Penguins Made Me Run Faster

First of all, this is post #300 for me! Hooray! It's been two-and-a-half years of blogging, 300 posts, 502 followers, 28,300+ page views, hundreds of photos, funny posts, serious posts, brave posts great new friends, amazing connections, fun link-ups, lots of support and encouragement...I sure do love this blogging community! :)

But anyways, normally I don't really have any sort of posting "schedule" for Thursday's, and I just write about whatever I find or feel like or wanna ramble about...And today is no exception. And even though I just did my Weigh-In Wednesday post yesterday like normal, I still have more to talk about today, so I'm doing another "fitness & health" related post today!

And really, this post is mainly about how I just have to brag on myself here guys, because I was soooo pumped about it yesterday. After work, I tried to go to the high school I always run at, but there were TONS of people all over the track and field, so I'm guessing it was probably the track and field team or something. (It's like I'm Sherlock Holmes or something over here, right?!) So instead I went and ran down a big multi-use trail close to where Jeff lives (for you Tally peeps, I was on Blair Stone), since it was such a nice day outside!

(And my shirt is little penguins, all lined up to look like a piano :) It's called the "Choir of Antarctica." I ordered it from Threadless a while back, and it's definitely one of my favorite t-shirts. Because it's cute obviously, but's it's also super-duper soft and comfy. You should check out Threadless.com for some awesome stuff. I have two others from there as well, and they're also some of my favorite t-shirts.)

Side note: Let me stop for a moment to interject here and explain my one-mile routine, because I don't think I have yet... I use the RunKeeper app on my iPhone to track my runs, and I have it set up for the lady to talk to me every quarter of a mile. So I run/walk/run/walk the first mile, alternating at each quarter-of-a-mile mark. So essentially, if I stick exactly to that routine, I run exactly half of the mile, and walk exactly half of the mile. (Then when I'm on the track, for the second mile I run the straights and walk the curves.) But lately I've gotten better at being able to run more of that last quarter-of-a-mile, instead of walking that whole time, which is how I've been slowly improving my time...

But even as pretty as it was, it was still pretty hard, because there were huge giant hills I had to run up! But since I was on my official "run" quarter of the mile, I stuck it out and ran up the whole hill instead of giving in and walking. And then once I reached .75 miles, I walked for just a little bit, and then decided to start running again. I checked the time on my phone, and I was somewhere in the 12-minute range. And I decided that I wanted to finish the mile somewhere  under 13:30. So I kept running. And I pushed harder. And I was breathing so heavy. And I kept telling myself, "Just a couple more steps and you're almost done. And you're gonna do this in under 13:30. You're going to."

So I ran a little further for a little bit longer. And then the lady finally told me I had reached one mile. So I quickly unlocked my phone and took a screen shot as fast as I could. And at first I didn't even realize what the time said. And then I took another look, and this is what I saw:

And I almost had a fit!! Not only had I done it in under my goal of 13:30, but I actually finished in 13:04. Holy crap people! That is by far my fastest mile I've done so far!! As of yesterday, I told y'all my fastest had been 13:47. So that was 43 seconds faster than that!! I seriously didn't know what to do with myself. I was exhausted, but I had run a mile away from my car, so I had no choice but to run that mile back. So I kept on truckin'. And it was pretty slow, but I still pushed myself when I could. And even with a slower second mile, I ended up finishing the two miles in 28:41, which is only 40 seconds longer than the two miles I did last Friday. I'd say that's a pretty great time still!

Then I drove the couple of minutes to Jeff's house, and decided I wasn't done working out yet. I did a whole ton of stuff with my little hand-weights, and went through a couple of those Pinterest-style circuit workouts  for my legs, booty, arms & waist from my "Gotta Get Fit" board. At the end of all that, I had worked out for a total of one hour, and burned 608 calories. Dang. I think I'm becoming someone who likes to exercise?! Weird.

I can't prove this or anything obviously, but I think those little penguins helped me run faster. I mean, penguins in general are always my little buddies. And maybe the ones on my shirt were cheering me on yesterday instead of singing like a little choir. Cheering for me to run faster and harder and longer! And just maybe it worked ;) Oh, and even though this isn't about the scale today, I would like to announce that I'm back down to 195.5 today. For a total of 21.5 pounds lost in 2013!

And today I'm linking up with Katie @ KTJ Weighing In, for the non-scale victories link up.