It starts with a solid foundation: Accountability Monday

In the last few weeks my training has had to slow down again as I figure out why my stomach is still creating fatigue and other issues. Initially I was frustrated and thinking “here we go again with missing out on another goal”. Until I began to realize that everything was actually falling in to place quite nicely.

With 11 years of running under my belt, it’s really easy to skip over the important FOUNDATIONAL components of training. Realizing things I made a decision and now I am:

• Doing running drills
• Running hills (parking garage)
• Serious foam rolling and stretching
• Consistent entire core workouts
• Serious attention to fueling properly

Most importantly for me right now, I am running without my GPS to reconnect to my body and let it determine what easy, medium and hard feel like rather than a watch.

While I was so ready for speedwork because it blasts fat, my body was saying hey we need a good solid base if you want to do all of these things!  Luckily as I was thinking this the book Run Faster: How to be your own best coach came in to my life and I have been devouring it again as I create a new personalized training program. 

I love creating plans for others and seeing them progress, but don’t often take the time to really do this for myself…so silly {don’t forget to join me at the Miami Running Clinic to get a personalized plan of your own}.

Campaigns like What’s Beautiful always get me fired up and I dive in head first ready to go after my goal. Last year I had my sights set on a PR at 13.1 Chicago, which technically I got by 1 second but that wasn’t really what I had in mind. This year I started using it again to focus in on my clean eating habits, stick to my core work…and oh yes PR.

Technically we are half way through the What’s Beautiful Challenge where my goal was to hit a PR, but realistically I’ve just now started working on that goal since I am going back to the beginning! I absolutely feel confident in hitting my new PR goals this year, but it’s going to require consistent progress and not the overnight jump I was working on ha!

Loving some of the interesting moves they are showing me too..you should look for this in a Clean and Lean Project ab workout soon!!

Checkout the purpose of Accountability Monday’s>>
Want to participate? Fill out this form and I’ll be featuring people each week (see Your Goals below)!

Goal check in: I was super productive and on point with doing only what was most important!

Goal for Week: More laughter, which means connecting with more people in Orlando.

Mentally I wanted to do more, but per my goal last week I listened to my body and backed off or pushed based on what I felt. I also continued to leave the GPS at home and do my running drills.

Goal for Week: Continue base building.

June 10
AM: 55 min walk + 30 min yoga

June 11
AM: 60 min run + 20 min walk + 30 min stretch
- HOLY humidity, after 30 minutes I thought I was spent, but I headed to the parking garage to just run up one level…15 minutes later I’d run the garage numerous times and felt so much better that I kept running after that. Hills are good for me!

June 12 
AM: 30 min walk + 15 min upper body +15 min stretch, Pilates Inspired Core Workout
PM: 10 min run - 3 min warm up, 8 tabatas, 3 min cool down
- in the past if I didn’t feel up to at minimum 3 miles I just wouldn’t have gone at all. Now I’m remembering that even a small run is great if I enjoy it.

June 13 
AM: 40 min run (half in parking garage) + 10 min running drills + 30 min walk + 20 min stretch
PM: T-Ab-ata core workout

June 14
AM:20 min easy run + 20 min walk + 10 min elliptical + 10 min bike + 20 min stretch
PM: Fly to Kansas City!!!

June 15
AM: 20 min easy run on hills + 30 min walk + 30 min stretch
PM: 30 min walk with mom, more stretching

June 16
AM: 1:45 run on tons of hills + 20 min walk + 20 min stretch
felt amazing! Seriously I love hills and I'm loving running sans GPS.

PM: 30 min walk with mom and dad.

Do you ever take time to go back to basics with your training?

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Gratitude Journal
June 17
I am grateful for a weekend surrounded by love.

eMeals - Clean Eating made easy

The process of switching to more clean eating lifestyle often feels overwhelming to many people I talk with. Unsure where to start they just don’t start at all. Step one I obviously recommend the Clean and Lean Project {biased yes, proven to work yes}, but after that a long term tool like eMeals might just be a good option.

They reached out to me last month with an offer to try their program and I was interested to see if it is indeed something that would help my cLEANers. Since meal planning seems to be one of the bigger excuses for not following through with clean eating. AND stress is one of the biggest factors that trigger us to eat less than healthy foods.

Hence, the biggest benefit of eMeals: Stress reduction! This provides you with 7 meals every week, so you can purchase all ingredients in advance. Each recipe tells you the prep and cook time required, which allows you to pick some of the longer meals to make over the weekend and have the quicker one’s set aside for week nights. You can see here they over a variety of options to meet different dietary needs. I started with the Natural and Organic plan and then switched to the Clean Eating plan after a few weeks just to see the difference. Both had a lot of great meal ideas and they varied in difficulty, but nothing that was Martha Stewart anxiety inducing for someone like me who prefers to keep it simple. 

eMeals also does some special things like a free Father’s Day menu which I was excited about since I am actually  in KC with my Dad for Father’s Day it took away the process of:
“hmm what should we have”
“well what do you want”
“Oh I don’t care, what do you want”.
Tell me you haven’t all had this conversation with friends at some point! For my weekly meals, I opted for the meal planning for TWO rather than for a family which runs $58 for the entire year or $21 for 3 months. If you will use the service to keep yourself on track and reduce preparation stress then it’s not just a good deal it’s a steal. For those who want even more you can add on lunches and breakfasts for an additional $3-4/month each.

Plus the all mighty budgeter himself, Dave Ramsey, endorses it because it definitely helps you to stop waisting money {ha total pun} on eating out and keeps you from wasting food at home! {Someone laugh at waisting, it’s funny!}

Your meal plans are then emailed to you each week, but you can also log in to your account to access them at any time in case you delete one of those emails. Everything is provided in an easy to read PDF that you can print and put in a recipe binder to keep using if you find meals that everyone just loves.

Have you ever used a meal planning service?
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Gratitude Journal
June 16
I am grateful to be spending Father’s Day with my dad!!

Why the BlackBerry Z10 isn’t my favorite

As a Verizon Ambassador I am really blessed to get to try out new technology and use the mobile hotspot for our home internet right now, which means part of me feels that I should of course love everything they send me to test…but I don’t. Do you ever have that feeling??  Like something is supposed to be wonderful or it isn’t actually bad, but you personally just don’t care for it?

As it happens, I just do not care for the BlackBerry Z10.

To be fair it’s a great phone with some wizbang features. For example if you like Face Time on the iPhone it has something similar now with BBM. I don’t have any friends on BlackBerry though…I think because it’s geared more towards business users than my crazy social media addicted friends. 

It has the nifty photo option I showed where it takes multiples so you can adjust someone’s face to get a frame where their eyes are open and do that across multiple faces to create one good photo! I mean that’s some serious technology from a camera phone.

Unfortunately one of the big features that doesn’t work for me is the MOBILE HUB. Which for a lot of people is like nirvana because you can see all of your incoming messages from every email and every social media in one fell swoop.I am more of a compartmentalized person. I don’t even care to go in to massive retailers any more because I just want to find the one thing I’m interested in and be on my way. I have separate email accounts for a reason…and well darn it I just feel overwhelmed when I see 62 new messages instead of 3 on a given area.

Like I said this phone really has some cool things, it just isn’t my phone. I’m still too gaga over the DROID DNA to ever fall in love with it. So there is my honest review!
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Gratitude Journal
June 15
I am grateful for the freedom to have an opinion…and hopefully express it without getting kicked out!

Sugar Detox Jumpstart

As the Clean and Lean Project got rolling, I realized that there were two major areas where everyone could use some additional help: sugar and weekends!  Taking that in to account, I have partnered up with Holistic Health Coach Laura Peifer to offer a Sugar Detox Jumpstart workshop in conjunction with the next round of the Clean and Lean Project {registration now open}.

This is not a NO sugar ever plan, this is a 5 day detox plan to reset your taste buds so that you can more easily make the transition to a clean eating lifestyle.

If you are frustrated with being unable to give up your nightly treats or exhausted by the constantly changing diet information in the media the Clean and lean Project is for you. It’s a program designed to create a new LIFESTYLE and the Sugar Detox jumpstart will give you the confidence to get going.

The workshop will include:

• Information on why you crave sugar
• Foods to help you make the switch
• Sugar substitutes - the good, the bad, the don’t you dare
• How to be sugar free and still enjoy your social life
• 1 hour of fear-busting, strategies and tools to help you make the shift
• Feeling in control of your food choices

BACK ON TRACK AFTER JULY 4TH
This is exactly the kind of thing that I needed when I undertook the Unprocessed October and Clean Eating challenges the first time around….and occasionally now after a weekend like ohhh July 4th. The workshop will be held prior to that infamous holiday weekend of hot dogs, drinks and sugary treats so you can put all of the new knowledge to use to clear out your system and get on track.

I get that you are always deciding where to spend your money, so here is a little feedback from folks just a few weeks in to the June start of the Clean and Lean Project. 

REGISTRATION OPTIONS
Currently the Sugar Detox is only offered as part of the July Clean and Lean Project. <<Click for complete details and to register as spots are limited.

Achieving a weight that you can easily maintain is possible and ENJOYABLE if you are willing to take it step by step which is the goal of this great group.
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Gratitude Journal
June 13
I am grateful for having the guts to talk to random runners at the track so I can find some new running partners in Orlando!

Running Weekend Clinic - Efficiency and Form Training

Today I am so excited to share with you a new running weekend clinic that is going to be held in Miami on July 20th-21st. I’ve had ideas for a runners camp based on all the feedback I’ve received over the last few years, but it wasn’t until I started talking with my new friend {Sports Medicine Doctor} Dr Gonzalez that things really started to fall in to place.

This will be a highly personalized weekend focused on analyzing form, reviewing exercises to correct imbalances, how to select the right running shoe, and personalized training plans based upon fall race goals.  As a running nut the idea of someone taking the time to analyze MY FORM on a treadmill from multiple angels, then give me details on exercises to improve and prevent injury alone would be worth going to any clinic.

I AM THRILLED to be involved with this and can’t wait to share more about it with you…but I hope you might actually be there as we are offering it at a crazy low intro price to a very limited number of participants while we gather feedback. Click the image below to see the full agenda and more details!Read more about it here>>

If you can’t make it, then help us continue to make things even better by answering this super short survey!

Thanks to every single one of you that has supported RunToTheFinish over the last year. It’s been a wild ride to figure out where I’m going, but I am in LOVE with every moment of it and cannot wait to continue sharing more new exciting programs with you!!
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Gratitude Journal
June 12
I am grateful for a desire to always be learning and growing and experiencing new things.