The 25-Minute Mile

A quick health update:

I think the cold I tried to catch last week is finally leaving.  I’m not as congested as I was, and my coughing has quieted down quite a lot.  This is fantastic, as I’ve gotten really poor sleep the past few nights due to the coughing.  I’ll be glad when it’s gone entirely because my abdomen is really sore from all the coughing I’ve done.

Tonight when I got home, I decided that I wanted to go to the park not too far from the house to take a walk and feed the ducks some croutons and corn chips we’d had sitting around the house from before we had surgery.  So I changed clothes and hubby and I went to the park but didn’t stay long since the skies looked like they might open up and pour down rain any second.

I scattered the food around and the critters came sniffing about, curious about what had just been tossed their way.  I knew that the ducks might not eat what I threw out, but that the nutria that live there definitely would.  A few minutes after I’d distributed the food around the creek bank, sure enough, one came up from the creek to see what goodies we’d brought.  We got to see one of them sneak onto the bank and snack on the stuff we’d tossed out:

After I got done feeding the critters, I decided that I wanted to take a short walk. The bike/walk/run path circles the entire creek.  I’m not sure how long it is because I haven’t walked the whole thing, but one of my goals is to walk it all.  Since the weather threatened to get nasty, tonight’s walk had to be a short one.  I used MapMyWalk to determine how far and how fast I’d walked, and here’s what I got at the end of my walk:

An under 25-minute mile.

This is encouraging.  Especially since one of my goals this week is to complete the Jameson 1-mile Mosey in under 25 minutes.  I will say that for my walk tonight, I was tired as all get out and wasn’t wearing proper shoes.  I’m hopeful that I can achieve the goal I’m setting for myself for this weekend’s walk, for which I will be fully and adequately prepared.  I’m also excited because I looked at one of my past walks and noted that my pace was 29 minutes/mile.  I’ve shaved off nearly 5 minutes from that pace, which I’m pretty sure is directly related to the fact that I’m so much lighter than I used to be–than I’ve ever been as an adult.

I feel absolutely triumphant.

Today’s nutrition was good:  91 grams of protein on the day, with 34 grams of fat and really low carbs–31 grams; I prefer getting 50 grams or so.  I just feel better when I do.  I feel really tired when I don’t.

Today’s food choices, from upper right: honey garlic marinated flank steak from Central Market; multivitamin and calcium supplements x2, vitamin B12 and iron supplements, vitamin C and D supplements (not shown); house roasted roast beef slices from Central Market; honey barbecue chicken breast with green beans almondine; honey barbecue chicken breast slices with Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese and avocado slices.

Bedtime is going to be much sooner this evening so that I stand a decent chance of getting some sleep–I didn’t sleep worth a crap last night, and tomorrow is a very long day.