So, first of all, I just want to take a little poll.

This is totally normal, right?

I mean…everyone has a huge treadmill in the middle of their living room, right?

Right?!

I do have some crazy ideas, but believe it or not, the whole ‘treadmill in the middle of the living room’ thing was not part of my original plan. I’m crazy, but I’m not insane.

The reason there is a treadmill in the middle of my living room is because in light of purchasing our “dream” house, My Gazelle and I decided to cancel our respective gym memberships. When we do finally move into a new house, at that point we will have two mortgages. [Thank you, negative equity]. We are doing drastic things in order to cut expenses in advance of entering into the “two mortgage zone”. It’s a dangerous place to be.

We allowed ourselves a budget of $1000 to purchase all of the equipment that we would need to furnish our home gym. We feel pretty confident that with the gym actually residing in our home, we will be even more likely to work out in our free time. Since I am a fair weather runner [and despise the hassle of going to a gym], I have been wanting a treadmill of my own for a few years. I just didn’t think we had any space for it.

Clearly, I was wrong!

See–plenty of space!!

In the end, we purchased a new set of PowerBlocks on sale at a local fitness equipment store, and then found this treadmill, a squat rack, an incline bench, two bars, and a whole set of weight plates on Craigslist. All for $1,100 [almost made the budget]!

When we purchased this treadmill the weekend of April 23rd, we should have already settled on our new house. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that smoothly, so now we have a great treadmill [conversation piece] in the middle of the living room. The funny thing is that having the treadmill in the middle of the living room has proved to be a great motivation to use it. I see it on a daily basis, and My Gazelle often walks returns from a walk or a trip to the store only to find me huffing it out on the treadmill.

Sweating all over our carpet.

He loves that part.

Moral of the story: If you’re looking for fitness equipment, go directly to Craigslist. And don’t be afraid to store it in the middle of a high-traffic area in your house until you have a legitimate place to put it.

———-

And now, a winner.

In the midst of my hiatus, I actually forgot to pick the winner of the Hardware Designs bracelet [p.s...thank you for reminding me, Summer]! It’s a little late, but here’s the winner:

Yay!

Incidentally, Meredith followed up with this comment, and I think it’s great!

So, congrats Meredith–wear it proud! Just email me your shipping instructions, and I’ll have Hardware Designs send your bracelet out ASAP!

Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, peeps, and be safe!

Disclosure: Actions you take from the links within this blog post may yield commissions for joggerslife.com. See Jogger’s Life’s disclosure statement for more details.

First, thank you so much for the support on my swimming SKILZ yesterday! Where some might not be bothered, I find it rather nerve wracking to post a video of myself scantily clad, doing something that I’m not comfortable doing.

(perv.)

So, I know that I still have a lot of work to do on my swimming, but I’m pretty confident that I will be able to improve both my form and endurance if I just keep practicing 3 times per week. That equates to 20 more swims before my first TRI, so I think I should be good by then. If not, at least I know how to do the back crawl.

The whole concept of having to train for three events (swim, bike, run) at the same time was not lost in the translation for me when I signed up for this whole ‘triathlon’ business. I have always owned the fact that I was going to have to “know” all three events, but the biking and running don’t have me nervous. The swimming is another story.

I’ve actually been kind of excited about the biking and running events; and I haven’t been excited about running for a very long time. However, after spending most of the previous 2 years training for race after race after race, and running longer distances each time, I was finding this strange comfort in the fact that for my triathlons, “I only have to run 3 miles”.

Shortly, I came to the realization that I have that blasted 15K Boilermaker Road Race sandwiched between my two triathlons, which means that I need to be able to run (at least) 9 miles before July 11th.

p.s…who is the nimrod that made this race schedule of mine?

I’d be lying if I told you that I’m excited about training for and running a 15K. However, nothing seems very far anymore, because I compare every running distance to that damn marathon that I did last October. In the face of 26.2 miles, 9 miles seems like a walk in the park. Every single run that I’ve done since that fateful day in October has been weighed against my marathon. Strangely, nothing ever seems even a fraction as bad.

p.s…I’ll probably compare child birth to my marathon. And child birth will seem better.

I began running on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule last week. On Tuesday, I tolerated it. By Thursday, I was bored out of my mind.

This Tuesday, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I love music, and I always run with my iPod, but I was running with a “New Run” playlist that was no longer “New”, nor did it make me want to “Run”.

On Thursday, I ran with the “New and Improved Run” playlist, and I didn’t want to get off of the treadmill. It reminded me of how important it is for me to stay excited about running, and how music actually helps me feel that way.

In my opinion, this playlist is something to get excited about. It’s diverse. It’s quirky. It’s fun. And it made me run fast!

“Sober”-Pink
“Sweet Dreams (Hot Remix)”-Eurythmics
“Seven Nation Army”-White Stripes
“Rock This Party (Everybody Dance Now)”-Boyz Boyz
“Breed”-Nirvana
“Pump It”-Black Eyed Peas
“Take Your Shirt Off”-T Pain (I might have said “Take your mothaf@c%in shirt off!” out loud…while running…on the treadmill”)
“Tambourine”-Eve
“Scenario”-A Tribe Called Quest
“Rape Me”-Nirvana
“Unbelievable”-EMF
“Imma Be”-Black Eyed Peas
“In Bloom”-Nirvana
“Universal Mind Control”-Common
“International Player”-Andre 3000
“Ice Ice Baby”-Vanilla Ice
“Oh Sherrie”-Steve Perry

This playlist is between 30-40 minutes, so it was great for my 3 mile treadmill run. You should try it…but make sure there is nobody around, because it’s difficult to NOT rap along with T-Pain.

What are your favorite songs to run with?

Tomorrow, I have an awesome guest post on a product that everyone seems to want these days (including me)!

Today, I want to bring your attention over to Jen’s site, where she is hosting Part II of her Stairmaster Invitational. Despite the fact that she’s doing it because Tony called her out and picked on her on his site, I still support her decision to sweat it out. And I rather think this method is very cool in an “I challenge you to a duel” sort of John Wayne frontier-y way.

Er. Something.

I’m also going to join in on the sweat party, and I think you should too. All of our sweat will benefit charity, and that’s pretty cool.

So, what say you…99 minutes of continuous sweating on April 20th–are you man enough? If you want to participate, hop on over to Jen’s site (which you should be reading anyway), and leave her a comment to let her know you’re on board.

Happy sweating!

As for me, yesterday I swam, and today is a running day. I was planning on getting up at the buttcrack of dawn again today to knock out my run, but I just couldn’t.get.out.of.bed! There is something about Tuesday that is infinitely worse than any Monday I’ve ever experienced, and Tuesday does not let me get up early. Ever.

So, I’ll do my run at lunchtime. I am aiming for 3 miles today. I had the realization yesterday that I’ve signed up for The Boilermaker 15K again this summer (remember, that race was the whole reason why I started this blog thingy in 2008), and I need to be able to run 9 miles by July 11th!

I’ve sited so many examples of my lack of preparedness, as well as my chronic ‘fly by the seat of my pantsedness’, and here is yet another example. Luckily, I’ve considered this far enough in advance, so it’s not a crisis. So, in addition to learning how to swim (p.s…this could be going better) and mastering the art of clipping into a road bike without suffering a head injury, I will also need to build my mileage back up for the Boilermaker.

Piece of cake.

Right?

In the meantime, stay tuned later this week for some sweet video of me trying not to drown!

My day started out fine.  No drama.

Chipotle for lunch with Restaurant Boy.

I mean really.  How can you go wrong with Restaurant Boy?

You might not have known this because I’ve never told you, but I have never really enjoyed Chipotle in the past.  The reason is because it has always hurt my guts.  I never understood the whole thing, since I know that Chipotle uses all natural ingredients.  It just didn’t make sense.  I cut meat out of the bowl, and it still hurt my guts.  About 2 weeks ago, I gave it another whirl.

Because I am a constant source of self-torture.

This time, I omitted the rice.

Pinto beans, peppers & onions, corn and medium green salsa, guacamole, and lots of lettuce.  BINGO!  WE HAVE A WINNER!   A non-gut-aching vegetarian fajita bowl for your girl.  No intestinal revolt.  So, I’ve basically been eating Chipotle now at every other meal.

So when a day starts out with Restaurant Boy and Chipotle, it can only get better, right?!

Right?

Wrong.

For the entire day, I was dreading my run.  Walked to the copier, dreading my run.  Walked to refill my water bottle, dreading my run.  Foam rolled my sore hamstrings, dreading my run.

Tonight, I didn’t want to run.  at.all.

I was tired and so sore from kickboxing class, and the only thing that I really wanted to do was go home, curl up on the futon with some steamed veggies, and catch up on Tough Love and Teen Mom.

I really am not lying when I tell you that I’m a reality TV addict.  My problem doesn’t end with just botox-injected one-hit wonders.

So, what I’m trying to say is that I wanted to go home.  Running was the last thing I wanted to do.

I attend the most insane kickboxing class now on Mondays and Wednesdays.  On Monday, we low crawled.  As in ‘combat training low crawl’.  As in, dragging ones lifeless legs behind oneself using only ones elbows.  This causes bodily injury.

See, the problem with this insane class is that there is no room to be lazy.  If you’re not working out on the days when you’re not kickboxing, you’re getting beat the hail up in class on Monday and Wednesday.  You will be abused, chewed up, and spit out.  The fact that I refuse to be defeated is also part of the problem as well, I would imagine.

I have to get my runs in so that I can finish the Disney Princess 1/2 in March.

I have to do my cross and weight training so that I don’t get injured again like I did in 2009.

These are not things that I can be lazy about.  I hated being hurt, and the reason I was hurt is because I was slacking.  So, when I feel like slacking, I have to think twice about it now, and just look forward to my next rest day.  As I slogged along after work, and procrastinated, I just kept thinking about the fact that tomorrow was my rest day.

If by rest, you mean working for 8 hours, grocery shopping, and generally running errands like a crazy lady, then yes…definitely a rest day.

So.  I needed to be motivated, and I did what any reasonable person would do.  I went in the bathroom, changed into my Skirtsports running skirt and tank (which strangely resembles something that I would’ve worn to the club back in the day), and I proceeded to examine my growing baby muscles in the mirror.

Everyone does this, right?

Right?

And then I focused…er something.  Who knows what this face is.

Ha!  Do you see that silly little gun making an appearance?  I haven’t seen that thing in years.

I think it’s even grown since I last LOVED MYSELF.

No, I’m not sniffing my armpit here.

After a full on photo shoot, I stopped procrastinating and got my a$$ to the gym.  Several minutes and 4 miles later, it was over, and I was glad that I sucked it up and went.

And the guns are growing baby!  Woo!

* Have you joined my Facebook Group yet?

* See how my training is going over here!

* Looking for my eBook?

*Check out my body image project!

If you missed yesterday’s No Excuses Tuesday post, you really should check it out.  Go ahead, I’ll wait…

In case you don’t know what ‘No Excuses Tuesday’ is (which I wouldn’t expect you to, since I just made it up like 4.5 seconds ago), I’m going to start devoting my post every Tuesday to another fellow blogger who didn’t/doesn’t let excuses get in the way of their own personal progress.  This could include anyone who overcomes any type of challenge in order to meet their goals; whether personal, fitness, or career-related.

If you’d like to be featured on ‘No Excuses Tuesday’, or if you want to nominate someone who you think should be featured, please contact me.  p.s…There could be prizes involved!

Although I’ve set the bar very high by featuring Jen on the first ‘No Excuses Tuesday’ post, I know that there are many other bloggers out there whose stories can motivate and push us all to the next level.

So, start thinking of who you’d like to see up here on JL for the next ‘No Excuses Tuesday’!

* Have you joined my Facebook Group yet?

* See how my training is going over here!

* Looking for my eBook?

*Check out my body image project!