The scale giveth …

and the scale taketh away.

That’s a little bass-ackward, since last week I weighed less than I do this week, but in my little world “giving” means a loss and “taking away” means – um – a gain. Duh.

I’m not too upset, though. This has been a stressful week and I’m an emotional eater, so the food has not been exactly clean and pretty. If you’re thinking that I maybe, possibly, left South Beach by the wayside for a few days you’d be absolutely right.

I’m not sure how much I believe in the theory that’s been bandied about the internets for years now that weight-training might be responsible for a slight gain when you’re starting out. I’m happy to say that I lifted weights for 20 minutes on Monday and again yesterday. One more day and I’ll have the weekly hour done! Whether 40 minutes of hoisting dumbbells and barbells has anything to do with this week’s backward slide is debatable, considering the crazy stuff I ate this week.

Wouldn’t it be nice to do everything right at the same time?

Mindy wondered if I would share the pattern for the bag that’s up for grabs (if you’d like a chance to win, post a comment before midnight EST tonight). E-mail me at shrinkingknitter AT citynet DOT net and I’ll shoot a .pdf file off to you. Please don’t share it with others – it’s one of the few things I still sell on my woefully outdated website.

Today is the first tempo run of the new training schedule. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, just assume I died on the treadmill.

Better late than never

Today has been kind of wacky, timewise. And even though I woke up early, I still haven’t had time to do a quick post until now.

I had planned to lift weights and take a walk yesterday morning. I lifted weights, but got a call to be someplace a little earlier than I’d anticipated and had to ditch the walk. I feel very good about getting some weight training in, though, and gave myself a star for 20 minutes of effort.

Today I had to be cleaned up and ready to leave the house at 8:30 a.m. Kinda like you working people. The training schedule for today was an easy two-mile run, so I got it out of the way early (on the treadmill) and gave myself a star for that, as well.

As for knitting, I found a mostly finished bag over the weekend, finished the strap and felted it. On the left, before; on the right, after.

I need another bag like a need another 20 pounds – which is to say I don’t – so it’s up for grabs. If you’d like your very own blue-and-green wool bag, leave a comment before Thursday night at midnight, EST. I’ll assign numbers and pick one at random. Winner will be announced Friday, August 1.

In the beginning

Today is the first day of the rest of my life half-marathon training.

Well, it seems like the rest of my life. It was 90 degrees here in the Middle of Nowhere yesterday and it will very likely be in the 60s or colder when I toe the starting line in Richmond in November.

(As you distance racing veterans know, only the elites get to actually “toe” the starting line. The rest of us get to huddle up in corrals with the masses, several blocks behind the fastest runners. We sometimes don’t even notice the starting line when we eventually cross it.)

Nothing says “time passes” like the weather in the Middle of Nowhere.

As I mentioned last week, today’s schedule calls for a rest day. But you can also cross-train on rest days. I spent Saturday morning helping load eight truckloads of wood from our demolition project, which I thought was quite a good weightlifting workout. Lifting weights would be a good thing to do today, as well.

Here’s what’s left of our pool house:

One thing I’m going to have to pound into my pretty little head this time around is that I don’t have to start out at the suggested pace. It’s something to work toward. I’d like to finish in 2:30, but I don’t expect my first training run to even come close to a 12-minute mile. (Don’t laugh. I’m old. And slow.)

Finally, apropos of nothing at all, here’s a photo of my zinnia.

Yes, you read it correctly – ONE zinnia. I planted six packages of zinnia seeds the last week of May, watered them every day for a week and then had to go to Florida when my dad got sick. When I got back, all these cute little seedlings were sprouting, and I thought they were flowers. I figured out, eventually, they weren’t, but have been too lazy to pull them all out. Good thing, too, or I’d have missed the miracle! Heh.

Grrr.

GRRR #1
What is it with .pdf files that are so freaking huge they simply won’t download? Evah? There are ways, my pretties, to reduce the file size of photos so that the resultant .pdf will download in, literally, seconds!

GRRR #2
And while we’re at it, what is it with the Blogger/Mozilla combination that won’t let me update my Google Reader? I have to open Reader in Safari in order to manage my blog subscriptions.

GRRR #3
And this morning when I tried to leave a comment at Cranky Fitness, Blogger kept saying it was done when it was really just giving up. Goodness knows, I don’t need another cookbook, but the one they’re giving away looks so good. I’m a sucker for a good photo of chocolate cake. Heh.

Perhaps it all boils down to dial-up internet service. Having a broadband connection isn’t a good enough reason to leave the Middle of Nowhere.

But it’s close.

Perhaps all these ‘grrrs’ mean I’m leaving the blahs behind?

Let’s weigh in, shall we?

Somehow, despite a week of steroids, crazy (non-South Beach) eating and virtually no exercise, I managed to lose two pounds since my last weigh-in, whenever that was.

What’s up with that?

For the past week I’ve kind of eaten like how I imagine regular folks eat: a brownie here, a hamburger (with the bun) there. We even had buttered popcorn one night for an evening snack.

I’m not even going to try to analyze or explain it. It is what it is, and I’ll take it, thankyouverymuch.

Forgive me a tiny bit of analysis: I hesitate to give any credit to my new favorite beverage, but it does contain antioxidants that are purported to boost metabolism. I love, love, LOVE Lipton Diet Green Tea with Citrus. Tiny Kroger even has a store brand that’s just as tasty and a buck-fifty cheaper (per 12 bottles) than the Real Stuff. But since I was at Sam’s yesterday I picked up two cases of the Real Stuff, which ought to last us, oh, a week or so.

I haven’t been knitting at all. The triplet sweaters are going to be too small for their fall wardrobe – they each weigh between 10 and 11 pounds now. I’ve abandoned that project and can’t seem to find anything new that’s exciting or tempting. I’ve been spending all my former knitting time playing solitaire, either on the computer or on the iPod.

That’s not a good sign for my mental health. I hope that getting back into a disciplined race training program will help me back out of these doldrums.

A case of the blahs

I’m going to attempt the Richmond Half-Marathon this fall. I originally thought the date was Nov. 8; turns out it’s the 15th, giving me an extra week before Serious Training commences.

That delay, combined with my doctor’s admonition to stay out of the sun and the slight puffiness from the steroids I’ve been taking (last one went down this morning!) has contributed to a case of the blahs. Or the lazies. You make the call.

Other than filling and moving trash bags for an hour or two the past couple days, my intentional exercise has been nil. Nada. Nyet. I could get used to this.

But then I remember how much I enjoy training – sticking with the schedule, adding bright little stars to my calendar when I’ve completed a workout, progressing and improving as time goes on – and suddenly I can’t wait for Monday. Because, according to the schedule, Monday is … are you ready? … a REST DAY!

Heh.

Four years later …

We used to have a pool in our side yard, a ridiculously expensive hole in the ground that took tons o’ work to maintain. The amount of enjoyment we received from it was far less than the amount of time and money we spent taking care of it.

When the liner finally couldn’t take another repair, and a replacement was going to cost $10,000(!), we decided to fill it in. That was four years ago.

During those years we’ve had this squat little building sitting in the yard facing what used to be the pool. We filled it with odds and ends – books, furniture, Christmas decorations – and ignored it.

Until this year. Getting rid of the poolhouse has been high on my husband’s retirement priority list, and yesterday was the Beginning of the End.

Today’s exercise will consist largely in bagging insulation and roofing material and carrying it down the driveway for the sanitation department to take away. Thank goodness we’re not so far out in the Middle of Nowhere that we don’t have weekly garbage pick-up.

For once in my recent life, I wish I were running. Heh.