Taking on the World

Somedays I really feel like I'm carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I've been having a lot of these days recently but there isn't much I can do about it. Of course, right about when I started to feel hopeless is when I saw the quote, "If you can't change your circumstances, change your outlook." How appropriate!




I've finally been offered a job I am excited to take. It's a management position so I can finally put that Business Administration degree to work! However, there's a downside. A Monday thru Friday schedule with set and guaranteed hours is going to be great for my budget. It's just going to take away a lot of the time I've been using for homework, workouts, and my family. I'm going to have to rebalance my life and that's a scary thought!

On top of the new job, I'm in my first semester of my Sports Management degree. I LOVE my classes. I'm learning a ton and realizing how much misinformation is out there. I've recommitted to getting my body composition where I want to be and training to be the athlete I want to be instead of the slow plodder I currently am. However, there's always a but right? Full time college on top of a full time job is going to be hard, really hard. I have already started carrying a planner and scheduling my assignments in order of due dates so I get them done on time. The problem is that getting them done now means doing them at night after the kids go to bed and my husband leaves for work. While I used to be able to use that time for a quick run or some weights I now have lost another opportunity for my workouts.

Then there's soccer. I volunteered to coach my daughter's soccer team while I was laid off. I figured it was only for 8 weeks and it would keep me busy and active. Now it's hard to be happy with that decsion. My team is great and the kids are always happy and smiling. We always have fun but motivating myself to get out the door every Monday and Wednesday night instead of plopping down on the couch or going for a run is hard. When I was just a soccer mom I had the luxury of missing a practice. Now that I'm 'Coach Sara' I have to set a good example and show up and work hard. It's been a great lesson in dependability and fortitude.

Then there's the issue of my running which didn't happen for five, yes FIVE, days straight. I attempted to run a 50k last weekend and twisted my knee pretty badly. I got to an aid station and told them I was going to DNF. I have never made such a hard decision in my life. They told me I was only 3 miles from the finish line and I could take a 25k finish if I just walked in the first loop. Despite the creaking and popping in my knee I thought a 25k finish would be better than a DNF so I walked it in. And the but.... The race director told me the volunteers were mistaken and I couldn't be listed as a 25k finisher and I would be listed as a DNF anyway. I cried, I freaked, and I worried. My knee is still sensitive to hills and stairs but thankfully 5 days of rest seems to have it well on the way to mending.

It hasn't all been gloom and doom though. Blessings still abound in my life. The weekend before the 50k disaster my hubby and I ran a beautiful 5k in Slickville, PA called the Heritage Hustle. We both set new PR's (low-23's for him and 27:14 for me) and had a grand old time doing it! My husband also just celebrated his '29th birthday for the 3rd time' and we used his birthday weekend as an excuse to travel to a fun 5k. I was still worried about my knee so I promised Shane he could go as fast as he liked and I would run with our older daughter for a little bit and then just go as fast as I could handle while pushing the baby in the stroller.

It turned out to be a better day than I could have hoped for. I lost my older daughter in the crowds before mile 1 but she's experienced enough at this point to be okay on her own. I decided to go at an 'I'm working but I'm not dying' pace and see what happened. My knee behaved and I only walked once for a fairly large hill. At the end of mile 1, the volunteer said I had done mile 1 in about 10:45. I did some quick math in my head and thought, "Hey, I can beat my last stroller-pushing time of 35 minutes!" I picked up the pace coming off of the uphill and passed quite a few people. I leap frogged with another mother pushing a baby in a stroller for the rest of the race. My split at mile 2 was something like just under 21 minutes. I pushed to keep up with the other stroller mom who was just in front of me at this point. I was starting to get mad because she was switching the stroller off with her mother who was running with her. It didn't seem fair that she got a break and I didn't! I couldn't let her beat me like that! Coming up to the third mile marker I pushed harder and caught a few more people and started to gain on stroller mom. Then she paused to adjust the baby her stroller! It was my chance! I swerved around her and into the finish shoot for a time of 30:54 and a 4:06 PR over my old stroller time!

It turns out Team Brunazzi had a great day all around. My hubby missed a PR and ran high-23's but took second in his age group. My daughter set a new PR and took second in her age group and I took third in my age group! I never, ever would have thought I could score an age group award while pushing a stroller! What an awesome uplift right when my spirits were low!




Overall, I'm still scared of what's coming with my new job, school, and races. I've got a full schedule with more being added daily. But I'm trying to take it one day, one assignment, one run at a time and just be grateful that I'm able to do all of this at all!

Change Is Never Easy

Recently, I've felt on top of the world. My running seems to be improving and I've set new mileage and pace PR's. I finished my first 50 Mile Race and I'm looking forward to my upcoming 100k.

I've also won several contests from blogs like Run Wifey Run and Run Faster, mommy! Thanks to them and several of their wonderful sponsors I will be running the inaugural Rock N Roll Savannah Marathon and hanging out with the other winners of the Race and Relax weekend! I'm also going to be receiving a beautiful medal hanger from Allied Medal Displays to show off my girls' race bling! I love their medal hangers so much that I have bought two already and hope to purchase more!

On top of all these wonderful things I am finally going to school for what I love, Health and Wellness. Part of my curriculum is measuring my own body composition. I decided to use several methods including bioelectric impedence, girth measurement, and the BodPod. If you're interested in finding a BodPod near you COSMED has a search feature here. According to my bioelectric impedence scale I am around 23% body fat. I've heard horrible things about these scales so I hoped it was pretty far off. My girth measurements only came out slightly better at 22%. I was still hopeful that the BodPod would hold a pleasant surprise. However, my results were not what I'd hoped:

In case you can't read that, it says I am 22.8% fat. That means I'm carrying 30 pounds of fat around. Don't misunderstand me please. This isn't horrible but it's not really 'athletic' either. Everybody needs a certain amount of fat to be healthy and women need more than men. My goal has been 18% for awhile now and I was very surprised to learn that I'm not there yet (by a long shot). I have about 6 pounds of fat to lose to get there. I really thought I'd be closer considering I've lost 7 pounds in the last couple months. What I'm realizing, however, is that diet and strength training are of far more importance than I ever knew. I thought that running 40-50 miles every week was enough to keep my body fat down but when I came home and ate a bowl of ice cream and half a bag of Twizzlers I wasn't giving my body the fuel it needed and it was storing this 'junk' as fat. On top of that, my body is very used to running long distances and for long periods of time. My muscles have reached a plateau now. Without heavy strength training like I was doing at CrossFit I will not continue to see gains in strength and muscle development.

So how do I make it right and reach my goals? Well the first thing I did was substitute a weight routine for yesterday's run. I didn't have time to do both so I made the conscious choice to use my time to pursue the activity that would help me achieve my goals. As a grown up sometimes I have to hike up my big girl britches and do things that aren't particularly enjoyable in the pursuit of long-term satisfaction. I enjoy weight training but not as much as I enjoy running so to balance both I'm going to have to sacrifice something. Given that school, family, and work aren't flexible I decided to sacrifice my much beloved sleep. I got out of bed at 6AM instead of 7 today and got the ball rolling on our morning an hour earlier. Instead of dressing in 'normal' clothes I put on my running clothes. After everyone was ready for the day I walked my older daughter to the bus stop as usual, except instead of carrying the baby I was pushing her in the jogging stroller. As soon as Gem was on the bus I turned for the trail instead of heading home. Four miles later I was feeling productive and the baby was sleepy. At home I put her down for a nap and took advantage of the down time to do a 30 minute kettlebell routine. That still left me enough time to shower and dress before she woke up.

I'm amazed already at how much more energy I have and how much more productive I feel then when I would wait until afternoon to try to cram in a workout. I'm hoping that if I can make this a routine I will be able to continue to increase my mileage without sacrificing strength training and nutrition ever again. I've been so worried about what's going to happen when I find another job and how it will affect my athletic endeavors but maybe, just maybe I've been worrying over nothing. In the end it's all about change and using our energy to find solutions instead of worrying about the problem. I know it's not going to be easy and I still have a long way to go but I'm so grateful for the community of athletes and experts that I've found and the support of my family and friends.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
C. S. Lewis