Sharon Thacker, May, Run a Half Marathon and commit to better health!

My goal for May was to run a half marathon and commit to better health!!

This was a hard one but I have fully accomplished this goal and am still going with it!

I run with friends every Thursday night at the high school track. We do speed workouts and then talk about our problems in between. It's a win win and cheaper than therapy. I have ran a couple of half marathons in the past and was looking for another. My friend Erin recommended the St Michaels Half Marathon. St Michaels is located on the eastern shore of Maryland and is a quaint retirement community. The race was small (1800 People) which I like, and the timing was perfect. There ended up being a group of four of us who ran it together and we made a little girls trip out of it. We left Friday around Noon and set out to beat the traffic over the bridge. We got to our hotel and then walked around town but mainly tried to sit because we were all nervous about the race the following morning.We had a delicious dinner at a local place and went to bed early.

First Miracle- I slept like a rock the night before. I was nervous because there were four women sharing two beds in a tiny hotel room. I did take half of a sleeping pill but I got close to eight hours of sleep!!

Second Miracle- Weather! The weather was perfect...sunny and in the high 50s!!

Third Miracle- The course was completely flat flat flat. I had had hopes of doing some more intense training to get a faster time but I just did basic training again. I just want to beat my previous time and I did by FOUR minutes with my finish being 2:03!! I ran a very consistent 9:30 split which felt awesome until the last couple miles. I wanted to stop and walk but knew I would never start running again if I stopped so I didn't.

Here's the strange thing about my training. I gained about three pounds:( I over compensate with food.(and according to this article I am not the only one:) After the race I wanted to focus on losing weight. I am hopeful that this will also help me run a little faster.  I was my heaviest when I got pregnant with my oldest (now 9) and have been chipping off the weight after each baby. It's a little backwards but it's worked. After I had my third child (now 4) I was finally closing in on my goal size/weight. I felt normal. I wasn't crazy skinny but healthy. I then had my fourth baby and went a little crazy with that pregnancy and gained a crazy amount of weight. I have lost some and gained some since he was born (he is now 2). I really just want to get back to where I was which is about 20 pounds.

During the month of May I got a message from a friend asking me to join an online weight loss group with her. You pay $33 and it lasts eight weeks. Every day you have the possibility of earning 9 points for drinking lots of water, exercising, tracking your food and more. There are also bonus points for weekly challenges (the weekly challenges are in green and change every week). Here is the spread sheet I fill out every day/week.

You report your points and current weight every week to the group moderator. At the end of the challenge the top five weight loss losers and the top five point totals win the money (there are over 100 people in the group). I have been doing this the last two weeks and it's been awesome. I set a goal to have PERFECT points for the full eight weeks and so far so good. I have lost 4 pounds and am happy to be back in the groove:)

The hardest thing has been breaking my addiction to this:(

I went cold turkey and while I could still technically drink it once a week on my "free" day I decided to see if I could cut it out completely. Who knew I was so addicted to caffeine? It was rough the first few days but now I'm getting used to it. I only eat sugar treats once a week which is also difficult but getting easier. Sometimes all or nothing works better for me than just a little bit every day.

I'll let you know how it all works out!

For June I'm going to work on doing some "Music Appreciation" with my kids. We don't listen to much music (I prefer podcasts) and I feel like I'm robbing them of something. We'll see how it goes.