Weekly Weigh-in (Week 48)

Sunday yet again and time for another weekly weigh-in.

This week was a fairly good week all around I think. Got some Christmas shopping taken care of, made up some salad dressing and packed salads for lunch for the latter half of the week, and finished week 9 of the Couch to 5K plan. All told, that's a pretty good week.

Speaking of said plan, I mentioned that there was some more information to my usage of my ipod while I run than just using it for Runkeeper, and so today I shall share that with you all. Some of you reading this may have thought to yourself in the past that running isn't for you because it's boring. To that I have two things to say, firstly that you should make sure you are running outside in the real world and not on a treadmill if boredom is something you want to counter. Secondly, you might want to consider adding some music into your runs, as it can be a rather interesting thing to help keep you aware of what's going on around you. That said, I will caution you that you should make sure that the music isn't getting in the way of your awareness of your surroundings. You need to make sure you are keeping track of any traffic, your form, the sound of your footfalls, your breathing, and so many other things. But, if you can keep track of all of those things music can be a nice addition to your runs. Especially if it's also functional.

The benefit of the Ct5K plan, is that it uses intervals to help you progressively increase your running time toward a full 5K. The downside, is that you need a way to track either the distances or the times that you are working on for your intervals. The free version of Runkeeper doesn't do that, so I needed another way to track that, enter Podrunner. Podrunner Intervals uses high energy music, timed to the intervals set out in the Ct5K plan, to help keep you moving at a good pace for the times you need to get yourself to where you want to be. They have sets for each week of the plan, and all 3 days in weeks 5 and 6. They also have sets past the 5K program for training your way to 8 or even 10K runs. I very much enjoy these podcasts, and reccomend them highly to anyone looking to try out the Ct5K plan, who wondered how they would manage the timing, or those who didn't as well.

Well, all of the small accomplishments piling up, where does that leave me with the scale? 206.0, down 3.6 pounds since last week. Making steady progress in the direction I want to be going for now. Finally nearing the end of my period of weight loss, and getting to a point where all I have left to do is manage my body fat. See you all next week.