Behold.

Since my 4th of July present was sitting in the ER (for a second time) with some leg difficulties I will not go into, I decided to present to the world my new shoes that I have not been able to run in because of said-complications. :( But they are purtty!




I want to run in them so bad. :( But, pretty! If you like new balance shoes, these ones have gotten rave reviews, are RIDICULOUSLY light and RIDICULOUSLY pretty, AND AND AND since this is last year's model, they are on sale at Finish line for 50. Bucks. So if you're putting a lot of miles on your shoes and need to invest in new ones... Finishline.com has them!

Oh hay what's going on in this blog

Ladies, if you ask me any question at all re: cooking I'd be glad to answer it. I think Tamara is writing a great post about nutrition, and I'll probably link back to that and add my own thoughts when she's finished. I keep thinking about looking up some "beginner novice" friendly foodie sites for yall and then getting distracted - I have the attention span of a butterfly. Maybe tonight!

While I haven't been posting, I have been lifting weights and gimping along in my running!

Today's max weights were:
Deadlift 155x5
Bent-over row 115x5 (not sure if I'm doing these right, oh dear)
Military Press 65x5 (HELL YEAH I RULE)

Tuesday I ran outdoors, with the Cersei-dog, in the morning, then lifted in the afternoon. It showed, too - my squats sucked.
Squat 125x2 (down from 130x3 last week!)
Bench 85x5
Assisted Pullup - offset 130 lbs x3, then a break, then -130x4

I am quite happy with the gains I'm making, honestly. I have a bet going that I'll be able to squat and deadlift my body weight by early 2010, but as soon as I accomplish that, I'm going to try to cut my stupid belly fat without losing any of this hard-earned muscle. I don't look much different at a glance, but I have all these little rock-hard muscles everywhere! Yay!

Running - I made it to Week 4 on the c25k on the treadmill, then decided I'd just go run outside with my dog. Almost got heatstroke, discovered real running is completely unlike treadmill running, started over on that. It's a secondary goal. Like I said, I have an Internet Bet going and I can't lose my e-cred.

Wooo-DiJ

Thought I'd post with some happenings and some goals!

I've been pretty consistently running a 1.5 mile 'speed' day, and a 2.1 mile 'long day', and my times for each have dropped drastically. I started running a 13:40 1.5 mile, and around 19:50 for my two mile. I'm running, on average, 10-11 minute 1.5 mile times, and 17:20 two-mile time. Go me! I put in one three-mile run on pavement, and although my ankles were not a huge fan, I felt great afterward.

Yesterday I did my first sprint 'workout', where I ran around 100 meters as fast as possible, jogged back to the start, and repeated. Like most fitness aficionados, I love sprints. They burn more calories then jogging does, it keeps your heart rate and metabolism raised for much longer AFTER the work out, and just four repetitions of the 100 meters (plus a warm up run and a cool down run) had me EXHAUSTED and I'm sore everywhere. That's the thing about sprinting... it's great for the butt muscles as WELL as your core, your arms, your back.... everything hurts after sprinting. ;) Sprinting engages the butt muscles, where as jogging really doesn't. Sigh. I'm going to try to sprint twice a week, so we'll see how that goes.

I really want to run a 5K race in decent time, and I actually looked up some events in my area today... and found a few that might be do-able.

I have really slacked on my resistance training however, and I need to get back into doing my situps/pushups/weights. Running is nice for cardio, but my arms look great when I'm pumping my iron. ;)

Funder, I think you're going to have to teach Andrea AND me how to cook! :P

Week two of C25k is OVAH!

(Whenever I say "over" in real life, I always say it like the announcer on the old Japanese Iron Chef. "And Battle Pufferfish is OVAH!")

Anyway, I just finished up week 2 of the Couch to 5k. My legs feel great, I'm not even going to wrap and ice them.

Lifting is going well - squats at 75, bench at 75, deadlifts at 90 (!!!), rows at 80, military presses at 60. We won't talk about pullups. They're really hard and I'm gamely giving them my all, but my all is not very much.

I bought a bunch of whey protein from True Protein, so I'm actually getting enough protein now! I got the unflavored stuff because I hate all artificial sweeteners (and stevia) with the passion of a thousand suns. I just add about a tsp of sugar or honey and it's totally drinkable.

I feel awesome!

Boy I need inspiration.

Man you guys, you are going A LOT better than I am. Between show season suddenly exploding into full swing and working 70 hour weeks (AND riding AND walking the dog AND finding time to have a life AND actually trying to get more than four hours of sleep at night... which never happens), I've just been utterly exhausted and totally uninspired to give up my very precious and very little time off after work to workouts. So I need inspiration... lots of inspiration. I'm tired and I'm weary and my job is 100% physical labor, and I'm a horrible cook who doesn't get her nutritional needs in ever. I need advice. What would YOU do to get motivated?

Yay we're all here!

Hi DiJ! I would love a mini-workout from the PX90 guy - I've heard great things about that system. I don't know if I'm hardcore enough for that yet but it's worth a shot!

So lifting is still going pretty well, except I sucked at military presses today. Oh well, those are really hard.

I'm gradually adding more stretching before my workouts, mainly because I am gradually remembering more yoga poses! There is no yoga up here. Well, there's like two aerobiyoga classes at two other gyms miles away from my house. I'd rather just try to remember what I did in my old yoga class every week for two straight years.

My shins are starting to maybe think about hurting when I run and directly after. I did a little googling, and I'm trying RICE as a preventative. When I get home from running, I immediately wrap them in ACE bandages and drape ice bags over them for about 20 minutes, then get up and cook dinner, then ice them some more afterwards.

I do actually feel like a horse, getting polo bandages after a workout. :(

Anyway, I'll let yall know how this works out for me.

-Dressage in Jeans, Post Uno

Funder has yelled at me, so here is my post! Hehee. :)

I actually HAVE been working out. The initial two weeks was hard, but now I've gotten into that addictive mode where I'll kneel down on the floor to grab something and I'll want to do a push up. I ran a mile and a half with my brother yesterday, and we had a nice (exhausting) sprint at the end of it.

I know Andrea is busy as hell (Don't know about you Funder!), and my mom saw these 'ten minute trainer' workout videos and ordered them a while back. They are made by one of my favorite workout guys, Tony Horton, and they give you five ten-minute workout videos. They are AWESOME if you don't have a lot of time, and if you do... then you just do more then one. If anyone wants them, I have the ability to get them to you at a... 100 percent-off discount. hahaaa. <3 Tony Horton also makes Power 90 AND my all-time favorite, P90X (which is an extreme workout... noted by the 'x' lol). Why do I sound like an infomercial? Either way, I've tried a lot of workout videos, and these are my favorites. :D

At the moment, I try to get in three runs a week, and a workout video or two every night. It's been going pretty well... I'm so excited to be fit, guys! Between that and lifting 50-pound boxes all night at the warehouse, I think my upper body is in the best shape it's EVER been in... because I am a ridiculously weak person if I'm not working out. lol ;)

Happy work outs!!!

(I think Active Trainer has a calendar we can use, I just can't get it to embed in the blog. BUT, it tracks a lot of neat things... like the fitness calendar Cool Running has, Funder!)

It's working!

My arms are getting bigger! Like, muscly bigger! Also I lost two pounds, which hopefully means I lost more than that because I gained some muscle at the same time.

I've worked my way up to cardio twice a week - elliptical or treadmill. This is about the fifth time in my life I've tried to start running (or even jogging!) and I always hurt myself by pushing too far, too fast. I am going to religiously follow the Couch to 5k guide this time. It'll take me longer than 9 weeks, because I am only planning on running 2x a week. If I can tolerate more, I'll do 3x a week, but I have got to allow myself time to heal. I am no spring chicken ;)

And I have officially moved up to the "big boy" weights. The big bar that you see people stacking plates on actually weighs 45 lbs, so I wanted to get to where I could lift about 60 lbs before I tried to use the big bar. My gym has two racks of "small bars" with weights permanently attached, ranging from 20 to 100 lbs. I am not particularly ashamed to admit I started squatting with the 20 lb barbell - because yesterday I squatted 70!

I CAN DO ITTTTTT

Well, maybe I can do it.

I have a hard time getting motivated about fitness. I keep such rigorous training schedules when it comes to my horse, but as for my own cardio and weight work, I totally fail a lot of the time. Most of this stems from the fact that I'm in the barn somewhere between 4am and 6am, and I usually don't get off work until 5pm or 6pm - by that time, I'm usually exhausted and not too much in the mood to work out. This is changing now that the weather is improving, but still, it's hard. I keep starting the One Hundred Pushups and Two Hundred Situps Challenges, but I keep failing to follow through with them, so I keep starting them over again. Next week I will get back into it on Monday, and I seriously do mean to do it this time. I hope.

But. I AM taking a new direction with my focus. Last week my running schedule went all to pieces, so I picked up again this week anew with a different tactic - go slow. I have a tendancy when I'm running to push myself way harder than I should, and it exhausts me to the point of muscle injury - which, obviously, means time off. It's also hard to get motivated when I'm hurting and tired. My new tactic is just to add the teeniest bit more to every workout. I started again with a half hour brisk walk, then added the full brisk walk down to the trailhead and back - about 40 minutes roundway. Today, I went the full brisk walk to the trailhead and ran for half a mile, then brisk walked back. By doing this, I keep myself from hurting AND can do a little bit every day, keeping myself motivated and setting a steady routine at the same time. Tomorrow, I'll bump it up to running 3/4 of a mile, then give myself a day off Sunday, and continue on to a mile from there. I hope to be running several miles a day after a long and gradual increase.

I really love running once I actually get into it. I just have to, you know, find the energy after a 12-hour physical labor day, you know.

I think I wouldn't be worried about my fitness if a) I wasn't trying to bump my horse up to Training level eventing and b) the clients here didn't bring me cookies and candy and Dunkin Donuts every day. I've put on a smidge of weight and I DON'T LIKE IT.

This is me nearing my thinnest and most musclar last summer, and the summer before:




I hope to get back there soon.

Booooring sweaty stuff

Yesterday was my rest day. It's really important for your body to have time to heal from whatever you're doing with it - just working a physical job, exercising, riding, whatever. I was flat out done in yesterday.

Today I felt lots better! I washed my horse and did cardio. Ugh. I hate cardio.

My husband got me a refurb Shuffle (in purple, of course!) for $40 and that helps a lot. Just one more song of boring yet exhausting sweaty work! I started out on the stationary bike but that was really boring and made my knees think about hurting, so I switched to the elliptical and did 20 minutes at about 150 heart rate.

Tomorrow, weights again!

Welcome!

Welcome to yet another fitness blog. This one's a big different, however: we're equestrians. This is the chronicle of three women, trying to get fit in three different ways.

I'm Funder. My main blog is over at It seemed like a good idea at the time, where I chronicle the mishaps of my life with horses so far.

Oddly enough, my last attempt to get fit ended rather abruptly when I got my first horse, Champ. I had been working out very sanely and regularly, going to the local YMCA 3x a week to do weights and another 1-2x a week to do yoga and cardio. I wasn't a superstar or anything; if I remember right I was benching about 60 lbs and squatting about the same. Horses were so much more fun that the gym quickly fell by the wayside.

At first, it wasn't too bad - I was at a self-care place, slinging my own grain sacks and hay bales around. And I was working construction (remodeling, usually) when I wasn't in class or riding. Things have changed a lot lately, and I need to get off my butt and get back in shape.

I graduated from law school, passed the Mississippi bar, and... we had to move to Ohio for my husband's job. Ohio's not so bad, but I can't take the bar exam here til next year and I haven't found a temp job yet. My horse Dixie is in full care, so I don't even get to pretend that lifting a feed sack a week is "exercise." So I signed up for the free gym membership at my apartment complex, and I'm back at it.

My goal is to get stronger and lose some fat. I'm doing a very simple (but supposedly very effective!) free weights program - you lift three days a week, alternating between two workouts. Each workout has three lifts, all of which use a lot of muscle groups. Each lift is a 3x8, which means I do 3 sets of 8 reps each time. It doesn't sound like much of a workout - three lifts? every other day? - but it's surprisingly hard.

Yesterday's lifts were:
Barbell Dead Lift, 30/40/50. (8 reps at 30 lbs, 8 at 40, 8 at 50.) I need to read up some more on this one - I'm not sure I was doing it right. I felt like I almost hurt my back, which means I wasn't keeping it straight and stable enough.

Dumbbell Bent-Over Rows, 30/40/45. 45 was tough. I probably won't try to increase that next time.

Barbell Military Press, 30/40/50f/40. I gave that last set absolutely everything I had, and I could only get 4 reps at 50 lbs. I finished the last set at 40. I'll try that one again at the same weight next time.

I feel pretty good, not too sore. My quads are still killing me from the squats I did Monday. I'll talk about squats on Friday or Saturday, when I do them again.

It's Time to GET FIT

IT IS TIME.

Show season, bikini season, jandals season, whatever you want to call it... summer is coming and it's time to show off our sexy bods. Well, wait... what happened to my sexy bod? Hmm, it seems to have become less sexy over the course of a winter full of boarders at the barn where I work bringing me a neverending steam of cookies, cakes, and Dunkin Donuts. I have NO off button on my junk food radar. I can't resist it. I work hard enough during the day in the barn (literally on my feet without breaks from 6am or easier to 5pm or later... the only time I sit is when I'm in the saddle!) to not become the size of a blimp with this diet, but it's time to start eating better and working out more. My young event mare deserves an owner who is just as fit as she is.

I'm not going to start blogging about my fitness in depth til I get back from Rolex Kentucky (YES!) this weekend, but I'll have pictures and an outline of what I ought to be doing, and what I actually am doing (right now? slugging down more hot cocoa, thanks very much).

Fitness, HERE WE COME!