Tuesday, July 8, 2014

New job and old goals

After 7 years of working for the same company-although I have to admit-the company I started with looked nothing like what it did when I originally joined, five executive teams later-it was time for me to change and move. I thankfully found a position in a competing company that has saved me about 3 hours a day in commuting time, now that's progress! With my newfound time I get to sleep in and plan actual runs, as opposed to stumbling along like a zombie and trying to squeeze in a 30 minute scramble to the bus every day. Now that I've had regular sleep again and feel human I have tried to have a good look at my overall running plan for this year, what my goals are and what I can do to achieve them. I had my big race a couple of months ago. I had packed on a few extra pounds and hadn't gotten the runs in that I should have. It wasn't a huge surprise (or let down) to find myself checking out at the 33km mark. The next week I ran a short 10k with my husband and I saw two weeks of race pictures-yikes! Clearly I had gotten off track. The hecticness of the company being bought out, the uncertainy of the transition (who would be laid off, who would be kept on and for how long) loomed over everyone I worked with for 6 months. When I heard nothing was going to change, even though promises had been made early on that things would change for the better, I had to get out of there. Clearly the extra pounds had to go as well as my old job. I've always responded really well to a high protein and fat diet, very low on the carbs, so I decided to dust that off again. So far, 6 weeks or so has passed and I've lost about 10lbs. My running though has taken much longer than I expected to get back on track. At the moment I have a solid, consistent 3ish mile run going on every day after work, but I need to go longer if I want to step up to the 50km plate again in early August at the Brookvale trail ultra in PEI. My weekends have been less than productive on the running side. Last weekend I managed a measley 10 miles over 2 days. Seriously! Me! Ugh. So, this past Sunday I thought I had a plan. From my home to my new workplace is about 10 miles. If I did that every morning (yes, my work has a gym and a shower-AWESOMENESS is that right there!!) I could get in my whole weekly mileage in 5 days. Yeeahh. That didn't work out so well yesterday...or today. God, once you get used to NOT waking up at 4:30am it's really hard to get up at 5. So, this week I'm trying to stretch out the end of my day a bit by coming into work early. If I can get in a solid hour after work before picking up my daughter at summer day camp I might have a chance to pull this race out of somewhere (use your imagination). I want to apologize to you guys though. I haven't been posting regularly as I used to, that's something else I want to change as well. I think I was in some kind of survival mode these past 6 months, worrying I wouldn't have a job, worrying about the effect my job's commute (It changed when the company was bought-we relocated to the other side of the city) was having on my family life, I just let a lot of things go by the wayside..not good. I'm very happy at my new workplace, people are generally happy here, everyone seems to work really hard and I've even spied a few race bibs posted in some of the cubes- hey, fellow runners! On top of that they have an excellent benefits plan, tons of training to take, a GYM on site, and a great cafeteria that will make just about anything you want at a subsidized price. Sweet. Now if I can just figure out my running schedule I'll be all set...famous last words lol.

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