Let's try this AGAIN...

Ok, so it’s obvious that I suck at regularly updating any kind of blog or other social media outlet. I get a whim, I start a blog, then life smacks me around a little and I forget all about my grandiose plans. You’d think I’d stop being surprised when this happens. I should, and yet somehow I am always surprised…

A lot has happened since the last post. My girlfriend and I have kept to our goal of doing one 5k (or other significant organized physical exertion event) every month for the past year now. Two of those major physical events are the biannual Square2Square ride, which is a 30 mile bike ride on the trails between Fayetteville and Bentonville city squares. We’ve done every one they’ve held for the past… 3 years? Basically, every single one they’ve held, we’ve done.

Also this past April I completed my very first half marathon with an almost respectable time of 3:07:44. Well, that’s my Garmin time. I can’t remember what the official time was, but it was within 30 seconds of that. And we are signed up for the Disney Princess half this coming February. In other words, it’s about time I start training for it.

There have been a couple of changes in the fitness equipment in the last year. I had previously upgraded my trusty (if slow to lock) Forerunner 15 with a shiny new Vivoactive. It is quite possibly still my favorite in terms of a daily watch. But earlier this year I splurged (thanks to a friend at Garmin that let me use his discount) and upgraded to the Forerunner 630 and the HR-RUN chest strap. Now, I’m not going to lie and say that I know what all of the data this thing throws at me means, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

This has meant, however, that I have basically ended my relationship with Fitbit. The Charge was disappointing, to say the least, and because I was already pretty heavily invested in Garmin for running I saw no need to continue carrying multiple devices. The only thing I still use that is a Fitbit is my Aria scale. While I could (and have considered) move over to a Garmin scale and have everything syncing nicely there, I’d lose out on integration with things like Trendweight. So I put up with occasionally remembering to manually update my weight on the Garmin app. Maybe one of these days someone will fix the MyFitnessPal -> Garmin weight sync thing. It’s *supposed* to push from MFP to Garmin, but it doesn’t.

Sadly, despite all of this extra activity, I’m still way heavier than I should be. I am fully aware it’s because I eat like shit. I’m trying to fix that now. I’m up to a 12 day MFP streak, and that’s logging everything almost every day. (I didn’t track the food from the halloween party last weekend, because screw that.) The trend line isn’t great, but it’s at least in the general direction I want it to go. I’m hoping to finally stick with meal prep this time and combine that with half marathon training to achieve some positive results.