Another new gym

It has been a busy but fun weekend full of quality time with the family.  Knowing it was going to be a crazy weekend, I wanted to plan ahead to be sure I got in at least one good run.  So my first stop after work on Friday was to join another gym and get in some quality time with the treadmill.

Yes, another gym!  I am so happy I took a few minutes to research my health plan's fitness options before joining a gym.  I hate everything else about our health insurance plan, but I love that they offer the Healthways Prime membership.  In a nutshell, I paid a $25 initiation fee and pay $25 a month for a gym membership that works at a ton of different gyms.  It is awesome for me because I live 20+ miles from where I am interning, and I'll be graduating and looking for a job elsewhere in the near future.  I could be anywhere in the greater Pittsburgh area looking for a gym and didn't want to be limited by a chain's options.  I also wasn't keen on the idea of shelling out big money on a gym contract for a gym I may not love.  I've only joined 2 so far, but I have a list of a handful more to check out soon.

On Friday I tried out a large gym just down the road from work, and I'm a fan so far.  They have showers (a little important for pre-work sweat fests), loads of empty cardio equipment, and I think I even spotted free/cheap coffee!  Oddly, there were also about 20 males there for every female.  Not interested in the eye candy, but I literally had the whole locker room to myself!

Locker room, with mirrored optical illusion included.  Super outdated 90s fab, but clean and empty!

But really I just wanted to share how happy I was after pounding out 8 miles on a Friday night!  My longest run so far, and it felt so good to see that 8 when I was done.  My Motoactv tells me thorough my headphones every time I hit a new longest distance or time, and it is such a running high.  It's a little "that's the farthest I've ever ran... and now I'm going to just keep going!"  The reality is that before I started running a few weeks ago, I had never ran more than 3 miles at a time.  I am in totally new territory for running continuous miles.  90 minute soccer games, yes.  But never just straight out running.  It is such an incredible feeling to hit each little milestone.

Tomorrow comes a new milestone.  I have 10 pre-work treadmill miles planned out for the morning!  Guess that means I should pack my gym bag and get some sleep...

Whirliwind- with an extra i

I capped off the weekend with a 5 mile run early this AM before I had to rush off to start another work week.  I really chose running over sleep; who have I become?!

It was a busy weekend, but I did manage to get in no less than 2 hours of napping each day.  Now that sounds more like me.

Friday was a hardcore cleaning fest while the hubs was entertaining a few friends that were in town for a hockey tournament.  It mostly involved our bedroom, since my pile of "shoes I wore this week" looked like this:

And this pair too, since we're totally unsanitary and put shoes and sweaty socks on the bed.

Saturday was a whirlwind day including ice hockey spectating, family time, an epic 3 hour nap followed by a 3 hour run, and some majoring feasting and fun at Dave and Buster's to cap off the night.

It should also be shown here that I don't totally live in athletic shoes and attire.  I prettied it up for the D&B dinner with the hub's coworkers.

Sunday would have brought more spectating, but we had both the game time and location wrong, so we went grocery shopping at Target at 9am instead.

We later headed to the auto show downtown, where I began drooling over the post-graduation car possibilities.  I've seriously lusting over the CRV right now.  I kind of didn't want to get out of the floor model... like at all.  But they told me I couldn't take it home with me.  Bummer.

Just one-more-thing to look forward to post graduation in... only about 10 more weeks!!!

Oh and I did I emphasize that I ran 5 miles?  Because I did, twice!  I actually wanted 7 this AM but I didn't get out of bed fast enough!

Sending love

Just wanted to send out some warm wishes and a Happy Valentine's Day +1 from me and my obnoxiously festive nails.  Hope everyone found some time to love themselves and share some time with loved ones yesterday!

Happy Monday- is that possible?

I promised I would be back with new, happy things.  It's a fresh week, and I am putting all of last week long behind me.

Since being cleared to start running again a few weeks ago, I have been on a roll.  My leg is feeling great, which makes me feel great.  And the ability to get my feet on the pavement, that just makes things that much better.  The pavement part helps too- we've had some ridiculous January-February weather this year.  I ran on Super Bowl Sunday in capris and short sleeves.  Yesterday, I don't think it reached 30 degrees.

On to the rest of the good.

1.  I hit 2 miles.

And then I hit 3 miles.  I'm trying to ramp slowly and work in plenty of weights and cross training, but I feel great!

2. Before heading out for more than 1 mile, it was time for new shoes!

The friendly man at the running store was a huge help, and I think I'm in love with my Brooks Ghost 4's.  Just don't tell the hubs he's not the only love in my life.

3. Back to running, I can finally get to wearing all the running clothes that have been hanging out with the tags still on.

I am really loving these North Face capris right now.  I am usually pretty frugal with my workout clothes, but these are just such an amazingly nice quality pair of capris.  Bonus that I actually snagged them off the clearance rack at REI!

4. I planked for over 4 minutes!

5. I joined a gym.  More precisely, I joined about 8000 gyms.  I found an absolutely fantastic deal/membership through my health insurance that lets me join a bunch of different gyms for one super-duper low price.  I only joined one near my house so far, but I'm excited to check out about a half dozen more between my house and work.  With the 20+ mile each way commute, it would be nice to have a place close to work or at least in between.

Karma

I hate for my first post in so long to be so negative, but I have to get this off my chest.

I accidentally left my wallet in the cart at Target yesterday afternoon, in the parking lot.  I didn't realize it was missing until I couldn't find it before leaving for work this morning.

I called Target immediately because it was the last place I was with it before arriving home.  Score!  They had my wallet in their safe.  Target is in the opposite direction of work so I had to wait until I got off work at 7 tonight to go pick it up, but I was relieved knowing it was there.

Wallet was in fact there.
There wasn't any cash to be stolen, thankfully.
All my credit cards and IDs were moved around but all there.
Change pocket empty.
Almost every single last gift card was gone.

I was so angry I could scream.  I can't even fathom the idea of stealing something that isn't mine, especially when I could clearly see who it belonged to.  Even the hubs asked how someone could look right at my picture on my license and still steal from me, hah.  Nothing burns me up inside like people that are so selfish.  I'm not a hateful person, but things like this make me karma believer.

But trying to see the bright side... I reflected on the fact that there was actually only one valuable card stolen, a $50 restaurant card we had from Christmas.  The rest of the haul consisted of this:
- Starbucks card worth less than $1- glad I bought that Venti last week to use most of it up!
- Two AmEx cards worth less than $2 each-that had been in my wallet for almost 5 years each
- Victoria's Secret $10 Rewards card that was both used up and expired- I'm bad at cleaning out my wallet
- A handful of small change- quarters go straight to my "parking meter quarters" stash- no quarters for you!

I cancelled all my cards and had them replaced anyways- just to be safe.  But aside from that, I'm really just out one dinner and a few tears.

PS- I totally used my stash of "parking meter quarters" to buy a morning coffee and apologized profusely for the handful of change I handed to the barista.

Will be back soon with news of rainbows, sunshine, no more injuries, and running shoes!