Jig and Jog

For the two weeks after my first marathon, I took it easy. I did basically no physical activity other than hiking around Catalina Island a week ago for work. I did this for two reasons. The first being my knees after the race were not happy with me.  I’m 90% sure my knee issues are IT Band related. The second being I was tired and kind of burnt out.  While the excitement of the upcoming Tinkerbell Half Marathon in January is helping, starting a new job, and continuing to work my old job at the same time has been a little stressful and slightly draining.  Not terribly so, but it’s been a long few weeks where I’ve definitely worked more than 8 hours days nearly every day.

(This is one of the Marathon photos I ordered, btw)

A year ago, when I was training for my first half-marathon, The Disneyland Half, I took a month of boot camp classes at a local gym (Pink Iron for you LA ladies) and loved it.  However, it was pricey so I ended up not renewing my classes there, which bummed me out. I stayed on their mailing list however, and they offered a sweet deal last month which I totally jumped on.  $49 a month for unlimited group classes. Sweet, right? So, I signed up and then in November they started running this Nutrition Challenge.

I have to admit that while I have never struggled with my weight in terms of numbers on a scale, I have not always loved my body, and I know that if I want to be able to continue to run half and full marathons, I needed to step up my game strength wise. I also knew that I was falling into a processed food spiral where I was consuming a lot of fruit snacks, granola bars and other convenience foods that aren’t really that great for you. I knew I needed to make a change, but it’s hard to get started, and I wasn’t even exactly sure where to start.

I had Friday off from work (after working all last weekend,) so I met with the owner of the gym and signed up to do their 24 Day Nutrition Challenge.  I purchased the 24 Day kit which was products from Advocare and officially started today.

I’m pretty wary of anything with a “Detox” in it, but after talking with the owner of the gym, and reading up on the products myself, I’m pretty excited about this. There is no “no eating” in this detox, it’s simply cutting out processed foods and really bulking up on clean eating and real foods. Sounds good to me! I’ll give you a better re-cap of the program later, but this morning’s workout was a Crossfit class at the gym. It was great! I was really intimidated at first, but the workouts were totally doable and everyone was friendly.  I’m really looking forward to increasing my strength and pushing myself.

It felt great to start off my Monday with a workout, and still have time to come home, shower and read my blogs

How did you start your Monday?