Weekly Update 3

Time flies when you’re running 🙂 This has been a fabulous week for me! It’s the first time I write down weekly goals and  better yet I’ve achieved pretty much everything on my on it!

I’m going to be mentioning Mike a lot in this entry and the reason is that he was participating in a step challenge at his job and I walked with him to help him get at least 20 thousand steps a day to help him place top 10. 

Highlights from the week:

1. I’ve achieved all the goals in my list for the week. 
2. I lost 7 lbs this week which brings my weight loss to a grand total of 20 lbs since I got active 3 months ago. 
3. Pena 5K – I reduced my time by two minutes since last week, finished it in 28 minutes and 23 seconds. This is my personal best at Deer Island  ever. 
4. Ran Deer Island without stopping. One of my main goals was to run the this course without stopping. I can check that one off the list now.

Breakdown of the week:

Monday – Mike and I walked 8.5 miles in the evening. We walked from work to the train station where I leave my car. 

Tuesday – I ran 4.11 miles at ungodly hours in morning, ungodly for me! In the evening Mike and I walked 5.75 miles at the lovely heart break reservation in Saugus. It’s a beautifully scenic and hilly course. 

Wednesday – I ran 2.5 miles in the morning and walked 7.5 miles in the evening with Mike. We went from Downtown Boston to Cambridge, then to Somerville, then to Everett. 

Thursday – Pena 5K @ Deer Island. I walked around the course once to warm up before running it. 

Friday – Ran 3.75 miles in the morning and 9+ miles in the evening with Mike. I didn’t start the tracking app on time, so I missed he first 30ish minutes of walking. 

I have only one goal for the weekend: DON’T GAIN ANY WEIGHT. 

I usually gain a few pounds during the weekend. I spend a lot of time at my parents’ house. There’s always so much deliciousness everywhere!

This week I was telling Mike about it during one of our long walks and because he’s a numbers guy he simply commented that I was ‘losing one third’ of my weight lost. That somehow set things to a different perspective. I don’t want to lose 33% of anything! And that’s what I had been doing for ever. Some weekends I would gain all the weight back during the weekend.

I’m extremely pleased with the progress this week and intend to keep it going next week and into the foreseeable future.

Thanks for reading.

Relativity

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.
– Albert Einstein

No, I’m not going to attempt to explain the theory of relativity. Continue reading.

A quick refresher and context setting. 1) As soon as the weather is tolerable here in Massachusetts my friends and family go to Deer Island in Winthrop, once a week to walk or jog or run. It’s actually a peninsula not an Island, but that’s besides the point. It’s a beautiful 2.66 mile scenic route, not quite a full 5K but we dubbed it “Pena 5K”. 2) April 19, 2019 was the day when I got my behind off the couch and to a gym for the first time in years.

My first Pena 5K this year was on April 21st, only two days after my first gym visit. I walked the entire thing and completed it in 45 minutes and 45 seconds! Not a great showing, but I made it out and completed it. The following days I kept going to the gym and worked on the elliptical machine and the treadmill. Whenever the weather allowed I’d walk/jog a 2.5 mile loop around my house using the Couch to 5K app.

I’ve stuck to the weekly Pena 5K religiously since that first run on April 21st. I couldn’t make it to the island a couple of times, but I’ve completed it virtually. My time to complete it slowly began to decrease.

Left to right: Me; my brother Jose; my sister in-law Vero. Before each Pena 5K I take a selfie with the group. Yesterday it was only three of us.

On May 12th, my time had decreased to 36 minutes and 40 seconds. A week later, on May 19th, my time had decreased again by over 3 minutes to 33 minutes and 31 seconds. Seeing the progress encouraged me and motivated me to keep going.

May 26th and June 2nd were my virtual runs @ Revere Beach. On June 9th my  plantar fasciitis (PF) condition didn’t allow me to run, so I compensated by walking 8 miles.

All of this brings me to yesterday’s Pena 5K.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been walking a lot and not much running. My PF is almost gone and I was feeling good. I was excited to see if I would improve my time since the last time I ran it over a month ago. I was only hoping to finish under 33 minutes and 31 seconds.

To my amazement when I looked at the tracker upon finishing, it read 30 minutes and 29 seconds! I was overcome with excitement, joy, happiness, and sense of accomplishment. I was so proud of myself I had to shout a loud “YES! YEAH!“. To this moment I’m still ecstatic. It’s a great feeling.

Vero took a picture of me as I started to run. Thank you Vero!

Coming back to relativity. Completing 2.66 miles in 30 minutes and 29 seconds is a great accomplishment for me, but it’s a joke to any serious runner.

Like everything else in life there are others in life who are better off than you and others who are worse off than you. Be happy with what you have. Look around and be thankful for what you have rather than what you wish you had. This has served me well in life. It applies to all aspects of life. There will always be someone who’s faster than you; someone who makes more money than you; someone who’s smarter than you; someone who has your dream car or a bigger house; someone who travels more than you; and the list goes on forever.

I’ve been working on my goals post and I’ll publish it soon. One of my goals is to complete the Pena 5K @ Deer Island in 25 minutes or less. Yesterday’s run encourages me to keep working towards my arbitrary 25 minutes goal.

Thanks for reading! I didn’t realize how therapeutic writing this blog would become.