C25K Week 4 Recap

I didn't get to recap on Friday, so I won't fill you on any thoughts for this week that starts today and I'll pretend that it's Friday still!

Week four was tough! It went right into 16 minutes of running broken down into 4 intervals which is quite a bit more than any week prior which was 9 minutes of running max, so it goes without saying IT WAS HARD!  I even came down with a cold so I couldn't breathe but I still hit the treadmill three times a week last week and even added Zumba to the mix Thursday! 

Day one of C25K was an adjustment, but I did it, YAY!  I always dread day 2 as it seems to be the hardest, but this past week, it was actually pretty easy; day 3, however, was the hardest!  I don't know if it was from Zumba the day before, but I was soooooooo done!!!

Running while sick.  Hmmm... It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  My sinuses cleared up during the run but my chest hurt real bad afterward in a way I can't explain.  I'm glad I didn't use the excuse of having a cold to keep me off the treadmill - I feel quite accomplished that I completed another week successfully.  But I would definitely prefer to be healthy during my runs!

I keep wondering if I'll have to repeat some weeks.  A lot of people seem to repeat weeks when they feel they need it and looking into week five, it may be time for a repeat, but we will see how it goes...I've been icing my legs a lot to keep the pain down.  It's weird - it hurts only when I begin running then goes away and then will ache occasionally throughout the day, but if I push on my leg to find the pain, there isn't any... not sure what is going on there, but I'm happy to report that I had zero pain this past weekend!

On another happy note, I'm down three pounds!!  Whoo hoo!  It's super nice to see some results on the scale and this was on Monday before I even began any of my week four running or zumba!!  Hopefully I can keep adding to the weight loss!

I'll blog soon about my fitbit review - it wasn't what I was expecting or what I thought I wanted, but I LOVE it, yay!

My new fitness toy!

I've been debating on buying a calorie counter/heart rate monitor for awhile now.  When I was steadily at the gym last summer I was researching and looking into them and now I really wish I had gotten one.  I really want to know how many calories I'm burning each day!  It turns out we had a little bit of money leftover from our tax return, ya know, after putting money away to savings, for vacation, for church and for some car repairs.  It's like the one time of the year we can splurge on ourselves just a bit (we're talking $100 each here - whoopdidoo!), but we look forward to being able to get something we've really wanted without feeling guilty about spending the money.  Last year I got a cricut and Matt paid for an entire years worth of Sirius/XM.  This year he is renewing his subscription and I got myself a fitbit and Zumba 2 for the wii! 



I did a little bit of reading again on different monitors, the fitbit, the bodybugg, the jawbone up, and body media just to name a few.  They are all basically the same, as in they count calories, steps walked, some, including the fitbit, monitor your sleeping (which I'm quite curious about because I wake up every morning at 3:30 and can't fall back asleep), etc.  So I jumped on it and got myself a fitbit and thanks to amazon's free two day shipping, I hope to have it by midweek!  I even splurged and got myself the pretty plum colored one!

Wanting to up my activity level this week, I was considering going back to zumba at my gym twice a week in the evenings.  But the classes are not at a convenient time for our family.  We would have to rush to eat dinner and get out the door to be there by 6:30 and then when it's over it would be immediate bedtime for them once we got home.  I've already cut back on some things in my life to have some more "time" and I don't want to hinder it, especially the girl's!  So I was thinking that since I do my C25K training on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I would do zumba at home on Tuesday and Thursday mornings!  I didn't even know there was a zumba 2, I saw it when I googled reviews for the first one!  I read the reviews and watched actual demos and reviews on youtube and can't wait to get it this week (thanks again to free 2-day shipping at amazon!)! 

I really can't wait to combine the fitbit with the C25K and zumba and hopefully see the weight come off a little faster than what I mentioned in my C25K week 3 update.  Have you ever used a fitness monitor? What about using the wii (or xbox or ps3) for exercise?