ActiveLink update.

Back in April, I wrote a blog post about getting started with the Weight Watchers ActiveLink. I won't re-hash all the specifics (read the old post for those), but here's a quick recap: ActiveLink is a monitor that you wear every day. It records all of your movement and assigns you WW Activity Points based on your whole day's activity. For the first 8 days that you wear it, it assesses your normal activity and then assigns a 12-week challenge based on your current activity pattern.

I am currently in week 10 of my first challenge, and I must say that I LOVE this thing! Based on my assessment, my original goal for week 12 was to earn 4 activity points per day. I was sick during my assessment and less active than usual, so I initially thought that goal sounded easy. WRONG. Turns out that earning 4 activity points on days where I have a race or tough cardio workout is very easy. Earning 4 activity points on a regular workday with no cardio workout is very, very hard.

I have tried everything: cleaning more, taking the stairs, walking to talk to co-workers. The only thing that gets me to my goal on a regular, non-workout day is getting home early enough to go for a walk with my husband. (Or, as others might call it, getting in a workout.) The reality is that I do a fairly sedentary job and spend a minimum of 90 minutes per day commuting. That is a whole lot of sitting time. Want proof that most of us sit too much? Get yourself an activity monitor. Within 2 or 3 weeks, I was already considering fairly drastic lifestyle changes to cut my commute and increase my activity. I'm still thinking about making those changes in the long term.

In the short term, I'm just being more diligent about getting workouts done, especially cardio workouts. Knowing that I will plug in my ActiveLink at the end of the day and stare at a big fat "0" is often enough to get me to the pool for a quick swim or convince me to go for that walk at the end of the day. In fact, by week 4 or so, I was doing so well that ActiveLink suggested upping my challenge to 5 Activity Points per day. I gladly accepted!

10 weeks in, I haven't totally succeeded in achieving my goal of spreading out my activity throughout the week, but I am doing better. ActiveLink builds you up to your challenge goal with smaller goals in the early weeks. In the first week, I was struggling to meet my mini-goal of 2 Activity Points per day. Now, I almost always manage at least that. On a weekly basis, I pretty much always make my goal (ie: 35 Activity Points/week), but I still earn most of those on the weekends. This week, for example, I have earned:

-22 on Saturday (10-mile run plus cooking and cleaning)
-15 on Sunday (triathlon)
-3 on Monday (work from home day with a workout DVD)
-3 on Tuesday (TRX in the AM and a day in the office)

The pattern is clear. I'm already 5 Activity Points over my weekly goal, but I didn't hit the daily goal on Monday and Tuesday, even though I did some exercise both of those days.

This brings me back to what I said about cardio workouts. The ActiveLink really rewards cardio (walking, running, biking, swimming) over any other exercise. The workouts I did on Monday and Tuesday were more strength-based, and those just don't earn many activity points. I would earn more going for a 30-minute walk than doing an intense 45-minute TRX class. This can be frustrating, as I'm a big believer in strength training with no intention of giving that up. But I have to keep in mind that the ActiveLink is from WeightWatchers, which means that it is focused on weight loss, and one glance at any "calories burned by type of activity" chart (like this one) clearly shows that cardio activities burn more calories. I know enough about fitness not to abandon my strength training just to do more cardio, but one positive of the ActiveLink is that it motivates me to do at least a little cardio (say, a short run or walk) even on strength training days.

All in all, I'm a fan of this little device and activity monitors in general. If you are thinking about trying one out, I say go for it. I can't promise that you will lose a ton of weight and become incredibly fit (that hasn't happened to me), but you will learn a great deal about your activity patterns and where you can make some positive changes.

Summer craziness.

It seems to happen every year: my June gets so crammed with fun events that it winds up being totally nuts and I can't wait for July. Weddings, birthdays, races, travel, preaching- its like my whole summer gets crammed into one month. This has been going on for several years now, but this year is the craziest ever. When Andrew and I married each other, its like our calendars got married too, and gave birth to more and more places to go and things to do. Here's the run-down for this summer so far:

May 24-26: Andrew went to KY for a bachelor party. I went to NC to see some seminary friends. While I was there, I visited the US National Whitewater Center, which is basically a massive outdoor adventure playground for grownups. Amazing.

May 31-Jun 2: Andrew and I were scheduled for my first tri of the season and his first tri ever, with his parents visiting to cheer us on. Those plans went a little awry when I injured my foot May 30th, but Andrew was triumphant! (See two posts ago.)

June 5: My birthday. For the second year in a row, I didn't have time for a real party because my birthday was surrounded by weddings, but Andrew and my family still made it nice.

A "cake" made of flowers, which Andrew sent to my office.



Best card ever from my niece.



 

June 7-9: Andrew and I went to Richmond, VA for an awesome wedding at a camp, featuring a bluegrass band and lots of friends from my Yale Divinity School days. Bonus: I managed my first workout post-toe injury.

June 15-16: Andrew and I went to another great wedding, this time for two of his friends in Washington, DC. The next day, we got up bright and early to run the Striders' Father's Day 10K. Not the strongest showing for either of us, but it did get us closer to IronMan awards for 2013.

June 21-23: I did my 4th annual stint volunteering for Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC, while Andrew spent the weekend going to my nephew's 13th birthday party and having breakfast with my parents. Who has the best husband?

Andrew teaches my family his unique photo stylings.

Which brings us up to the craziest of crazy weekends:

June 28-30: Two parts of this weekend were planned out months ago. I've known for a long time that Saturday was the first day of the Striders' 2013 marathon training group and also that Andrew's parents would be coming to visit and celebrate our mothers' close-together birthdays. As if that weren't enough for one weekend, Andrew and I made a last-minute choice to add some craziness. When I had to back out of the Rock Hall tri on June 2nd, I signed up for the Annapolis Tri Club's first-ever sprint tri on June 30th.  Even though he already had one tri under his belt for this month, Andrew gamely signed up too.

In previous years, I've gone easy on the first few weeks of marathon training and jumped in closer to the fall race season. This year, though, I'm signed up for the Kauai Marathon, which is a mere 8 weeks away. So, no skipping the early long runs! With that race in mind, Andrew and I got up bright and early Saturday morning and headed out on our first 10-miler since April. It wasn't easy, but we got to see lots of friends from the Striders and we took a lovely coffee-and-scenery break during the last 3 miles.

When we got home from the run, we took quick showers and set about cleaning the house and prepping food for the mothers' birthday party. Then, we drove down to southern MD in the afternoon to watch my nephew win 2 baseball games (yay!) and back home to host said party. We had a great time, until we looked at our watches and the drinks in our hands at 9pm and remembered we were doing a tri first thing in the morning.

At 5am on Sunday, we got up and packed our tri gear. The race was just a few minutes down the road inside the beautiful Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. From the moment we arrived, we started seeing friends: people from our gym, Striders, members of the Wonder Women tri group, even members of my high school and college classes. Andrew and I still can't get over the fact that all of our local friends are athletes, and we're thrilled to be part of that group! The sign-in and gear set-up, like all aspects of this race, were low-key. We didn't even have assigned spots on the bike racks, which was nice because we got to be next to each other and our friends.

When I signed up for this race, my brain somehow confused "low-key" with "easy." Big mistake. This race was far from easy. The swim was a pretty basic 1/2 mile out-and-back in warm, calm water. It would have been lovely, if not for the jellyfish. I got stung once, which I thought was a big deal until I chatted with people post-race and realized that most of my fellow athletes (including Andrew) were stung at least 5 or 6 times. The bike course was an easy 10 miles (two 5-mile loops), which I made hard by not training. Then came the run. It was billed as a trail run. In my experience, this often means "a lot of road and a little bit of trail." Not this time. This was a true trail race: mud, tree roots, steep climbs, and slow finish times. Beautiful, but very challenging.

I finished the race in just over 2 hours with a distinct feeling that it had not been my day. Just a couple minutes later, I watched Andrew cross the line, and realized I was witnessing a first. Andrew had started two swim waves- or 6 minutes- behind me. He crossed the finish line about two minutes after me. Thus, for the first time ever, he beat me in a race. When we got our official times, we learned that my math was spot on. I finished in 2:02; Andrew finished in 1:58.

Savoring his well-earned victory.

After the race, we finally got to relax. We spent the afternoon eating, napping, and going to the movies. Good thing, because we need to rest up for the rest of the summer. Events still to come: the rest of marathon training, 5 more road races (for both of us), 2 more tris (for me), a family trip to PA, Andrew's birthday, the removal of my wisdom teeth, and finally our honeymoon to Hawaii!

I'll sleep in September.