Yesterday should have been a run club day. But, it wasn't. Late nights, too much homework and not enough sleep have made me scatterbrained and it wasn't until I got to work that I realized I had forgotten all of my gear at home. Unfortunatley, because where I live pretty much sucks at rush hour, and it takes me an hour to make the eight mile journey between where I work and where I live, I would have never made it home and then to running club before it started.
Anyhow, the old me would have said : dramatically snapping fingers : oh, shucks....forgot my gear and can't participate.... oh, man....:dramatic pause whilst looking disappointed:... guess today is a "rest day"... who wants ice cream? But new me, while chiding myself the entire ride home for being so stupid as to forget my running gear, bolted into my house, changed clothes and charged over to the park so that I could run on my own. (which, incendentally is not nearly as enjoyable) I find, as I have mentioned before, that I am not really good at pushing myself out of my comfort zone. In swimming, no problem, I can push myself harder and harder, but its because I KNOW that I am a good swimmer and that my body will respond properly. With running, I still can't push myself. Maybe it comes with more running experience. Yesterday, as I walked briskly around the bike path, (up hills and not on flat land like we do with run club) just the walking part exhausted me. We were supposed to do 4 mins of running according to our sheet, I only did one and a half. Including the overall feeling of exhaustion, I also was having a hard time running and looking at the stop watch on my IPOD to see how long Id been running for. (Mental note, program heart rate monitor/watch when you get home tonight) I also think that maybe tricking myself will work better. Now that I know my way around Garage Band on my Mac, I think I'm going to record a workout for myself with audio cues so I know when to run and when to walk. I'm not so sure about this whole 5K thing... from where I stand right now, with half of September over and the run coming up at the 6 week horizon, I'm not so sure that I'm going to be able to do this thing.
I think that maybe I just need to grit my teeth and on the days that I'm not running with running club, do more running than walking- I know that goes off program and probably will end up hurting me and not helping me... but I'm thinking if I can go and do maybe five minute walk five minute run five minute walk this week and then maybe next week to that times two, maybe I might actually be able to run at least half of this 5K.
I wanted to take a brief moment
:prepare for soapbox tangent:
to talk to my plus size huffy puffer friends for a minute. If you are not one of these people you can skip to the end of the tangent, as this really only applies to them.
:Begin Tangent:
Yesterday, I received a shipment of pants from Lane Bryant. In case you didn't know they are having a pants sale right now $29.99 on all pants. - so cool. Anyhow, I'm always leery about ordering pants from Lane Bryant because none of them are the same size. But, thats not the only problem with them. All of us plus sized huffy puffers need to take a good hard look at ourselves and really, truly find out what our true size is. Plus sized stores sell clothing in combined sizes so as to nab a larger share of us, and make us feel better about ourselves. They sell most clothes in 14/16 18/20 22/24 26/28 etc. The other issue with plus sized stores - Poly/cotton lycra/spandex blends. As much as you think these are your friends, they are NOT. They only allow you to continue to live in a fantasy world of sizing. They allow you to fool yourself into believing you are a size that you actually aren't. All of these fabrics stretch, which allow a lot of women who have well exceeded the larger end of that sizing spectrum to still squeeze themselves into them and believe that they actually fit. If this were the case, then according to my favorite University of Iowa Tshirt- I'm a double extra large... which would mean I'm an 18/20 - and there is no way in holy hell I would ever squeeze my jiggle into an actual pair of 18/20 pants. No way. Maybe if they were a spandex/cotton blend, but a true pair of pants- nope not a prayer. So- everyone (as much as it is going to hurt to rip the bandaid of disbelief off) needs to walk into a store, and pick up an item in your size that does not have any form of stretch in it (no cottons, spandexes, poly blends, etc) and find a pair of pants with no elastic in them, that are made of an unforgiving fabric (and read the labels ladies, because even your denim has spandex(or its other forms in it) march into that dressing room and figure out your true size.
And, for those of you at the top of the sizing chart, who are still forcing yourselves to believe you are a size 28 because all of your pants are made of stretchy material- you may need to take waist and hip measurements and compare them against a sizing chart.
We are not going to win the wage against our waistlines if we keep fooling ourselves into believing we are a size that we aren't. True transformation begins with honesty and accepting what we are... and that includes accepting the fact that we may not actually be the size that Lane Bryant tells us we are. They say in Weight Watchers that for every 12 pounds you lose, you lose one pant size. This is not the case for Plus Sizers, and especially the Super Plus Sizers. There is about a FORTY pound range in inclusion sizing (ie 22/24 pants) if you are at the very far end of the 24 - (ie you are technically a size 26 but you can still squeeze into those 24s)
All that said, I was THRILLED-- and I mean THRILLED to try on my pants from Lane Bryant yesterday. They are all dress pants (so made of materials that DONT give and have NO stretch in them) and :sound the trumpets: the pants I ordered FIT like honest to goodness FIT - not "I can lay on my bed, suck it all in and squeeze them shut so it looks like I have a butt in the front as well as in the back" no.... they FIT and that is the BEST feeling in the world. But - before I could make it here, I had to be honest with myself and stop allowing myself to believe I was a size that I wasn't. Back before the triathlon I was wearing some pants in a size larger than these, and some pants in the same size as Im wearing... but the pants that I wore were mostly pants that had some give in them. Jeans, Khakis and dress pants I had to order in a size up, but I made all kinds of excuses as to why that was necessary- it was never that I was lying to myself about what size I was. But now, I am finally and truly in this size-- and it's only downhill sizing from here on out.
I truly hope that you all do the same.
:end tangent:
I hope you all have a fabulous day!
~One Pant Size Smaller, Millie :)
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