Self Destruct

May 26, 2020

The first month of quarantine was hard. It was dealing with a whirlwind of demons due to no gym to keep the monsters in check. The second month, it got a little easier, as I was able to obtain a barbell and weights from a work colleague, and my husband set up a separate space for my home gym for me to work out in peace and maintain focus. He set everything up with speakers for my music, plenty of light, and now even a nice ring light stand for my phone for me to easily record IG stories to help keep me accountable when I work out. I finally developed somewhat of a routine down for what to do on certain days. The second month I was able to get back on track and feel somewhat normal again. I was motivated more often than not and really pushing myself to get more miles in during my runs, outstepping my coworkers, putting in the time and breaking up my days with every morning for cardio and nights for weights. Signing up for the WDW marathon was absolutely scary but it was a nice rush of motivation and inspiration that week and I ended up logging in 100km(about 62.1 miles) the following week as I rode that high.

But then this past week, out of nowhere, I had a moment of “off” all over gain. It goes to show you that no matter how hard you work, and even if you’re eating well and your nutrition is on point, there are just going to be some days where you’re not feeling 100%. And it’s okay. You’ll get back on as long as you make the effort, keep trying and commit to showing up for yourself. But that’s also easier said than done, I know. My point is, I’m still working on it and going through it. The journey is far from over. It’s only just started and despite how much work I already have put in, it’s up to me to make sure these habits stick and become second nature instead of something I can easily give up because I just feel like being lazy and complacent again. I do have to credit that my last two years have definitely helped a lot into creating and maintaining these habits so I actually want to work out now. And I do want to eat healthier and try to choose the right foods more often than not.

But again, it feels like a roller coaster with so many high highs and low lows recently. I’ll feel totally fine and feeling myself one day and then the next day, the fat monster comes out to wreak havoc making me second guess everything I put in my mouth to eat that day. I really wish I could develop a more healthy relationship with food and my weight. Unfortunately, I feel like this is something you just have to go through on your own. All the words of encouragement of others simply can’t pierce through to the annoying worst enemy that is myself. It’s like how you could get a million compliments in a day, but that one bad one could ruin your whole day. The funny thing, I’ve learned to not let what others throw at me ruin my day, but I’ve yet to learn to shut out my own self destructive thoughts. Why am I my own worst enemy???

I’m not actually a fan of Demi Lovato at all, but her latest single has me relating hard(I’m also a sucker for the Travis Barker version because Travis Barker. That high school part of me will never die). I don’t mean I relate to her own situation of personal problems, but just how I personally treat myself. I am definitely guilty of overthinking and obsessing over everything I eat, if and how much it’s going to fluctuate my weight, and what to do to dial back to keep it in check every single day. I still do that bad habit of eating strictly good and then falling down the rabbit hole and cheating terribly, only to lather, rinse, repeat the cycle over and over. I want to one day get to the “everything in moderation” point where I don’t step on the scale so obsessively and punish myself for every little thing. It’s getting hard because despite the work I’ve been putting in, I’m still gaining weight and losing definition. I know where the problem lies but it’s hard. Working out is definitely helping to slow it down somewhat so that not all the gains originally gained are lost. But that’s probably the next step I have to address during this quarantine. I have the workout down, now to fix the diet. I have to develop a new strategy on how to get into a new rhythm and routine and stick to it.

It’s sad that I’m good at giving advice to everyone but myself. I’m good at giving pep talks and encouraging everyone but myself. When am I going to be my own damn hype man and my own damn cheerleader. I can’t wait for this quarantine to be over so I can get back to the gym, get my gym endorphins back and banish these demons back to the dark depths of my soul. Fitness journeys aren’t just a physical journey unfortunately, but a big mental one you have to somehow overcome in your head, on your own time. Which, unfortunately for me means I’m nowhere near done. I hope 5 years from now though I’ll have a much healthier relationship with my weight, food and myself. That is, if I haven’t fully self destructed by then.

Flipping through all of these magazines
Telling me who I'm supposed to be
Way too good at camouflage
Can't see what I am
I just see what I'm not
I'm guilty 'bout everything that I eat
(Every single thing)
Feeling myself is a felony
Jedi level sabotage
Voices in my head make up my entourage
'Cause I'm a black belt when I'm beating up on myself
But I'm an expert at giving love to somebody else
I, me, myself and
I, don't see eye to
Eye, me, myself and I
Oh, why do I compare myself to everyone?
And I always got my finger on the self destruct
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Why am I always looking for a ride or die?
'Cause mine's the only heart I'm gonna have for life
After all the times I went and fucked it up
(All the times I went and fucked it up)
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I wonder when I love me is enough
I wonder when I love me is enough

Go The Distance

May 8, 2020

So it’s official! I’m all signed up and registered for the Walt Disney World marathon next year. Coincidentally, it was the only race NOT sold out this morning when I finally got through the queue so I was able to nab a spot for this race. Literally everything else sold out, the 5k, 10k, half, Goofy and Dopey challenges. Only the marathon alone was still available, and luckily for me, it’s the only race I’m aiming for. I don’t want to attempt the Dopey challenge til I’m confident I can survive a full marathon on it’s own first. One step at a time. I don’t want to be too ambitious and set myself up for failure, or worse, injury.

But this morning’s experience has me nervous because I have to do it again next month for the Princess Half weekend registration. I’m worried because last year I had no issues signing up for the Princess race weekend. There was no waiting in a virtual queue to get through registration. I was able to register all 3 races for myself and Kerri, and my sisters for the 5k with me. This year, I heard about issues with Wine & Dine races selling out at both early registration and general registration sales. And of course, with everything in 2020 being cancelled and the WDW Marathon weekend in January being the most popular of the RunDisney events, this morning’s registration was sure to sell out fast. Princess weekend is becoming more and more popular every weekend too so I’m sure there’s going to be a lot more registrants this year, along with the pandemic causing everyone to go crazy and sign up for events for next year to have something to look forward to. I love Princess weekend so I really hope I can go again next year. At least I have two chances at registration next month.

Currently I’m looking up blogs and other people’s experiences with their first marathon for advice, tips, and tricks. I’m going to continue running since that’s all I really can do but I’m wondering when I should actively start training for this since I feel like now is too early because if I start training too soon and meet goals sooner than the event date, I might get too overconfident and relax too early before then. I feel like I kind of did this with Princess training this year since I had ran a test half marathon a good two weeks before the actual race. Then I started easing off and it probably hurt me in the long run because I could’ve performed better and gotten a better time. RunDisney’s official training program by Jeff Galloway does suggest a 29 week training program even for experienced runners, and we’re currently 36 weeks out from the race. So I’m not exactly too far off from where I should begin for training. I usually train a little more aggressively than their proposed calendar but with the marathon, it might be harder since 13.1 miles is the farthest I’ve run, and that itself is time consuming enough, let alone adding more miles on weekly to increase endurance and how far I can go. Simply put, this is going to be a lot of work and I probably should stick to the schedule a little more closely to give myself enough rest in between training as well as ensuring I avoid injury. That’s the last thing I want to do, put myself out of commission and not be able to crush this goal on go day.

If you have any tips or would like to share your own experience, please, feel free to share away below in the comments. I love reading other people’s dos and don’ts and what they’ve learned. I’m not going to lie and say I’m not terrified because despite being 248 days away, I’m definitely scared as all hell. The funny thing is the night before, I was telling my husband how it was one of those situations where I’m terrified of making it through registration (because then it would mean I actually have to go through with this) and I was also equally terrified of not making it through registration if it sold out. Pick your poison. Ah, the life I choose to live.

In other updates, OMG, my hubby has cleared the den in my house and turned it into a beautiful workout space for me. He organized, threw out, and cleared out everything we had cluttered in there, put down gym mats, and positioned all the equipment in place for me. He even bought me bright white lights and set up my Mickey speaker. The bright white lights are a small detail to some, but to me, it’s a big deal. I love bright lights. Something about light in a room helps put me in the right mindset to get things done. And my Mickey speaker connects to my phone, ipad or any other device so I can stream music or play audio if I’m watching a show or whatever. It’s really helped to improve my home workouts and boosted my mental health mindset. I was stuck in a self destruct mode a few weeks ago with my demons playing at me literally EVERY DAY but since my new space was put together, I’ve been doing much better. I’m slowly starting to get an actual routine and new rhythm of things as I adjust to a new normal, even if it’s for a temporary time, albeit we have no idea how long this ‘temporary’ will last. But it’s amazing how little things like this affect your mood and help to set the day. I’m definitely still fluctuating back and forth on the scale, I’ll be honest. I’m rubberbanding currently between 115-118 but I’m coming to accept that a little weight gain during this quarantine is just inevitable. I still try to eat clean and healthy on most days but some days I let myself be human and give in to what I want to eat. I’ll work it off later when the quarantine is lifted and I can get back to my usual go hard or go home workouts in the gym. For now though, I’m going to try to relax a little bit and attempt to be kinder to myself. I know I’m really hard on myself and it’s a little unhealthy and probably what took a big toll on my stress a few weeks ago. It’s funny because despite the scale numbers gradually creeping up a little, the pictures I constantly take to track my progress help to balance out that anxiety. I still like what I see in the mirror and honestly, yes I do look bloated here and there sometimes, but for the most part, I’m still very happy with where I’m at and how I look. I don’t want to take away from that because I worked really hard the past 2 years not only on my physical appearance, strength, endurance, stamina, self discipline and health, but laying down good habits and finally sticking to them. I used to be a lot more sedentary and complacent. Now I try to get in at least 20,000 steps a day. I am very conscious of how much protein I consume and try to limit my carb and sugar intake. I make time to make sure I'm packing proper meals for work so I'm not mindlessly ordering out, wasting money and wasting progress. I try to focus more on fueling my body, rather than mindlessly feeding it and damaging it in ways that would create health problems and weight problems later on. I plan all my meals in advance, even if I plan on ordering food, I'll try to pick healthier alternatives. I hydrate like a fish. All I drink is water and lots of it daily. I learned that as long as you stick with something, what seems so hard now will one day be your warm up. 5ks used to be insufferable for me. Now a 10k is routine. I try to run for at least an hour when I do go running. I work out almost every day, whether it’s a run, weights, stretching or a combination of various workouts. I’m looking to learn and incorporate yoga possibly into my routine during this quarantine. I mean, no better time to learn, right?

I’m learning to treat exercise as a celebration for what your body can do, not a punishment for what you ate. I look forward to my daily runs and my home workouts. I do them because I want to. I try not to skip workouts because I’ve learned to love consistency. I’ve grown into the mindset that I’d rather come out with 3 months of progress, instead of 3 months of excuses. So much can change in 30 days. That can be good or bad, depending on how you want to take control of the situation.

I’ve also learned to use social media more intentionally. People always complain about how we need to use it less and spend more time off our phones. While I do believe I need to unplug every now and then, I do believe you can use social media in a more productive way. I started unfollowing and muting everything that doesn’t speak to me. Marie Kondo-ing my feed, in a sense. I only want to follow those that inspire and motivate me. I want to engage with people I can learn from, and those that produce genuine, positive, interesting conversations. So that I’m not just mindlessly scrolling. I’m trying to rid my feed of the complaining, hating, negativity and bitterness that plagues social media and gives it a bad name. I’m learning to starve the trolls because it’s not worth my energy or time. I’ve never cared about the number of followers anyway. So now I’m focusing more on the followers that have stuck around and have something of substance to say, instead of the average fuckboi DM. I do enjoy the friends I’ve made and the relationships I’ve built on there, from those following me through running and working out, rather than the skimpy cosplays. So for those of you taking the time to read this all the way to the end, love you guys! And for those of you working on your own goals, know that I’m rooting for you! I love when you share your stories and accomplishments with me and I’m really glad my IG stories inspire you. It’s why I keep posting every day, y’all keep me going. Here’s to being goal-diggers, goal crushers and working hard to go the distance!

Walt Disney World Marathon!

April 19, 2020

With the current state of 2020 events being cancelled, runDisney has finally opened up the registration for their virtual runs for the summer and released all the sign-up dates for their upcoming races up to Princess Weekend 2021. I wasn’t planning on signing up for the virtual races but considering there’s really nothing to do now and all I do is run everyday anyway currently, I might as well. It’s not like I’m spending my money on anything else other than food, groceries, bills, student loans and my mortgage. So I signed up not only for the virtual races, but all 3 of them so I could get 4 medals total; 1 for each race and a challenge medal for completing all 3, similar to the Princess races and their Fairy Tale challenge medal.

It’s funny because I went from originally just trying to consistently run 5k every day last year to currently running around 9-10k every day. I try to run for at least an hour every day. When I was training aggressively, I was able to run 10k in an hour but with no pressure or imminent deadline to train, this past month I scaled back and have been running at a slower, easier going pace to give my legs a bit of a break. I’ve lost my speed, but I’ve gained in stamina and endurance; I’ve been feeling better at running for longer periods of time. I don’t feel as terrible as I usually do during the run anymore. Usually I’m out of breath, tired and sweaty and wanting to die. l’m still sweaty, but lately, I’m feeling good, breathing better and feeling like I can go for even longer if time permits. I’m enjoying the longer distances now. It’s true what they say, slow and steady wins the race.

I really hope this strategy helps though because in seeing all the release dates for race registrations, I went back and forth but ultimately decided I’m going to bite the bullet and ::DRUM ROLL PLEASE:: attempt to run the Walt Disney World Marathon in January! Pending I make it through registration, that is, hahaha. I’ve learned that trying to register for races is actually harder than trying to get comic con tickets, but hey, this is what I’ve been training for, right?

May 7th is my first shot at signing up for this, with May 12th being my back-up if I don’t make it through the first round of sales. I was on the fence because I’m so scared of setting a date for this goal because it makes it all the more real. I also wasn’t really planning on tackling this on til more towards the end of 2021 but realized why not? The sooner I get it over with, the closer I’ll be to working on the next goal: the Dopey challenge in 2022. Besides, I don’t want to run my first marathon towards the end of 2021 and then take on the Dopey challenge that close back to back since it’s in the beginning of January. I need to give myself a break in between each stupid thing I do, lol. I figured a year between each new goal is a good amount of time.

My other concern that had me on the fence about doing the marathon in 2021 is that I still want to do the Princess weekend in February. Unfortunately Disney trips aren’t cheap and two runcations back to back would be expensive, especially while still paying my student loans and mortgage ball and chain. But when I talked to my hubby about my concerns, he was a little more encouraging and was like why not? So in order to do both and save a little bit of money, I think I’m going to do a quick weekend trip of just the marathon (especially for my first marathon, I’d rather focus on just the one race than burn out running all the other ones beforehand) and spend the rest of the day in Magic Kingdom and then fly home the next day. I’m not going to make a big trip of it, and save the parks for the February Princess weekend trip since that’s when I would be doing all 3 races and thus more reason to do more park days. This way I can do both race events back to back and stay on budget.

And speaking of budgets and saving. My goal for 2021 is going to be save for an even bigger Disney trip for 2022 when I take on the Dopey challenge (I know, I know, when is she going to go somewhere else?). The Dopey Challenge is taking on all 4 races - the 5k, 10k, the half and a full marathon. It is not only going to be a HUGE undertaking physically and mentally, but financially. The price of the races alone is painful. On top of the price of a trip. And fingers crossed, I’m hoping I can tackle on a cruise at the end of it for the Disney Castaway Cay Challenge, for an extra two medals. And then, because I’m completely insane - hopefully go to Paris in the fall that year to run their half marathon to earn not only their half marathon medal but an additional challenge medal called the Castle to Chateau challenge medal, which is only given when you run a half marathon in the US and in Paris in the same calendar year. How did this get so big so quick? Oh man. 2022 is going to be one ambitious year. I’m hoping it won’t be too bad because that’s also supposed to be the year I finish up my student loans so hopefully it’ll help free up some of my funds to do all this.

Thinking about all this absolutely terrifies me. But it’s also exciting in a weird way. I need to set some new concrete goals down to help keep my mind off things, as well as give me motivation to work on something during this quarantine. And laying down this timeline helps me plan out everything I want to do and hopefully work on a training program to realistically reach these goals. But that’s what I was saying earlier. Slow and steady wins the race. A few years ago, a mile around the block was too much for me when I started. Last year I worked on running 5ks daily til it became regular and a piece of cake. This year 10k became my new norm. I can run them easy peasy now without hating myself. I don’t plan on running half marathons daily as my new norm in my regular workout routine but I do hope that I can work on longer runs becoming easier so that the Dopey challenge is more doable when doing the half and a full marathon back to back. My legs were definitely sore after doing the 5k, 10k and half marathon this year in the Princess races, but it was definitely not as bad as they were the first year I did a half marathon by itself, so the recovery itself is improving! I also found that the 5 and 10k really helped me warm up for the half marathon so hopefully I can get to a point where a full doesn’t feel as grueling. I figure as long as I keep increasing my distance slow and steady over time, every week, I should be on the road to completing my first full marathon in no time. And then one day, I’ll be able to complete the Dopey challenge for that coveted picture holding all 6 medals in front of the castle. Ah, the things I do for the mouse.

To think, in 2018, I was NOT a runner at all. I am, in no way, fast at all, but for right now, I’m not focused on speed, as covid19 has humbled me into putting my qualifying time goals on the backburner since there are no real races to run to work on qualifying time to submit for any races. For right now, to work on these long term goals, my game plan is to take it slow and steady and keep building my stamina and endurance to be able to go to the distance, for lack of a better, less cheesy term. I’ve never anything longer than a half marathon so I worry about the dreaded “wall” some people hit when going longer distances. I’m going to listen to my body and what it needs, in order to meet these goals. I’ll definitely outrun the pacing requirements but I don’t to run too fast and burn out before the end. As they say, “it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” and as such the strategies are different to complete them successfully. They’re even clearly outlined in Disney’s own training program online! Speaking of which, their marathon training is a 29 week training program. Which means I’m not that far off from starting my marathon training if I score a spot to do this in January. Time is precious! Let’s go!

P.S. It’s a totally weird mixed feeling of fear and excitement in crushing this goal. I have this problem every year as I pile another ambitious mountain climbing goal on top of another. I guess it’s because I’m so scared of failing, but hey, if there’s no risk of failure, it wouldn’t be worth much of anything right? Here’s to the next two years of terrible decisions!