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Last night was the least restful and most painful night I’ve had in a LONG time. I went to bed around 2am, but just as I was brushing my teeth I got hit with the worst stomach ache I have ever had. I’ve had my appendix taken out but this was worse pain. After finally managing to get up to my room, thinking it would get better if I lay down the way  always do for me, it still wasn’t any better. I spent some quality time with WebMD’s symptom checker, which, for once, actually did not make me panic. I mean yes, it did tell me I could have cancer but it at least assured me that I wasn’t going to die within an hour. after curling up for maybe 2 hours, I finally fell asleep.

I woke up with no pain, but my stomach felt off. Throughout the day though, my stomach got a little painful and continued to feel off. No idea why. Kind of annoying and is making me think that I shouldn’t run since I think making my poor stomach bounce up and down for 3.5 miles might not end well. Urgh.

Why is it that just when I want to up my mileage and start running more that this happens and I’m sidelined? I don’t know what I’m going to do if the pain returns. Especially at 2am, when I can’t just give my doctor a call. I’ve been to the hospital during the night before for another stomach ache a few years back and we ended up sitting there for at least 3 hours before we saw someone. And when the doctor did see me, he was zero help. So yeah, I figure that my next midnight trip to the hospital will only occur if I think I’ll actually get looked at before 3 hours is up. And then they actually help. It’s a long shot, those two.

 

There may be a bike ride happening though, since that should be less…bouncy.

Semi-successful

Yeah, I canceled my run. After dealing with school stuff and walking around the mall handing out resumes, both my knees decided to call it quits. Thanks guys, I appreciate it…not.

That being said I’m still going to get both upper and lower body workouts in today, because my arms look like noodles (and are about as strong)  and since my knees have zero desire to hold me up, I need to recruit my leg muscles to do the job. Hopefully if I ice and use the ointment that my doctor prescribed since NSAID’s hate my stomach, it’ll be enough to get my knees to shut up. That an a couple Advil. Oh fun times :)

Looks delightful, eh?

Yeah I have zero faith in that stuff working. At least it doesn’t smell as gross as it looks (seriously, that overly-doctored picture doesn’t even do it justice), just medicine-y.

I’m doing sort of decently on my goals for the week, I handed out some resumes and am going to apply online to a couple more since they don’t do in-store hiring. I even spoke to a manger, that’s a good thing, right? And I got my school fees dealt with, B.C. student loans are being a little dumb and losing my letters but it seems to be sorted and maybe I’ll even get my money before October. Maybe. Miracles do happen after all. And hopefully all this fee business being settled means I can finally register for the biology class I want to take (and pay half a million dollars for the textbooks). I’m an arts student and yet I need science credits. Yeah,  I don’t get it either.

Weekly Goals

So, last Monday I made myself some goals for the past week. Now that the week is over, how did I do?

1. Run 9 miles –  yeah, not so much. I did 6 because I left my last 3 mile run till the last minute and it didn’t exactly happen

2. 5 strength training session – um, nope. I did do 2 upper body and 1 lower body strength sessions though, so it’s an improvement. Plus I went kayaking, which was good for my arms.

3. Stretch everyday – …I stretched maybe 5 days, so not too too bad. I need to stretch daily though.

4. Organize my table – I got 2 drawers organized, does that count?

5. Drop off some resumes – I applied to a few jobs on Craigslist, but I never actually got my butt out the door to my local mall or anything.

And now onto this week:

1. Run 10 miles – I want to work up to doing Hal Higdon’s Intermediate 8-K plan, which means I need to get my mileage up to at least 15 miles per week. Especially because I have plans to do 2 races this spring, the Vancouver Sun Run (10km/6.2miles) and the BMO Vancouver Half-Marathon (13.1 miles/21.1km). The Sun Run is in April and the Vancouver half-marathon is in May.

2. Drink 8 cups of water throughout the day – no chugging it just before my runs, because that just makes me cramp up. Not fun. I’m counting things like tea too, but not coffee because with the amount of caffeine my morning coffee has (3 heaping or 6 normal teaspoons of instant coffee) I’m sure it’s doing more dehydration than hydration.

3. Finish organizing table and then organize bookshelf – summer meant I could get away with having my books and papers messy, but with school coming up in just over 2 weeks, I need to get it together.

4. Cut down sugar – mass amounts of sugar on a daily basis are just unnecessary, make me break out and will end up making me gain weight. And while I could definitely afford to lose 10-20lbs, gaining that much would make me overweight. Not cool.

5. Hand out (more) resumes – I’m doing this tomorrow, since I need to go to my university and pay school fees anyways.

6. Get school fees paid – yeah, I probably shouldn’t forget to do this.

7. 5 strength workouts – I want to finish the 100 pushups and 150 dips plans sometime this decade and if I’m going to be running I need to do lower body workouts.

Let’s see how we do, shall we?

Weekend of fun

So my weekend didn’t go quite the way I planned. I had grand plans of running 3 miles and getting 2 strength workouts in. Yeah, not so much. Lesson learned, don’t leave half your weekly workouts till the last second. They won’t happen. Anyways, despite the lack of planned workouts, my weekend was pretty fun. I ended up going over to a friend’s house on Saturday for half the day. It was good to see my highschool friends again, I haven’t seen them in a while. It’s weird how you just sort of drift apart, even though everyone warned me it would happen. Thankfully though, when we do finally manage to meet up it’s just like old times. I’d say with no awkwardness, but that’d be a lie. Then again we were always weird and awakward so I’m not sure that’ll ever change.

Excuse the shininess. And the hair. And the facial expression.

A fun night was had by all. And especially by me ;)

On Sunday, after finally heaving myself out of bed, I went down to the lake with the family. We took out some kayaks and paddled about for an hour. I think we need to find a new lake though, this one is tiny. As in I-can-kayak-around it-in-20-minutes tiny. Oh well, it was fun anyways. After our little kayak session, we played badminton for a bit and then I vegged out with a book.

Clearly still working on that summer tan. Only in B.C. does summer only start mid-August.

Cheers guys.

Stupid knees

So I succeeded in getting to bed by 1am last night. Not quite 12am, but whatever, progress is progress and I’ll take it. The only issue with this progress is that I spent way too long lying in bed attempting to fall asleep. Not cool body, not cool. I’m hoping by the time class starts I’ll actually be able to fall asleep within oh, an hour of getting into bed.

No run or leg workout happened yesterday because of a (not so) fun doctor’s appointment. I’ve had bad knees for years and lately they (especially the right one) have been acting up. Since my body is so used to Advil that it’s not really doing much but killing the pain for 4-6 hours, my doctor put me on naproxen, another NSAID, to bring down the inflammation since the swelling was starting to tweak a nerve. But apparently my knee and my stomach have teamed up against me and I ended up with a couple of days of bad stomache aches, despite taking the stomach meds I got at the same time. So the naproxen is out and I’m stuck using some sort of gel. Don’t have much hope in that working out, but an MRI would be a 6 month wait, I don’t really have much choice. Blech. I like that it’s all free, but I hate the wait times.

As far as workouts today, an arm workout and a 3 mile run is happening, just as soon as I. Hopefully I can avoid the emergency stop button this time, as I’d actually like to run 3 miles.

*insert creative title here*

So I didn’t go to bed by 12am last night either. I think this habit is kicking my ass, not the other way around. I almost got to bed by 1am, but then watching random hockey video on YouTube won out. *sigh*

In my defense even when I did get to bed I didn’t end up having a restful night at all. I’m terrible about getting to bed, but once I’m in I’m usually golden and I rarely wake up before my alarm, but last night I seriously woke up every hour. Not cool.

I got 3 miles in yesterday, as per my plan, but it ended up being in two parts since I hit the emergency stop button on the treadmill at 1.7 and just decided to go foam roll since the treadmill clearly didn’t like me. I hate that emergency stop button, I get that it’s important but I’ve almost wiped out on the treadmill every single time I’ve hit it. Not cool, not at all. I don’t need any help hurting myself. Talking about hurting myself, I still have a brusie on my ankle that I got a week ago. And it’s not looking any better, either. Goes along with all the cut marks on my ankle from who knows what.

I also got an arm workout in. I hate pushups. And I hate dips. Maybe it was a bad idea to do the 100 Pushups and the 150 Dips programs at the same time? I remember doing the 200 squats workout and having zero issues with it and being able to do way more than 200 by the end, but somehow I don’t think that’ll be the case for these two. Maybe for the dips, but no way in hell am I going to be able to do 100 pushups in less than 3 weeks. But at least I have 3/5 of my strength workouts for the week out of the way and I’m either going to do a leg workout today, or go for another 3 mile run, depending on how my knees end up feeling.

I failed..

At going to bed by midnight last night. Probably because I decided to do my leg workout at 11:25pm last night. Which probably happened because I overdid the sugar consumption. Me + lots of sugar = bouncing off walls. Or working out at close to midnight. I never claimed to be smart, okay?

I also spent a good hour trying to find a decent self-portrait for the “about me” page and have come to the conclusion that my friends and I suck at taking photos. Everything is either out of focus, blurry or from grade 8. Or has half my head chopped off, which defeats the purpose of putting a face to the blog, or however the expression goes.

I then decided to take a self-portrait for the blog and realized that I need to practice the cam whoring, since I cannot get a decent shot. And by decent I mean not blurry beyond recognition or 2/3 of my face out of the shot.

But…at least I’m doing decently at my goals: there have been 2 strength training sessions and I even stretched today. Which is a miracle in and of itself. So now maybe my arms will look less like noodles and more like the arms of a former gymnast. And my quads won’t be so tight it hurts to move.

So now I’m waiting on my grandma to wake up so I can go to the gym and run a few miles and then foam roll. I haven’t foam rolled in a while, mostly because the foam roller at my gym is in the weights area and I feel awkward rolling my quads and grimacing in pain as all the guys stare.

Kick the Habit!

I first saw Freely Be’s “Kick the Habit” over at Gracie’s blog and I thought it was such a great idea. I didn’t have a blog then, so I’m joining in…half a month late. Yeah, whatever, don’t judge me. Anyways, I have tons of habits that need a firm kick in the ass, but since it’s August and I start school in September (gulp), I figured I would kick one that’s pertinent to that. I go to bed at, oh on average, 2am. Sometimes 1am. Sometimes 3am. And last night I went to bed at almost 5am. Yeah, it’s a problem, since I’ll have to get up between 7 and 8am starting September 6 and 2-3 hours of sleep does not a happy Kat make. So, my goal for the month (and hopefully past that) is to be in bed by the incredibly early and unrealistic time of…12am. I’ll be like Cinderella; the clock strikes midnight and I’m out of the ball and into my bed.

And now, so that I don’t fail miserably at that goal, I’m going to go tackle my to-do list, which, among many other things includes a run, a leg workout and tackling the mess that my room has become.

Cheers!

Finished!

My exams that is. Now I get 3 weeks off before fall semester begins. 3 weeks to accomplish so many things I want to get done before classes start…

And with that (not so) brilliant segue I’ll go on to my next topic. Goals! I have a bunch of things I want to do this summer, but, more importantly, I have things I want to get done next week. Just minor goals, that if I complete week after week after week will get me to where I want to go. I write out a list of what I want to get done before classes start sometime in the next few days, but since it’s the start of a new week, I figure I should get to posting my weekly goals now!

So:

1. Run 9 miles – I’m trying to up my weekly mileage, but I need to do it slowly because seven years of basketball have not been kind to my knees. And then there’s that chronic ankle sprain. And the shin splints. You get the point, I’m sure.

2. 5 strength training session – I majorly slacked off last week and only did two upper body ones, so this week I’m going to commit to 2 lower body workouts and 3 upper body ones. Strength training is so important and, on a vain note, I’m really liking the tiny bit of definition I’m starting to get in my arms :)

3. Stretch everyday – I have super tight muscles that end up being really painful and are, according to my physiotherapist, the cause for some of knee problems. My quads are so tight that they’re tugging on my patella (knee cap). Sound unpleasant and feels rather painful.

4. Organize my table – it’s insanely messy and I need it to be neat for when classes start-up again because I’ll be taking 4-5 of them and organization is going to be key.

5. Drop of some resumes – I need a job ASAP. I’ve majorly slacked off on this all summer, but education doesn’t come free, and neither do laptops, DSLR cameras, makeup, clothing, nights out…yeah, if I want to have that kind of lifestyle, I need to figure out a way to support it and a job seems like the easiest (legal) way to do it.

Question of the day:

Do you set weekly goals? Do you find they help you stay on track?

Cheers!

Umm..

So…my first post. Awkward. This post is why even though I made my blog in March I’m only doing this in the middle of August. Procrastination at its finest. I should also be studying for my history final right now, so clearly I have phenomenal timing. I have an about me page, so I don’t really want to give you a quick – and awkward – summary of who I am in the next 100 words. I’d rather let the next 100 posts do that. So since it’ll be dinner in a few minutes I’ll just say welcome  and I hope you stick around to find out more.

Cheers!

PS. Oh and I promise to get some photos on here soon, I swear.