Mia's Edition: Dear Anna: Lessons from running in Paris

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Lessons from running in Paris

It's good to be back home. We arrived Sunday afternoon and I ended up working from home in my pajamas all day yesterday (Monday) suffering through another 'bout of jet lag, which I hope to get over fairly quickly. My working hours yesterday were from 5:00am - 2:30pm with a bed time of approximately 5:30pm. I'm logging similar hours today but

I woke up again this morning at 4:00am but forced myself to lay in bed until 5:30am trying to muster up my will to run. The thing is, it isn't too hard once I convince my brain that I'm not that tired and remind it of how great I feel after my run :)

The amazing thing, however, is that when I came home to hop on the scale for my regular Tuesday weigh-in (something I've been dreading since I was sure that I gained 10 pounds while I was in Paris) it read 120.5 lbs. A 2 lb loss since I last weighed myself before I left, which was a 2 lb gain (122 lbs). The week before my 122 lb weigh-in I ran 29 miles versus the17 miles I ran last week for today's 120.5 lb weigh-in. Weird.

I guess it's a lesson to pay close attention to both diet and exercise (or at least pay more attention). In fact, I posted an email from Jillian Michaels' newsletter to help motivate me to lose the final 5 to 8 lbs, which appears to be elusive. That said, while I was in Paris, I realized how running really helped center me in the madness of work, traveling and being a host to my own family while they visited Paris for the first time. I suppose having this sense of comfort and enjoyment with running will help the weight loss journey, which is very reassuring..

So in terms of my running-in-Paris summary, I logged 6 runs (3 runs/ week) for a total mileage of 31.5 miles and total duration of 4hrs 20mins. While commendable for being abroad, it was obviously just a fraction of the total miles and work-out hours I typically invest in a week.