Hey all my fit friends. I hope you are enjoying what is turning out to be an phenomenal Summer!
I do hope all of you partaking in the Clean Eating June Challenge are hanging in there. The month is, thankfully, almost over and I must say I am pretty excited about the thought of cracking open a cold beer on my roof to end the day. For the most part, however, this hasn’t been the hardest challenge for me. I do find that I have cravings, specifically for chocolate and beer, but that’s not really a new phenomenon for me. I feel like I have more energy and am eating a substantial amount of food yet still losing a couple of pounds.
Omitting flour has been one of the best things for me and though I have been making googly eyes at the baguettes at the market, I do think I will cut out the flour for the remainder of the summer. I do often feel puffy and weighed down afterwards and who likes feeling like that?
I did allow myself some cheat days this month and I have already had 3, more than I planned, but such is life.
My first cheat day was the day before the New Paltz Half Marathon. For those of you who know me outside this blog, you know that I try to get out of the city as much as possible. Having lived here for 10 years, I do feel like it is one of the most remarkable places in the world, but it can get tough to be here without a nature break. The hubby and I go to the Hudson Valley, an hour and a half away from the city, at least once a month and feel well fed and so rejuvenated when we return. I was so excited last year when I found out they had a half marathon on the very trail that I do my marathon training runs. The half last year as wonderful and I PR’d! This yeah I planned to do the same but also to not think too much on time and enjoy just running in nature, enjoying the Sunday with the wonderful volunteers and small group of runners.
So the Saturday before, I prepared for the run very differently than I usually did. I enjoyed delicious beers, cheese, fresh baked goods. Normally I avoid such things as they weigh me down, but I viewed this run as a vacation run. I had to go to work right after the race, so I was going to enjoy my Saturday and it didn’t affect my race.
I was maybe a little to relaxed for this race and was almost late as I flew out of bed 20 mins before start time. I’m also early as I hardly ever sleep before a race. Race anxiety gone forever? I hope so.
The course was the same as last year, taking you through historic Hugenot Street before turning onto the Walkill Rail Trail for six more miles before looping back around. With beautiful views of the mountain, horses and streams, I’d be hard pressed to find one person that found this race boring. At mile 6 I hung behind a young man who had an awesome 9 min mile pace. We stayed together until mile 11 when he started losing speed but I thanked him for being an awesome pacer and to keep it up. I had dreams of a 1:45 time but that wasn’t in the cards for the day. I do, however, have a new PR of 1:53:24 and so proud of it. I did not really train properly for this half because of the wedding/honeymoon/job change/other excuses. My weekly milage was around 15. I knew I could have done a better time if I trained, but instead of doing the normal beating myself up, I proudly displayed my medal and shirt at work two hours after and can’t wait to do the race again.
It isn’t so common that we have the best race or the best diet. Being healthy is a balance of setting goals, crushing them but also having fun and accepting that, “better luck next time” is not defeat. It is striving to make yourself better. Even with me not going by the sort of “rule book” that is outlined for a half marathon, I did it and crushed it. Did I achieve my goal? No, but I sure had a damn good time doing it. And yeah, I got you next time. I’m coming for ya 1:45!!!
I run, I asana, I repeat 