Another year, another Black Friday

Ever since I stopped going home for Thanksgiving the holiday to me just means sales and mindless online shopping.  This year is no different.  I spent the better part of my Thursday and Friday sitting in front of the computer, Amazon webpage opened, and watching the clock ticking as the next deal starts.

On Black Fridays I usually buy a lot of DVDs and other random stuff.  Nothing name brand or big/fancy, just random stuff I would normally be tempted to buy but not actually doing it.  But this year, apart from my usual DVD crazy buys, the majority of my other purchases definitely had an athletic theme to them.

My Black Friday shopping really started before Thanksgiving.  The one-ish day sale really awakened my inner shopping demon so I really let my credit card loose since the beginning of that week.  So over the course of the week, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I bought:

1 Fitbit Charge from eBay (which ended up to be cheaper than all of the Black Friday deals)

12-bottle monthly subscription of Soylent (my friend started it)

2 pairs of running pants from Dick's (I wanted something I can use in case I wanted to run outside during the winter, and I ended up returning one pair)

1 pair of Saucony Kinvara 5 in mint green from eBay (I realized that when the Kinvara 6 came out they just stopped making the 5, and therefore you can't really find the 5s anymore from major sellers.  Those who still sell them do not really sell them at a discount like I had hoped.  So I freaked out and got a pair on eBay just to hoard.  I thought about getting 2 pairs but that just seems a bit obsessive.  It's just that I have yet found another pair of shoes that I could run so comfortably in.  I haven't tried Kinvara 6 on yet, and I can't really afford new shoes at their full prices.)

1 pair of Gaiam yoga capris from Amazon.  They actually fit very comfortably and has this cool black-and-white pattern I liked but they make my butt look so huge now I feel self-conscious about wearing them.

1 pair of Adidas running capris.  Also fits nice and comfortably, but the material is such that I can really feel my legs rubbing against each other and I think I might have to apply some body cream on the fabric before I run?

1 pair of Calvin Kline performance capris which I later returned b/c they didn't fit.

1 Smartweighscales body scale that's supposed to be really fancy and can measure all kinds of random stuff like your body fat and your water weight or whatever.  But I don't know for sure since I had to return it for a replacement, as my first one turned out to be defective.  The scale uses these metal plates that measure some electrical current or body heat to generate these data, so after I received my scale I spent the better part of a very cold evening stepping on and off it in my bare feet, freezing myself to death before deciding that I cannot do this alone.  After I called the company the next morning and told them the situation (how the scale doesn't do anything but just telling me my weight and none of the other info shows up), the girl on the phone didn't say much except telling me to contact Amazon to ask for a replacement.  I'm slightly worried about the quality of their scales now since she was so nonchalant about my call.  Also a shame since I don't know what they are going to do with this scale.  I hope they don't just throw it away, it would be such a waste of resources. But my new scale should come in the next day or so and I'm excited about knowing info about myself that really don't mean anything to me.

So running caprices were definitely on my mind when I was Black Friday shopping.  I also looked at other athletics stuff and weight loss stuff and ultimately decided that I liked my money too much to exchange it for the stuff.  Despite the fact that in many instances I liked my money more than the thing I thought about buying, I still spend a very large amount of money on a bunch of random things.  The holiday season is always a time for uncontrollable shopping but I'm also struggling to not increase the amount of "stuff" I own.  It's a hard balance, but so far I'm not thinking about anything else I want to return.

Exercise Diary: Best Treadmill Run

By which I was very surprised.

I was going to go yesterday since it would give me a day to rest before my Monday runs, and there was an NCIS marathon on TV.  But I didn't.  I made spicy fried chicken and ate too much for lunch, and although I finished lunch by 2pm I still felt like throwing up by 6.

Which was pretty much what happened today as well, this time with creamed potatoes and spinach.  It was a variation on the creamed parsnips and spinach I made for Thanksgiving, but I realized that I don't really care for the slightly sweet root vegetable.  The result today was too much cream and too big a portion, I'm sorry to say.

My stomach felt like lead for most of the afternoon and I took a nap before my 6pm run.  I felt dizzy just lying still in bed and that was kind of terrifying, and I wasn't sure if I should go, but when I got up I felt most of the food had passed on to the lower intestines and I felt better.  I did a one-minute plank and walked around for half an hour before changing into the my gym clothes and left for the gym.

The run went really, really well.  Despite my big lunch I did drop a few pounds this week (yes even with the Thanksgiving feast and my fried chicken lunch yesterday) through dieting.  It wasn't a real diet, I just didn't feel like eating and when I did eat I didn't care for big portions or meat or a lot of fat.  I can't explain the origin of this lack of interest in eating a lot but I'm glad I did and didn't question it much.  And as a result I went back down to the weight I was before I stopped running regularly, and that was way back in June.

Anyways, probably because of my light body I felt extra energetic today.  I preempted my run with a 9 minute warm-up walk while searching for something suitable to watch (Brave that was playing on ABC family), and did 2 miles on my initial, faster speed (4.6 mi/hr, not very fast, but still).  This almost never happens to me, as I usually poop out after a mile.  Then it got hard for my breathing and my heart, but instead of stopping to walk I slowed down to a even slower jog and kept at that for another half mile before walking for ~2 minutes.  But I started to jog again until I finished an approximate 5K.  Then I walked for a bit more to cool down before stopping.  The treadmill read 53 minutes but my Nike+ said 46, and apparently I achieved my fastest 5K yet.  The time was similar to my last and only 5K race, at about 40 minutes (I ran that 5K with my Nike+ app running as well but the distance didn't quite match so it didn't register as a 5K, oh well).  I know I'm not very fast by any standards but I felt really good afterwards.  My foot didn't hurt, my ankle didn't hurt, and I didn't even feel that much fatigue in my muscles, which means that next time I can run a bit longer if the my time allows.  And if I drop a few more pounds maybe I'll even try to run a bit faster at some point.  Small victories~

Exercise Diary: Castle Mondays, Yoga Tuesdays

I did go running last week.  Not yoga though, my lab mate was very good at talking me out of it.

But I went yesterday.  And it was a good class, unlike last time. Which was two weeks ago and it was terrible.  I think the key here is focus.  I wasn't last time.  I had lots of things on my mind, like lab experiments, and airplane tickets for trips back home. I was distracted by the bright light above me, I was unfocused by the new location I was forced to be in at that class.

But this time I was focused.  The class was only half occupied since most people have gone home for winter break, and we had a new teacher who introduced to us some new variations of poses. I felt stronger within each pose, but weaker in between.  The room was extra hot and humid that day and I had to take child's pose multiple times, for the first time ever.  But I didn't have a lot of other things in mind and was focused for the most part.  And it was a very good class.

Thanksgiving this week and my friend and I are trying to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  She's brave enough to tackle the turkey and I'm just making the side dished, and the gravy. I'm making a mashed potatoes casserole, a vegetable dish, stuffings, and an ice cream pumpkin pie. The mashed potatoes is already too salty, and that is before I added any bacon or cheese... the pumpkin pie  looks okay, if my freezer will work as it should.  Stuffing is in the slow cooker, and hopefully it will taste fine. I'm excited to see how everything comes together tomorrow, although it is kind of ridiculous to do so much work just for a dinner.

Will post pictures and they usually look better than they taste.