having done more push-ups and sit-ups than I have done in a very looooong time. :)
My goal for this coming month is to keep working out every day and get back into running. I also will probably throw some pilates in there because I recently remembered that I love it.
In other news, I discovered the truth of this statement this morning around push-up number 27:

Yay for Pinterest. And push-ups :)

Idaho!

Guess what?? My brother and his wife (who live in Idaho) had a BABY last week!! And guess what else? I came up to stay with them for a month so I got to meet him! And guess what? He is so cute!! I'm so excited to be up here not only to meet him but to get to hang out with my brother and play with my niece and nephews! It's great!! And as a bonus I get to spend some time in my much beloved Idaho (the state of my birth!) Anywho I'm super excited. And since this is a running blog, I guess I should talk about something fitness-related, so here goes:
Upon my arrival at the home of said brother and family, I found out that he and his wife decided to have a healthy-habits competition in which each of them set 4 goals, (3of them fitness related and 1 spiritual one), and they get a point for each one they accomplish everyday, and then they will weigh themselves at the beginning and at the end of a month, and I'm not sure how they'll calculate pounds and points or whatever, but it sounded great so I decided to join in! My daily goals are as follows:


1. Exercise for 30 minutes 
2. Eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables
3. No eating anything after 7pm (this is an especially tough one for me!)
4. Read scriptures 15 minutes per day.

Mostly this is what I've been trying to do for a while, I'm just stepping it up a notch! So far it has been going well (for the whole two days I've been doing it :). Yesterday around 10:15pm I realized I hadn't done my exercising or my scripture reading so I combined them and did squats and sit-ups and push-ups while I read my scriptures. It probably would have been pretty comical to witness but luckily everyone else in the house was asleep :) Today I did a little better and got my exercise out of the way before dinner. I cycled on bike machine for 20 minutes and then did a couple laps around my brother's property which is built on a slant so there's a lovely hill to run up, which almost kicked my butt. But worry not, I defeated it in the end :)

Weird

So for pretty much my whole life I have hated running. It's too hard, it hurts, and it is just not fun. But guess what? I've gotten to the point where I absolutely LOVE IT!! Which is weird for me. Don't get me wrong, it's still too hard, it still hurts, and most of the time it makes me feel like I have to throw up, but somehow it still feels amazing. This is the first time in my life when I have somewhat-consistently gone running on a regular basis for a couple of months, and it makes me so happy that I can actually make myself get out there and crank out a mile or two anytime I want to! I never thought I would be a runner, and really I will never run marathons or anything like that, and I'm definitely not where I want to be yet, but it still just feels amazing to be able to do the little bit that I can do now.   :)

Personal Best

When I woke up this morning I decided I was going to break some kind of personal record. My record for distance is two miles and my record for fastest mile is 12:38. I wasn't feeling up to running more than two miles so I decided to go my fastest mile. So I hopped on the treadmill and started to run like crazy. I had to slow it down a couple times because my heart started to freak out and my lungs decided they needed a mini vacation, but mostly I was going over five miles an hour, and for part of it I was even up to 6 and 7 miles an hour, which is pretty great for me because I usually stick to about 4.5 or less. I wanted to quit around .7 miles but then I said, hey self, are you crazy? You are almost there. So I kept going till the end, and my finish time was 11:53!!! Which is officially the fastest I have ever run a mile in the entirety of my life, which is pretty thrilling. Of course it's hard to find it thrilling at the moment because I am shaking and I feel like I need to throw up, but in a few minutes, I will probably do a victory dance! Or maybe just go watch some victory television :)

Anniversary

Today I realized that one week ago was the three-month anniversary of me beginning to run (except let's be honest, I sort of skipped a month in the middle). I also realized that after all this time I'm still only doing a mile every time I run. What is that about? It's not that I can't run more, it's mostly that I get bored after a mile and I quit, which is lame. So this morning I decided to go two miles, and I did! I think I could have gone even farther if I hadn't started sprinting around 1.5 miles, but it's fun to sprint so I did it anyways, and now my face looks like a tomato :) My next goal is to be up to 3 miles by next Saturday, which will be as far as I've ever run at once in my entire life, so that will be fun. Then I'll try and work up to 4 miles by next month. :) !
In other news, here is my favorite Pinterest meme of the day:

So true!

Stairs

I was going to run this morning, but I slept in and then it was hot outside and I just wasn't feelin' it. So instead I decided to jog up and down my stairs, which I did about 20 times, and then my legs felt a little jelly-like, so it worked pretty well. It was actually good because I always run/walk on flat surfaces so my up and down muscles don't get a lot of work, so this probably helpful. In total I did 301 steps up and 301 steps down, so that was fun. Annnd that's all, hopefully I will work up enough motivation to go running in the morning :)
P.S. Remember how I started back up with running again last week? (If not see previous post). I went running twice and swimming once and I also watched what I ate, and I dropped three pounds in a week! Why didn't I think of this whole running thing ten years ago? I would be doing marathons by now :)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good: I finally got my butt out of bed early and went running this morning! And surprisingly it felt amazing. I ran about a mile and then walked a quarter of a mile, and I thought it would be completely miserable, and while it did pretty much wipe me out, it also felt really good to run again! Which for me is pretty much unheard of, so that was cool.

The Bad: Unfortunately I haven't been good about running for the past few weeks, so I pretty much lost everything I had gained. A month ago I could have cranked out a mile no problem, but this one pretty much killed me. Note to self (and all of you): JUST KEEP RUNNING! If you do even a little bit everyday, you'll keep working those running muscles, so it won't hurt as much to run as it would if you stopped for weeks like I did :)

The Ugly: Remember when we talked about how if you look good after your work-out then you didn't work hard enough? Let's just say I was definitely working hard :)

And now? TO BREAKFAST!! :)

Summer Goals

Okay, so in the midst of finishing all my classes I sorta failed at the whole running thing. Kind of a lot. But worry not my friends, I'm definitely not quitting!! I finally finished all my classes and summer is here so no I can focus on my running and whatnot. My goal for the summer is to run or swim or do some kind of work out activity pretty much everyday. Starting tomorrow :) Unless you count mini-golf as a work out, in which case I started today, hehe. I also want to start eating much healthier, which definitely has to start tomorrow because my dinner at In-N-Out was definitely not healthy (but it's just oh-so-tasty!!). So that's the plan, I'll let you know how it works out! :)

I'm back!!

Hello all, it's been a while. I had spring break two weeks ago and I took the "break" part a little too literally, because I took a break from ALL THE THINGS. Including running :( It wasn't on purpose, I just was lame and didn't do it. And then the week after that I didn't do it either. Because I couldn't work up the motivation. But don't worry I'm not quitting! Luckily I have SkipperJovi and CowboyChaser's blog posts about running to inspire me because I read them and I decided to get back on the horse. So yesterday I got up early before clinical and ran a mile! It wasn't very long but it was at least something. And I ran it like a boss.

Here is my pinterest picture of the day. Someday I will have a six pack from running, but til then:

Bahahaha. Awesome.

Speedy Gonzales

Guess what? I just did my fastest mile EVER in my entire life! Okay it was 12:38 which isn't that fast for all you speedy-like people, but I have been running 14-15 minute miles, and so for me this was super fast. And now I sorta need to throw up...but so worth it. Sorry for the TMI :)

That is all.

Reflection/Update

Hi everyone, I know it's been a while since I blogged but I promise I have still been running I just have been busy with school and sorta forgot I had a blog for a while, but now I'm back!

This week I ran 3 times (only a mile each time, I was being lazy), and went on 2 walks with my dad and rode my bike once. I was also going to do weight lifting this week but I got distracted by a videogame and forgot about it, so I will try for this week :) I also want to get back up to two mile runs this week, and hopefully get up to three miles within the next couple weeks.

Hey guess what everyone, I've been at this whole running thing for a whole month and I haven't quit yet! It's very exciting because I don't think I've ever stuck with a work out program or anything for longer than two weeks (except for when I did Tae-Kwon-Do as a kid but that was forever ago), and guess what else, I love it! I always hated running because it kills me and I've never been good at it. For instance the first time I went running in February I could only go half a mile and I almost died. But now I can run two whole miles! And I still feel a little like I'm going to die when I do it, but that's okay because I can do TWO miles. I never thought I'd even be able to run a mile straight in my life, but now I've decided I'm going to be able to do six. So that will be fun.

I wish I had started this whole running thing years ago because it's super good for me (who knew right?). Before I started running my heart kept freaking out and I'd get winded just walking up the stairs. But now my heart practically never freaks out and I can climb those stairs like a boss. As an added bonus I've lost around 6 pounds, yay!

So that is why I'm so happy that my awesome friend CowboyChaser got me to start running and keeps me motivated with her awesomeness :)

In other news, here is my pinterest picture of the day:

I need this shirt so I remember this next time I think I'm about to die while I'm running :)

Getting Healthy

Today I decided that in addition to exercise I need to start stepping it up in the healthy eating department. I went online to find a food tracker so I could keep track of what I was eating and how many calories I'm taking in and whatnot, and I found this website: http://www.everydayhealth.com/, and basically I love it. It is really easy to use, it lets me keep track of what I'm eating, and how many calories I'm burning and let's me know how I'm doing on my fitness goals, and it has lots of great tips on how to build a more healthy lifestyle! It's pretty great, and it's certified by HON so it's legit.

In other news, today I ran a mile and then I got my parents to walk for a mile with me around our neighborhood and it is GORGEOUS outside!!

That is all :)

Personal Record

So remember how I was going to exercise every day this week? Well that sorta flopped, so today I decided I was going to run two miles to make up for it. And guess what? I DID IT!!!!!! It took me 29 minutes and 54 seconds so it was slow, but I did it at a pretty steady pace and even sprinted the very end because my body wanted to quit around 1.8 miles and I had a mini-epic battle between my body and my brain, and luckily my brain won because no WAY was I gonna quit when I was that close, so I sped up to get there faster :)

I still can't really believe I just did that because that is officially the farthest I have ever run in my entire life. For reals.

Fittingly, the song that came on my ipod right after I finished was Feelin' Good by Muse. So perfect. And now I feel like doing a victory dance, but I can't because my body has become jello.

So even though I can't move, this is what I'm doing on the inside:

:)

Intervals

Okay, I know I said slow and steady wins the race, but slow and steady is also sometimes boring. Sometimes I like to sprint and then slow jog and then sprint and then slow jog etc., which I did today, and it was fun, because I like to sprint. However by knees do not like it when I sprint but that is another story. Anywho, today I did 1.25 miles with intervals and then another mile on my airdyne bike to cool off. And that is how I traveled 2.25 miles without moving more than 4 feet so that was cool.

In other news, my goal for this week is to work out every day. I might not run every day, but I'll do that at least 3 or 4 days and the other days I will ride my bike or walk or do jumping jacks or something. But I just think that when I don't work out one day it's too easy not to the next day, so I'm going to try to do at least a little bit every day. I'll let you know how that goes in a week :)

In conclusion, this is my favorite thing from Pinterest of the day:

Good thing I always look awful after I work out eh? :)

Jelly Legs

Today I decided I wanted to do some uphill work, because as I have mentioned before, my body has no uphill muscles. So I did a half a mile on my treadmill with just regular jogging, and then I ran up and down my staircase 10 times. My staircase has 16 steps and so with 10 times up and down I ran 160 steps up and 160 down. Now my legs feel like jelly.

That is all. :)

MILE...for reals this time!

It turns out the tortoise was right, who knew?

Today I decided I was going to do a whole mile without stopping or slowing down. I figured out that one of my problems is treadmills are boring, so I try to run fast to get it over with and then I get worn out really quickly. So this time I decided to run slower and keep the same pace the whole time. I also decided that I would listen to Adele to make the treadmill less boring. And it worked!! I didn't feel like I was going to fall over and die or anything. In fact I felt so good that I did a mile on my bike after I was done running. And since I wasn't going too fast my breathing was pretty steady so I could mouth along the words to Set Fire To the Rain instead of gasping for breath, which is always a plus:)

Anywho, now I have to go write a paper. Bye!

P.S. SkipperJovi was right, running does make you energized! I thought I would need a nap or something after my run but really I just feel like doing all of my homework and my laundry and cleaning my house! Okay maybe I'll just stick to the homework for now, but still :) Thanks for the tip Jovi!

Slacking is lame

Okay so the last couple days I have been a slacker with my running. Which is silly because it is way too soon in my running journey to be slacking. But if it makes you feel any better, I did work out, I just didn't run. My work out consisted of about 25 sit-ups, 10 push-ups, a bunch of squats and lunges, and other stuff like that. It really wasn't that much but it left me crazy sore because I never use those muscles :P

Anywho, it was nice to work some muscles, but I still was being lame by not running. In my defence I had a LOT of homework ;) So I promise to repent and run real good tomorrow :) I also will maybe try jogging uphill, to work my uphill muscles which are currently much dilapidated.

That is all.

Peace out. :)

Zapatos

Finding comfy athletic shoes has been kind of a problem for me over the course of my lifetime. I have no arches in my feet and so I need shoes with arches. Unfortunately I hate shoes that have arches, which is kind of a problem for me. Then one day, very recently, I found these:

And I thought, hey, those look cool, so I tried them on. It was kind of like trying on clouds. And they were on sale for 20 bucks!! So I bought them, and they are wonderful. They are very comfy and light weight, and when I wear them I just want to bounce around in them. Also, as an added bonus, they don't give me shin splints when I run. Woo!

In short, I love them. They are not for distance running, and they probably won't last for a super long time, but for the level I am at right now, they are perfect.

That is all. :)

Mile...almost

Guess who just ran an (almost) mile! Me!! Okay I can't count is as running a whole mile because I had to slow down and walk for about a tenth of a mile in the middle, but other than that I ran the whole way, (assuming you use my friend CowboyChaser's definition of running as going faster than walking, and since I agree wholeheartedly with this definition, I'm going to count what I just did as running :).

I was planning on running 3/4 of a mile today, but when I got up to around .7 miles (thank heaven for the distance tracker on treadmills, it makes it easier on my weird math brain), I remembered that CowboyChaser challenged me to a mile today, and I decided to do it, so I did it. Yay! It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It hurt at first because I was sore but after a while it was like whatever. :) Actually my heart started to freak out a little bit around 8.5 miles, but I just slowed down a little (but still jogging) and kept going till I finished. It was pretty fun.

In other news, I love pinterest, because it shows me things like this to make me feel better about myself:

Sore

So it turns out, it's cool to be sore. Because when you are sore that means you did something to make you sore, which means you are building your muscles, which is cool. My logic is undeniable yes? Okay now hold that thought:

On Saturday, my friend had a birthday party. And she had this most fabulous idea to have her party at a playground, so we could be 12 for a day. Thus, at about 3:30 on Saturday afternoon I found myself running around a jungle gym being chased around by kids between the ages of 6 and 21. After about an hour and a half of running around, climbing things, swinging, jumping, and engaging in all manner of frolicking and frivolity, I was pretty much tuckered out. And two days later my muscles still ache, which is awesome, because as we have just established, being sore is cool. Overall it was pretty much the coolest idea for a birthday party ever, because not only was it super fun, but it was a great work out. I should definitely run around a playground more often.

On a separate and completely unrelated note: it is a very bad idea to try to go running uphill at night right after you go to a movie during which you drank a bunch of sprite. It doesn't work out too well. Just so you know :) My advice: run before the movie and skip the sprite.

So this one time...

...I thought to myself, hey self, it would be cool if you could run 6 miles straight. About four years later I thought, hey why not? So I started to run. That was two days ago. So far so good. And then my friends said hey, you should blog about running so that you have to do it because everyone will know you are running, so I thought, hey why not. And that is the story of how I come to be on this blog.

The end. Well not really.

I pretty much have always hated running, and I think the most I have ever run in my life at one time was a mile, and that was a long time ago. So why did I make this goal of running 6 miles? I have no idea. But I did, so I'm gonna do it, because quitting is lame.

So far, since I started running, I have run twice. Keep in mind I only started two days ago so it's not all that surprising that I've only gone twice. The first time I decided I'd try half a mile. I went half a mile at 5mph on my treadmill, and I almost died, but I did it. That might seem like a tiny bit of running to you, and it wasn't very fast, but for me it was a whopper, so I am impressed with myself.

Today I went again, but I decided I could go further if I alternated between walking, jogging, and running. So I started out with a tenth of a mile walking (at 3mph), then another tenth of a mile jogging (5mph), and everything was going great, so I decided to do another tenth of a mile running (at 7mph), and I almost fell over, and my heart freaked out a little bit, so after that I stuck to walking and jogging. Hence, after 15 minutes I had done .4 miles walking, .5 miles jogging and .1 mile running. Added up that equals a MILE. That's right, a mile. BAM.

Okay so it wasn't that impressive but I'm working on it :)

In conclusion, this picture pretty much sums up my life:

:)