Yesterday was day two of working a full day and then taking files home to continue working until the wee hours for this big push to complete a job by tomorrow’s deadline. Needless to say exercise and decent eating habits have become a distant weekend memory…but i took back control of the ship last night (well maybe I took back control of the blow up raft…hey ya gotta start somewhere). The dog and i both needed some forward motion. I leashed him up and we started gingerly walking up the slicy (slushy and icy) road for about a half hour.

I love when the snow gets to be the same consistency as coffee cake crumble….ya know…like butter and sugar mixed together?! MMMM who knew dirty snow could make my mouth water =)

my walking buddy

Some areas were unplowed and the powdery cover gave better traction than the slicy spots letting us pick up the pace to a jog which was nice. I was wearing boots and a coat on so I don’t know that I would consider this a true workout but i warmed up enough to get sweaty and mentally i felt a whole lot better.
The dog was in his glory peeing on every telephone pole and digging in snow drifts. he also decided it was a perfect time for a snow facial. Exfoliation anyone?

Our destination was to my car that i had driven to the bus stop in the morning on my way to work. Once we arrived I let the dog jump in the car to warm up while I scraped the windshield (4 minute upper body workout!?)

take your time ma.

I continued the upper body workout when I got home as I spent 20 minutes in the garage breaking up cardboard boxes and bundling it all up to be recycled. I know the technical term for functional fitness is activities that prepare you for your every day life, but i like to think of it as the reverse…doing everyday life tasks to fulfill a part of your fitness. And the run a million and a half miles to fulfill the remaining fitness quota =) Oh and there were a couple more packages at the door tonight.

First , Duncan’s birthday gift delivery from Petsmart. I opened the box and let him sniff around.

birthday loot

So one of the gifts is a laser light. I thought it’d give him a good indoor workout option for days when we really can’t get outside.

The other cool package was a surprise gift from my sister-in-law. She must read my blog because she got me a running ornament for my tree!!!!!

Running Chick

Tomorrow ill finally get a run in. I’ve been running basically twice a week-Thursdays and one weekend day. It’s quite a different world for me. But in about 3 weeks that will change and ill be back to 4 days a week when I start my NJ Marathon training. Speaking of….on the NJ Marathon Facebook page, they posted a photo and bio of Brian, the pacer for the 4:40 group. That’s my guy! He has quite the marathon resume with 100+ marathons under his belt. I can’t wait to meet him and hope I can hang on to finish in 4:40. (I tried to stay with the 4:45 pacer at the NYC marathon but at mile 16 couldn’t keep up. It was a harder course though, so I still feel confident I can do this.)

Question: Do you have certain everyday tasks that you consider exercise? When I go grocery shopping I don’t use a shopping cart. I take 2 handheld baskets and as they fill up I do bicep curls in the aisles. And then I carry all the bags to my car as well with no shopping cart. It’s one of my favorite ways of sneaking in some upper body strength training.

I won’t dump because this blog isn’t about that. Let’s just say today was craptastic in the crappiest of crappy (we’re talking New York City Marathon 50,000 runners used a porta-potty crappy (That actually just made me giggle). And how dumb I felt tonight when I posted on Facebook about feeling defeated and I get words of encouragement from one friend who’s battling ovarian cancer and another who’d dad was shot and killed this year and found out today the gunman pleaded not guilty. Yeah, my crap isn’t really that crappy.

When I came home from work, there was a package at my door. It was the running ornaments (I mentioned in this post) that I ordered for my tree.

The sneakers are a little Richard Simmons looking but it’s a cute lil’ ornament. And it gets the point across no?

This cracks me up. I’ll have to try and re-create the look one day.

So there was the glimmer. And I had a good laugh too watching Duncan shred the paper that the gifts were wrapped in. He even had a couple of pieces stuck to his mouth.

He goes from playing in white stuff outside to playing with white stuff inside.

guilty

I’m working on a new section for the blog for 2014 that will have a collection of “Running 101” type posts. I’ll give some tips for outdoor running topics like running surfaces, safety, how to dress for the weather, fueling tips, stretches to help common runner ailments and other things like that. If you have any suggestions for topics you’d like me to feature just leave in the comments below. I’m also planning on a section that will be filled with inspirational mantras for both running and life in general. And I’ll be updating my races page as I’ve already got a handful of 2014 races on the agenda.

Well it’s after midnight….I better catch a few winks. Night all!