Six Week Six-Pack and Mini-Marathon Training Update

Jillian Michaels Six Week Six-Pack

I'm finishing up Week 2 of the Jillian Michaels Six Week Six-Pack (or 6W6P as I've been marking it on my calendar), and this week has been a little more difficult.  Week 1 I was super pumped, and there was a convenient holiday in the middle of the week.  Doing the Jillian Michaels workout 5 days/week on top of mini-marathon training and my busy work schedule has been tough, but I'm sticking with it!

Here's the problem I'm having: When I get home from work around 6:30 pm after my hour-long metro/car commute, the first thing I want to do is EAT because I'm super hungry by then! (Maybe I need to try eating a bigger breakfast or lunch?) So I usually make dinner as soon as I get home, then eat and watch some TV with my husband and end up commandeering the TV set (We only have one.) to do my JM workout around 9:30 pm or sometimes even later in the evening.  This keeps me awake later because I have to get my heart rate down, relax, and take a quick shower before I can go to bed. On Tuesday night I had my running group, so I didn't do my Jillian Michaels until after 10pm, and then I still had to shower, pack my lunch, etc. afterwards.  So it feels more like a chore because I'm relaxed and feeling kind of lazy by the time I start working out.  (But I do feel really good about it afterwards!)

What's a busy/lazy girl to do?  I'm not a morning person, so I'm definitely not getting up super duper early at 5:50 am to do my workout before I need to get ready for work at 6:30 am.  This week, I ended up skipping two of my workouts during the week because I was just too tired and it was already late, which means that I have to do them on Friday and Saturday when I was planning on taking those days off.

Possible solution:  I'm going to try eating a little more for lunch or maybe having a snack in the afternoons so that I can do my workouts right away when I get home from work or running, then make dinner, etc., etc.  I hope this works out!  If not, I'm going to have to try the waking up early idea, and that will probably make me tired and Ms. Grumpy-Wumpy Pants.  :(  And nobody wants to see grumpy Elise in the morning!

On the plus side, the moves in the video are getting easier with experience, and I've been moving up to doing the more difficult moves for most of them!  I can feel a definite difference in my stomach! (No six-pack, yet, but I'm actually hopeful that I'll have some visible definition and serious size reduction in the abs region by the end of 6 weeks.)  I'm even thinking about sneaking a few Level 2 workouts in next week!  You're supposed to do Level 1 for 3 weeks, and then Level 2 for 3 weeks, but I'm feeling pretty strong and think I might need more of a challenge.

Mini-Marathon Training

I've been running more miles this week and feeling great about it!  This past Sunday I ran 6.4 miles (!) with my Siberian Husky, Miki, for my long run of the week.  (If you're a serious distance runner, yes, 6 miles is a long run for me. Don't make fun!)  She loved it!  I was only planning on running 5, but I was feeling good and my dog wasn't slowing down at all, so I kept going.  Now I'm a week ahead of schedule for my training plan!  This was the longest run I've done in probably the past year, so it was a big achievement for me.  Also, the weather was ridiculously cold and there was still lots of slush on the sidewalks, so it was a big effort just for me to get myself out there.

This weekend, I'll be running 7 miles on the trails at Great Falls Park with some lovely people from my Tuesday night running group!  I'm excited about this!  I reached out and let people know that I was looking for a buddy for some longer runs leading up to the mini-marathon in March, and found a whole group that meets regularly for morning runs over the weekends. 

Yes, I'm a runner, but during the winter time I have a lot of trouble with motivation because of the colder weather and precipitation.  This year, I've improved leaps and bounds in relation to this problem.  One of the women from my running group proposed a challenge to run just 1 mile every day from Thanksgiving to New Years.  This challenge really helped keep me accountable and whip me into shape.  I missed a handful of days, but only a handful!  And I normally probably would have only run once or twice a week without this challenge.  It got me a little more comfortable with the treadmill, too.  (Or the "dreadmill" as I prefer to call it because I finding running in place to be ridiculously boring!)

Vegan-Powered MeetUp Group

More great news on the running front!  As well as being a regular attendee of a Tuesday night running Meetup Group (DC Capital Striders NOVA, Tuesday Tysons Corner run at Potomac River Running store, in case you're in the area and wanted to join), I'm also a member of the Vegan-Powered Meetup Group.  I'm not a very active member, but I try!  Recently, the head of the group sent out an email to the group asking for suggestions and talking about events in the upcoming year.  I responded talking about some races I'd like to do and how I'd love to get together for some group runs with the group.  She responded and asked me to be a co-organizer of the group to set up events for these races and group runs

I sent out an email and created some events for the group, not expecting much response.  The positive feedback has been overwhelming!  I've received over 25 email responses!  I'm so pumped about putting together and leading these runs!  It's only been about 24 hours, but I already have 7 attendees who RSVP-ed for my first Fun Run group run on February 1st!  (Okay, that's probably WAY too many exclamation points in a row, but I'm SO EXCITED!)

Things are seriously looking up on the exercise front, despite my struggles with finding time to get my Jillian Michaels on, and I'm looking forward to organizing all of these events and running the DC Rock n' Roll Mini in March! 

Readers, have you been exercising more this year or have you made any health/fitness-related resolutions?  What's your favorite type of exercise or what exercise do you plan to try out for the first time in 2014?