Sugar, Sugar go away

One of the things you become more conscious of when someone close to you is sick is your own health.  Since my dad's diagnoses, I have been working out, running, in general staying in motion.  A few months ago, my dad actually said to me, you need to keep working out and work on your fitness, too many of the people in our family have diabetes.  So I'm working out.  Still training for the Houston Marathon and planning to run the Nac Half in November.

With all of the training you would think I would be getting skinny and losing tons of weight, well I'm not.  I have lost about 10 lbs with another 5 lbs fluctuation between water weight and such.  My waist and hips have lost about 4 inches each and my mommy tummy is flatter and tighter.  Honestly I'm not really super concerned with weight lose or inches.  I'm feeling better and more confident in my body and at the end of the day that is the important part.

Now if I wanted lose weight along with my workouts, I need to diet.  I'm anti-diet.  I'm already gluten-free and dealing with Gymgirl's egg allergy, I don't need more limitations.  However, I have noticed that my sugar intake has been increasing noticeably.  Like drinking a gallon of sweet tea a day.  I make it so I know the amount of sugar (1 cup).  I've also been craving cookies, cake, cereal.  All the sweet stuff I can find at the house.  Luckily, we don't keep much in the way of gluten-free baked goods at the house.  For my overall health, if not my waistline, I have to cut back on sugar.

In the past, when I have noticed my craving for sugar I have taken magnesium supplements.  I originally started magnesium as a way to help my fertility back when we were trying to conceive the now 8 year old Gymgirl.  While I was on it I noticed I wanted less and less sugary snacks.  So with that in mind, I started magnesium yesterday.  I have already noticed myself not reaching for extra snacks.  I have also been slowly adding less and less sugar to my morning coffee and sweet tea.  So far I'm down from 3 teaspoons to 2 teaspoons in my coffee and from 1 full cup of sugar in my tea to just under 3/4 of cup.  We'll see if that translates to any changes in my waistline or on the scale. 

Training for a Half-Marathon

So a long time ago, I wrote about training for a 5k and then a 10k. I did run those races and finished them and then roller derby and a full-time job took my focus away from running.  Then I was going to start training again and I had a baby.  So I took another long break but now I'm back!

For the last few months, I have been working with runlife365.com to train for my first half marathon in November (the Nac Half).  Then to run the Houston Marathon in January.  The work out Sharon Mayes of RunLife365 created for me is a full body 16 week plan.  Today's 8 mile run was the completion of week 9. 

Back in the day, high school days, I use to run cross country and for that training we focused on running the whole race.  After some research and talks with Sharon, I decided to start using the Galloway method of training, a run/walk combination.  It really has made a huge difference in raising my confidence and allowing me to get past my 10k mental barrier. 

Sharon's plan includes my roller derby workout with a HIIT workout included and something that I absolutely hate - strength training.  She also has something that I had never done before - Fartleks.  For the non-runner readers, Fartlek is Swedish or Finnish for speed run.  Currently I rotate between a couple different Fartleks on the NikeRunClub app.  My favorite has been the one with Kevin Hart.  I actually laughted out loud in the middle of a run; Kevin is so funny.

Now I think when you say you are a runner people want to know that your time, pace, and weight are doing.  So here is what I've done and learned so far.
1 - Indoor runs are easy compared to running outside.  If you plan to run an outdoor race, you need to train outdoors.
2 - My pace fluctuates between 11 min miles and 15 min miles.  It completes depends on temperature, run surface, and if I actually remember to eat before hand.  As to my ultimate pace goal - keep it under 15 min per mile.  Any run I'm under that is gravy!
 3 - my weight and inches do not seem to care that I'm running and training all of the time.  Honestly, I haven't changed my eating habits so I eat anything and everything (gf of course) and manage to keep my curvy shape.  I could change my eating but one thing at a time.  Right now the focus is getting the miles not changing my shape.

So there you go.  I'm a runner again.  I'm a plus-size runner.  I'm a brown runner.  I'm a fairly slow runner.  I'm a runner!

Job searching from the heart

So about a month ago I came to the painful decision to leave my job as a school principal.  When people asked me why I left I had a canned answer ready, my dad's health requires me to be at home, but the real answer is I had done a lot of soulsearching and the Holy Spirit lead me to leave.  I was listening to the Spirit when I took the job and listening for when it was time to go.  Once I listened and turned in my resignation, the school spirit picked up, more students enrolled, and in general, things are looking up.  There are a couple of ways to look at that: 1 - people were hoping I was leaving and waiting until then to show up or 2 (my personal view) - my work for the last 3 years was bearing fruit and if you listen and do what the Holy Spirit asks then good things will come.

I listened and now I'm broke and jobless.  There are lots of jobs open in my field, library and higher education.  The problem for me is two-fold, timing and experience.  Since I hold a doctorate I am mostly "over-qualified" for a lot of entry positions in higher ed, like Academic Affairs or Student Affairs, but since I've never worked professionally in higher education I'm not really qualified for anything other than entry-level.  In the library field, I've worked in both school and public libraries but it is the beginning of the school year so school jobs are filled and with the economy, many cities are placing holds on open positions until after the new budget year.  I would love to move to into an Academic library but again without professional experience, I'm left a bit in nowhere's land, too educated to start but not experienced enough to fill a non-entry-level position.

I am also running up against something new with this job search: "We are waiting for a bigger candidate pool to start reviewing applications."  While I don't know if this is a real line or just something people are telling me to get me to stop calling I don't know but it is a line I'm getting quite a bit.  People with ALA-accredited Masters degrees in Library are few and far between.  It is a graying field with high demand.  If you aren't limited to where in the country you want to live ALA Joblist has over 4,000 openings!  If you are looking to go back to school I highly recommend looking into library studies but make sure the program is ALA-accredited!

So once I get a job I'll make sure and post about it.  I'm trying to keep my head up and understand that job searching takes time.  With children and bills, I am beyond stressed but I also believe, feel, and know God's timing is always right so I'll breathe deep and have faith.