oh hello!

Welcome to my fancy new blog! I assure you, this will in no way be interesting or entertaining. It's mostly a place where I can talk about my runs without boring the pants off of my friends/family and keep track of my workouts.

But just in case the cutesy little catchy title stolen (with love) from the soulful singer Adele piqued your interest, here's a little about what I'm doing.

I was always the type of person who would create really absurd "weight loss plans" for myself and I thought I was so smart and it was going to be GROUNDBREAKING and I would lose like 50 lbs in a week. I think we all know how these things end up. So enter now: 25, in a full time double master's program in Boston, and a bit of a chub. The truth is, this blog is getting a late start. Every Thanksgiving, my best friend (www.simmiecakes.com) does our local 5K with the cute little title: the Feaster Five. So every year she'd run the race, then I'd meet her out for breakfast...on Thanksgiving. Makes a lot of sense yes? This past fall, while I was tipping the scales at 185 lbs (I'm 5'8"), I told her in October I'm going to do the 5K with her. It's a fun run/walk, so I knew that there would be a lot of other walkers if I really couldn't run it.

I printed (actually wrote by hand since my printer was busted) the trusty old "Couch to 5K" plan (C25K as the cool people call it. At first I thought it was a plan to run a 25K and I was like oh HELL no). I followed it, sort of, until I was hit by the SWINE. Knocked me right off my ass for 2 weeks, the first 2 weeks of November. Enter sadface here. After I felt better the race was quickly approaching so I got in a few solid runs. Solid meaning running my first ever mile in 10 minutes. So I could do one mile...but 3.1 seemed impossible. I was excited and really nervous, but so curious to see what these 5Ks were all about. I ran it with my superstar track athlete friend, who stayed with me and motivated me the whole time, and finished in 37:41. An absolutely craptastic time for a 5K, but I felt amazing, alive, changed. I never looked back.

So here I am, about to do my second 5K this Saturday. My goal is 32 minutes (I did it in 31 minutes a few weeks ago on the treadmill). I was out of commission for two weeks when I got my very first running injury! It sucked but I felt wicked cool, naturally. It wasn't even anything major. My left foot swelled up for a week and a half and hurt like a mother. I went to the doc and got x-rays done, and there was nothing there. I asked him if I was being a giant baby, and he said it was probably a sprain and yes, I was a giant baby. AWESOME!

My foot stopped hurting literally 4 days ago, so I've been running like crazy to try to make up for the two weeks of lost time. I still did exercises where my feet were immobilized though, like the elliptical, bike, and lots of arms and ab work.

Oh I also lost 20 lbs, but honestly I'm not sure if I would've stuck with it if I didn't get brutally dumped by my boyfriend in January. I replaced my boyfriend with this new hobby, and now that the pain of the breakup is long gone, the running is now a habit. As we all know, running and cheeseburgers are not best friends, so I made a lot of changes to my diet too. I replaced ramen noodles and cheez-its with greek yogurt and zucchini. A lot of the weight that I packed on was also attributable to working at a not-so-good-for-you chain restaurant for 5 years. "Just one fry" every 10 minutes really adds up.

So there's the gist, the very long gist.

Today was a rest day (except for crunches and stretching) .I ran or cross trained the past 4 days. My last run is tomorrow. I'm thinking 2.5 miles or so. Friday I will rest again, and Saturday I will run 3.1 in 32 min or bust!