Success defined

Success does not come to you......You go to it.

With this statement I have found success. I have found the ability to push through even on the hardest of days. Sixteen short days from now I will wake up on a hopefully sunny day, dress in my sexy Tri shorts and head out to complete my first ever Triathlon. This day has been a long time coming and it will be a completion of a goal. A BIG goal!

I have been thinking about goals a lot lately. I have never really completed a goal that I can think of. Besides my goals of getting married and having kids, if you can call those goals. I have set many goals in my life but like many other things they have never been accomplished. Like the nursing degree I never got or all those diet goals that never shed those unwanted pounds.

Why is it that I have never accomplished a goal? I think my own fear has held me back from completing any sort of goal. The fear of my own body, fear of what people would say, fear of getting hurt and the fear of failure. However, something clicked inside my head/heart this year and suddenly I am not afraid of failing. 

On this goal journey I have learned a few things:

1. I want to compete & finish this Tri so bad I can almost taste it
2. Training for this Tri has been hard work & has taken more commitment than I thought
3. You have to mentally be ready to attack your goal
4. There will be good and bad days as you aim for your goal but you cannot let the bad days bring you all the way down

In January I decided to complete this Tri to prove to myself that I could do it and to show my children that you can do anything you set your mind to.  And by golly they have seen my blood, sweat & tears as I have trained the last few months.  With many  "Are we going to the Y again?",  "Mama are you going swimming or biking today?" and "You're sweaty mama" they have seen me working hard on this goal.

The morning of Sept 8th will bring me excitement, nerves and determination. And it will be all 3 that will carry me across that finish line to complete my first goal.

What's your goal? Do you have one? Why not?  What's holding you back from completing your goal?

You will never know your limits 

unless you push yourself

to them 

26 days and counting

The countdown till the Tri Tri Tri Again Triathlon is officially counting down. 26 days till I will swim 1/4 mile, bike 9miles and run 1.6 and finish a HUGE goal.

However, as the clock winds down I am getting nervous....no terrified better sums it up. Until this point I have been fine and constantly cheer leading my Tri buddies Briana and Karyn. But that all changed on Saturday when we went to watch the Lake Tye Triathlon.

As I stood there watching the competitors dolphin dive into the water, then run to their bikes & jump off to run I began to feel the butterflies. I began to want to throw up just a bit. The "What the H*#$ was I thinking  began creeping into my mind.

Training has stepped up just a bit and is involving more brick workouts each week. Last week was just a hard week for me training wise and so I barely managed to workout 3 days. Which may have played a role in my freaking out a bit on Saturday.

Yesterday we did a brick workout that consisted of 1/4 mile swim and then a 20min run. With the weather so beautiful and summer finally arrived in the NW I decided to swim without a wetsuit. And I am wrote this post so I survived!  The water felt great and the swim came very easily to me.
BUT then today I completed another brick workout. A 4.5 mile ride followed by a 10min run, where we completed almost 1mile. My newly "revamped" Huffy mountain bike did well. Yep, I am riding a mountain bike in my Tri and not just any mountain bike but a Huffy. "Don't you wish your bike was hot like mine?"   I did get it outfitted with street tires and am going to get some cage pedals hopefully this week. (my pedals are too small for cages so we are ordering new ones or Bill said "you will have cages one way or another, that's why God invented power tools")
A quick update on WW as well needs to be addressed - or rather I feel it should. I haven't weighed in since 6/23 when I had lost - .8. But I made Bill take me to face the scale today. And I was up +.6. And you know what I was actually okay with that! Ha! I have been training & eating what I want, whenever I want. And that may or may not have included a few Magnum bars. So I basically have maintained for almost 2months and that was OK with me. My goal of loosing 50lbs before the Tri wont be met but that's okay, because my body is more in shape & 31 lbs down is fine with me.

Yesterday, while waiting on my bike to get fitted I walked around downtown Snohomish and saw a cute sign that I loved and am going to post in my house......

 It took more than

a day to put it on,

it will take more than

a day to take it off.





Mojo gone

The title of today's post describes how I am feeling lately when it comes to eating right & staying on track. Blah, blah, blah. I weighed this morning and it says I am up 1.5lbs. I haven't weighed in at WW in 3 weeks just at home and am in a weight loss slump.

It's hot and all I want to do is eat ice cream and drink icy drinks. But that obviously helped in the weight loss arena this week.

I heard someone say this week that she doesn't weigh herself at all. She judges how her clothes feel and how she feels about herself. I wish I could be one of those people that doesn't focus on the number on the scale but I am that person. I do, I do want to see that number going down. And when it isn't I get discouraged and upset.

Working out has been hard too this past week. My kids got sick and so that kept me from being able to go to the gym. I did manage to complete TRX training this week & run 4miles with my running buddies Briana and Karyn. Which is the longest I have run since before Bill came along.

I am hoping that this coming week things turn around. I am going back on WW full speed ahead. I also got new running shoes and somehow they are calling to me. They are saying "put me on, run like the wind" - not really of course but somehow I am feeling a pulling towards them. And did I mention they are super cute looking for running shoes. Teal, grey and white. I love them!

I need to find my Mojo again and fast because the Tri is in 55 days. 55 days till I have to swim, bike and run. 55 days till I complete my first HUGE goal. I know I can do this!

Swim clinic & Tinkerbell

Last night was our "official" swim clinic that we paid for and by 4pm I was so nervous. Even after telling Briana that morning "I'm good, not nervous at all" - Yeah, right! Let's just say my nerves affect my bodily fluids/solids and many trips were made to the restroom before the clinic.

Anyways, now lets chat swim clinic.

1. Sleeveless wet suit = BETTER!  So much better. My arms were cold but I warmed up. You don't have as much buoyancy but I'd rather have range of motion & no pain in my shoulder than buoyancy.
2. Rusty - the Tri coach was great. Great at explaining techniques, answering questions and making you feel confident.
3. I swam further & longer last night in open water than I have yet in my training.
4. We learned how to swim around buoys - who knew that would be so hard and that you can waste so much energy swimming around them.
5. Learned the "dolphin dive" into the water for starting - see this great link to an Awesome video. Once you enter the water after the dive, you dig your hands into the sand. You're going to pull yourself forward using the sand as an anchor point. I need to work on this & get it perfected but this will be helpful. This is a great article to read if you want to know more on dolphin diving - ya know in case you decide you want to train for a Tri too. Ya never know who is reading this ;o)

After last night I am feeling more confident in my swimming abilities and the fact that I can do this part of the Tri. Plus, meeting other newbie Tri competitors was great too. We had fun bonding, sharing ideas & techniques. A fun clinic for sure & very helpful.

And for the Tinkerbell news - I registered for the Tinkerbell Half Marathon in Disneyland on Jan 20, 2013!!!
Yep, as if I'm not crazy enough I have already added my next BIG race to my goal sheet. I mean what's another 13.1 miles to run, right?

A week of First's

This week was truly a great week. Bill was worked late on Tues and was off Wed/Thurs so it was like having him home for 3 days. It was great. And we have gotten in workouts every day this week.

However, the most exciting part of this week has been so many first's:

1. Running around the lake this week = 1.6miles without stopping
2. Completing an hour long spin class = first time in over a year for a total of 12.3 miles
3. First time wearing a full body wet suit
4. First time swimming in open water in said wet suit across the lake and back

The swim was eventful for sure. When Briana called me and said "Martin (local bicycle shop owner, training for Ironman, member of Snohomish Tri team & she watches his daughter) and a few people are going to Lake Tye to swim tonight, he invited us to go with them" - My initial answer was "ummm, I don't know about that".  But with Bill's convincing and Briana's encouragement we decided to do it & that way next week when we go to our actual Tri swim clinic we will not look like goofballs. And boy are we glad we went.

First, putting on a wet suit is harder than you think!!! Then add to that trying it on in small bathroom together with your 2year old son under foot = fun times! Sweat was a pouring for sure along with laughs & lots of grunting noises. We managed to get them on and off was so much easier. Like someone said on my Facebook page - "Good thing they don't start timing us before we get them on" - For sure!

Next, we had to do it again 2hrs later when we met them at the lake. We put ours on in the bathroom while the rest of the "professionals" put them on at the waters edge. And my hubby snapped this picture of us as we walked to the water.

"Sexy and we know it"

Swimming in open water is more difficult than the pool for sure. The water is choppy, cold & dark. I mean you can't see much when you put your head under and then throw in the occasional patch of seaweed. Yikes! I seriously kept saying to myself  "just keep swimming" - that is my official motto for this Tri - Just Keep Swimming.

We managed to make it across and back without any major issues. Well, except for the hundreds of other swimmers who will be swimming at the same time. But I am choosing to not think about that right now.
The Swim Tri coach said we most likely managed to swim our 1/4 of a mile. Awesome news!  The real clinic is on Wed, will post about that later next week.

Took my measurements this week:
Arms = 15 3/4 " -3/4 of an inch loss from last month
Hips = 53 "  - no change from last month
Waist = 40 1/2 " - +1 inch from last month And I am not sure how that is possible 
Bust = 43 1/2 " - no change from last month


Weigh in tomorrow - hoping for good things - last week I gained .4ounces. Darn it with the gaining!

Feeling Strong

In just under 12 weeks I will be completing my Super Sprint Triathlon at Cottage Lake. This past weekend they held the first in the series of two races. It's called the Tri Tri Again race because you can do the one in June and then again in Sept to try to beat your time. That was NOT option for me. I decided to  drive by the park on Friday night and check things out. After seeing the swimming area with the big buoy out in the water I called Briana my Tri buddy and said "We can do this". Seeing it with my own eyes mentally gave me new perspective. 

Then today I ran all the way around Lake Tye in Monroe. Bill chose to work out on the elliptical and I decided to workout outside. Given the choice I would rather workout outside than inside. And to be honest I needed to complete a 20min run outside to be even with my running buddies who ran for 20mins straight on Sunday evening. I ran 1x around in just over 20mins for a total of 1.6miles and 2x around is a 5K.  Our first 5K this year is 7/7 so in just a few weeks. We got this!

You wouldn't believe the pep talks I was giving myself today while running. A friend spotted me running and shouted out her car window "Way to go Gina" - which helped pep me up. And I did have my fabulous 90's rap mix playing on my ipod. But all in all it wasn't as bad as I thought. Compared to a month ago when I tried to do this and couldn't run more than 2 light poles at a time. Such an adrenaline high to be able to finish & finish strong.

 I am definitely changing both physically & mentally. My body is reshaping itself and finally looking like 30lbs has been shed. Enough that in the last week I have had several comments from people saying things like "Wow, you are looking good" - which I will admit feels good.

 As each week passes I really do feel stronger and stronger. Physically I am stronger today than I was last Sept when I ran the Iron Girl 5k with a group of friends. Which just encourages me to keep going. Not for the compliments, although they are nice, but because of how it makes me feel. I feel so good and that is why I keep pushing on. "Just keep swimming"

And finally I leave you with this - my new haircut. I decided to go short, shorter than my husband has ever seen on me. And can I just say I LOVE it!! So easy to do & keep up with. Why didn't I do this sooner?

I am a Runner

A few days ago I asked "What makes me a runner?" And then my husbands cousin sent me this quote via FaceBook.     I  loved it instantly. And after running in the dark & the rain last night I have decided I am a Runner.
I run because it's good exercise, I am training for something bigger than me, it makes me stronger, it actually feels good to run and I like it. Yes, I like running. There is just something about it that calls to me. Now, I don't know if I will ever be a marathon runner but I do know this now................. I am a Runner!