Discipline.

I'm always surprised when my body does what it's supposed to do.

The result of the first week of five small meals (and very little sugar):

I was annoyed at how much I had to think about eating. And I was sick of eating.

The result of the second week of five small meals (and very little sugar):

I am still annoyed about it and sick of eating. And I lost 4 poounds.

Small meal #5 for today is this quinoa flat bread recipe.

The kids and I made cookies last night, and I had a bite of one to see how I liked the new recipe. Normal me would have needed eight to decide if it was a good recipe or not, or maybe twelve. A friend called that discipline. Discipline sounds much better than will-power. Or self-deprivation. Or hell. So I'm going to try to look at it as discipline. Maybe I should consider healthy eating the fifth discipline in triathlon. The fourth being pissing off your competition, of course, or so I was told yesterday.

Nearly a month into three strength workouts a week it occurred to me that I can't remember the last time I begged someone, anyone, Henry, my sister, a chiropractor I met at a party, some guy at the mall, to push on my piriformus for just a minute to stop the aching in my hips and glutes, please. I haven't taken advil to sleep through the ache, something I've been doing since the build for Vegas 2010, in at least two weeks. More on the strength training coming soon. In short: I am swim-bike-running a tiny bit less to fit it in. But it's nice to not constantly be asking strangers to touch my butt.

Since eating frequently and healthfully is a pain in the ass, really I've just traded one pain in the ass for another as a result of my new year's resolutions.

A post without photos seems dumb, but I'm not really into photos of food or my butt, so I'm adding a couple photos of important things, like boots and hair. This little rat keeps trying to sneak out of the house to school in my new boots. The clomp clomp clomp down the front steps is a dead giveaway though.

Somebody curled my hair into Barbie hair. Now I kind of want a perm. Is there even such thing anymore? Also, I look like Jim Carrey with big hair, but that's not really news.

A Weekend in Photos.

Weekend recap:

I swear the kindle was only for the warm up.

I taught her everything I know. Which is to be tall and wear big glasses. Once that ball starts flying around, the girl is on her own, and I'm ducking like George Michael from Arrested Development.

My sister and Calvin, who might grow up to expect a lot from a woman.

Henry's first concert!

 

And it starts, sometime around midnight...

My other two noodle faces.

And finally: after years of loving Timex, I caved and ran with this on Sunday. I love my Timex Global Trainer, but it is not compatible with my arm. It gives me an arm ache. I was on Team Timex for a lot of years, and I'm so grateful to them for all they've done for me. But it was time. This was dirt cheap ($139 on walmart.com, thanks for the tip skinnyrunner!) and does not give me an arm ache. And oh, the dirt it gave me... 

Once I set it up, it will stop lying so much about calories (that was for a 150 lb man) and I can review online, and know my pace without having to hit the track, and if one of those gangs of boys in the turnouts on Tantalus ever really does get me, they might even be able to find my corpse in the woods. 

You may have noticed that I ran. I had a nice, flat, concrete-avoiding run and I feel pretty good! I won't try it again for a few days, though. It probably was time to start swimming and riding. I've been on the trainer 4/5 days. I haven't gotten bored enough to brave the scary streets yet. I feel like more of a single mom than ever, since the kids dad isn't just a phone call away anymore, and it makes me shy away from riding on the road.

I finally got my hands on Hawaii Sport Mag today, after hearing a lot about it and being really, really scared. I was scared that I would sound like a jerkface in the article or I would look pregnant on the cover. The good news: Rae wrote the nicest article and said ridiculously over the top kind stuff about me. Most of the nice stuff was lies, she's just that nice! I am going to feed her m&ms and offer to babysit next time I see her. I guess I can't link to the article, so you, blogland, will just have to take my word for it. I didn't sound like a jerkface. Really. I think. And I only look a little pregnant.

P.S. I'm not pregnant. I have enough babies.

Dedicated to the Sport

Oh, right. I have a blog.

About that healthy eating stuff: two weeks of tracking shows that I don't consume anywhere near enough calories. There are two ways for me to take that, given that I feel like I eat when I'm hungry, and I eat until I'm full:

1. I don't consume enough calories, or

2. All those calorie calculators and scientists are lying to make humans feel better about themselves, kind of like Banana Republic has turned a size 4 into a 00 so that girls like me go Oh! I'm a 00! I'm must have this skirt/dress/huge muumuu!

Probably the scientists aren't lying (but Banana Republic is full of it). I can't eat more than I do at meals without feeling like crap afterwards, so I'm trying to do that five small meals a day thing. So far so good. I'm hungry all the time. And I rarely eat cookies, because there's not time. Ok, I still eat cookies every few days, but I call them small meals now. Here's a link to a super healthy small meal.

I was thinking about people who are dedicated to triathlon and write blogs about how focused they are on their goals or how they're turning pro and really giving it a go, and I realized that I am about 5% dedicated to this sport. I am mostly dedicated to kids, work, the beach, drinking, and reading books. Sometimes reading books overlaps with training, when I read on the trainer, so maybe those weeks I'm 6% dedicated. Why was I thinking about this? Because the only way I'm going to race a full IM anywhere, the distance I really love, would be to turn pro. Because I'm not enough of a planner to sign up for a race 364 days 23 hours and 59 minutes in advance, so I don't have any I can do. And well, I'm not going to turn pro, because of that whole 6% dedicated thing, but it's tempting. The appeal is both the last minute entry and the cost-effectiveness. You pay the entry fee one time for unlimited races. It's kind of like when you go to a bar in Vegas in the morning and it's $10 for a bloody mary, or $15 for all the bloody marys you can drink. It's a no-brainer, financially.

I should sign up for a tri, there's a part of me that would really like to get back to Kona, and I know Honu will sell out soon. But I just can't stand to. It's really too bad I didn't fall in love with Ultimate Frisbee, or those juggling sticks things, or some other cheap hippie sport.

I have shittyshinitis, aka shin splints. It happened overnight. I cannot even walk without pain. I've had shittyshins since 7th grade, but can usually manage them with shoe rotation. I stopped running and started icing and adviling and wearing running shoes to work like I think I'm in college or something in attempt to avoid another stress fracture (number 6? 8? I've lost count). I'm in time out.

The moral of this story, somehow, is that injury = cookies.

(Me, the only dorky human on Molokai in dumb running shoes last weekend, and cute Shel.)

And Haseena and me at Waipio (that counts as icing).

This Just In: Healthy Eating Makes Me Fatter.

Exactly one pound fatter than last week, thank you very much, fruits and vegetables. I was good 6/7 days. I did a (short) strength workout after my run 3/7 days, which is all the lunging, squatting, or other tedium my IT bands can handle. I ran a lot of miles, I rode over 100 miles (not a lot), golfed, hiked, and generally exhibited more self-discipline than ever before. And I got fatter.

Also, I put in five hours of training over the weekend, and in the end, it was the golf that kicked my ass. My shoulders are so sore.

I joined Pinterest and got lazier. Find me there (runlikeamotha) if you feel like witnessing my laziness and/or materialism. Actually, I made a board for healthy food. The first recipe was a quinoa salad, mostly because I already had all the ingredients in my fridge, on the verge of rotting if I didn't do something with them. I wound up dipping chips in it while drinking wine, because why not, clean eating was just making me fatter. But it's good, even without the added bad stuff.

The little bit of sugar I had wasn't even the standard (candy soup) at yogurtland. See, I took photo evidence. And what did I get for it? Fatter. Should have stuck to the Reeces/m&ms/brownies with a shot's worth of froyo.

Now for some randomly inserted photos from the week. The view from my ride:

Hiking photos:

Eww my sister's got sweaty-back.

How Sky hikes:

Next up - girls' weekend on Molokai! Lots of beach, shell-hunting, trashy magazines, and cocktails. I mean, training.