Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I kind of love Thanksgiving.  It's funny because when I was a child we didn't do very much to celebrate Thanksgiving.  We actually went bowling, which was always a traumatic experience for me as I lack the necessary hand eye coordination, and even at times, the strength to be a half way decent bowler.  Most Thanksgivings involved tears for me (I was a brat, its fine), but I look back pretty fondly on it anyways.  We also used to go to my grandma's and I was the pickiest eater ever, so I ate spaghetti on Thanksgiving.  Like I said, brat. 

Now, we don't go bowling because we celebrate Thanksgiving in the city with my family.  At some point, we established a new tradition that more closely resembles a typical Thanksgiving, and I kind of love it.  I'm still not the biggest fan of turkey, I don't like cranberry sauce, and I can definitely do without pumpkin flavored everything (sorry rest of world, I think its weird).  I just really enjoy spending the day with my family.  

So in short... to be sappy and corny: I am thankful for Thanksgiving!  This is my first Thanksgiving as a married woman, and tomorrow (if all goes right at the DMV and Social Security Card office) will actually be my last day with my maiden name.  I'm a little bummed about that, but more about that another day.

I'm also getting really amped up for the holidays.  We're going to visit family overseas and I'm pretty pumped.  I haven't seen my extended family for more than like a day and a half at a time in several years.  

Also, loved having a morning run this morning.  Nice little bonus of having the day off.  I am still not doing so well with the evening runs... dark and cold = cranky Nicole.  I'm just going to have to push through it.  

What is your favorite part of Thanksgiving?  Does your family have any cool traditions? 

What went wrong

OK, so this post title has 2 meanings...

First, I was thinking about the whole changing my blog title and 1) I can't come up with a name I like and 2) I dont want to change the URL b/c I don't want it to get lost on any lists I'm already on.  So... for now, Exercise ADD is stuck, but maybe in the future, I will post a much longer and more gradual change.

Second, I wanted to talk about what happened over the summer after my stress fracture.  See this post for the explanation of the injury. Even though I was injured, I could still do low impact cardio like cycling or swimming (which isn't easy in NYC unfortunately).  I decided to do cycling at the gym (one day I'll tell you all why I won't ride a bike outdoors, but thats a story for another day).  I went to the gym a couple times a week to cycle, and also did crunches most of the time when I was there.

Occasionally, if Cameron went to the gym, I would go with him to the weight room.  I made a vague attempt to gain muscle, but as I have a fear of the weight room, I had a very hard time going on my own.  This fear stems from feeling like I don't know what I'm doing in the weight room and I don't like to have trainers/staff help me, but I don't want to look like a moron.

As a result, I would really only go with Cameron, or I'd go in by myself, do 3 machines Cameron had shown me (probably in the wrong order or on the wrong day) and then sprint out of there.

Then September hit and I started going to NJ a lot to deal with wedding related things.  Which meant fitting in gym time was harder and harder, but I was able to go once or twice a week.  And then about 2 weeks before the wedding, I got a cold, and then threw my hands up in the air and essentially said, "SCREW YOU" to exercise.

I also had this issue where I really missed running as soon as I was booted.  I was very surprised the first time I said to myself, "Today is a great day for running, I can't believe I can't!" I also was a lot more stressed out, on edge and generally crankier.  Yes, there was wedding stress, but I had this itchy feeling like I didn't have an outlet for it.

What I realized is that running outside felt different than other forms of exercise for me.  The big thing was that I was disconnected from my life, but connected to the rest of the world.  I'm not coordinated enough to ever check my phone while running, which means text messages, facebook, emails and phone calls have to wait.  BUT, I'm outside with all these other people, observing how other people exercise, what other people wear, and looking into other people's lives. I can't zone out and watch TV like I can on a bike, but I listen to pandora and get lots of new songs and keep myself current.

Also, and this will sound very bizarre... I missed hating running.  Yup, thats right.  I spent a lot of energy during my runs saying, "f*** you hudson river" or "if only I could run as fast as that guy, I'd be done running by now" which got out a lot of my stress and anger towards other things in my life.

The first few weeks without running were really tough.  I felt very un-regulated and like I wasn't sure how to de-stress.  I tried napping, which I've done in the past, and it's generally unsuccessful.  I tried the bike at the gym, but I felt so un-isolated, that I couldn't process my own thoughts. In the end, I just had to do the best I could and try to get by without.

A few weeks into being booted, I didn't miss running so much anymore, but I did start to obsess over how much I had probably lost throughout all this, and I started to get discouraged.  I worked so hard to be able to run 4 miles, and now I probably lost it all.  It was very easy to let my mind think about what went wrong, and not how things will be in the future.  Also, my diet went downhill.  Not that I have the best diet to begin with, but I was starting to eat lunch consistently, and I was starting to have healthier snacks.  Pfft, that went out the window very quickly.

Now that my foot is better again, I'm starting really slowly.  I realized that jumping into it too quickly set me so far back.  I'd rather do very short runs for a little bit and gradually build up my speed and distance.  I'm not training for the Olympics, so why take the risk??

How do you feel when you can't do your favorite form of exercise?  What is your favorite form of exercise?

HI!!! I'm BACK!!

Hello world, I'm back!

So what the hell happened to me?  Quick summary.  So last you all saw me, I fractured my foot and was in a walking boot.  I wore the walking boot for approximately 2 months, and have been finished with it since the beginning of October.  During that time, I used the bike at the gym and did a little weightlifting (only if Cameron came with me), but obviously no classes, no yoga and most importantly, no running.

So why didn't I reappear in the beginning of October when the boot came off??

Cuz we got married!!

Here are a couple of pictures from our wedding: 

OK, that was October 14, why didn't I start blogging and exercising right after that??

That's a little tougher to answer.... I'm not sure why to be honest.  I wanted to and even had moments where I thought about writing, but then I just didn't.  But now I feel ready and I'm back and ready to document my exercise "adventures" and other life events.

However, I've done a lot of thinking about this "journey" I started over a year ago.  When I started exercising, I was just trying to get into the habit of doing something a few times a week.  When I started blogging, my goal was to try all sorts of different forms of exercise.

When I was injured, I found what I missed most was running.  I'm not sure if I missed running because I'd been training or because that was the form of exercise (I feel like I've said exercise too much) that alleviated the most stress for me.

I think my journey is evolving.  It makes sense thinking about it.  My first goal was to just do ANYTHING.  It really was to just make it to the gym or a class several times a week.  I didn't care how I did, I just had to stay for 30 minutes or the duration of the class.  My next goal was to explore different options.  I thought that I would get bored doing the same thing (hence exercise ADD), but I also was looking for something that I enjoyed, was good at, or wanted to keep going back to.  Unexpectedly, I found that: running.

So I think my focus now is running, and improving my time and increasing distance.  I still plan to take classes when I can and do other activities, but my main focus is really going to be running.  With that, I want to change the name of my blog and update the format.  Suggestions are welcome!!

How have your goal changed over time?  What should I rename my blog?