Walk to Mordor Update Weeks 42 and 43

Hello All! I'm back with my WTM Updates! It has been a really long time since I did one (July, if you can believe it!) and I'm here to bring them back, since I'm trying to step up my fitness in these next few weeks. If you haven't heard of  Walk to Mordor, it just means that I'm tracking my mileage and tracking how long it is going to take me to get to Mordor and back to the Shire following Frodo as he brings the ring to Mordor. I like the idea of using a fantasy world as a motivational tool to get fit.
As I've been trying to organize my posting schedule on my blog, I've decided to do Walk to Mordor Mondays, so all my Mordor and fitness posts will be on Mondays from here on out. My hope is to update every other week and the other Mondays will be days to talk about other cool fitness things like products and exercises. Here is my update from weeks 42 and 43!

Week 42

Starting Weight	Current Weight	Goal Weight	Projected Goal Date	Week #/ Day
270	268.3	175	2017	42/ 4-5

Date	Activity	Total Miles this Week	Beginning Mileage	Ending Mileage
7/13-7/19	Walk and Hike	17.28	520.16	537.44

Location	Notes
On winding paths, starting to head southeast.	This week (15th) was my one year vegan anniversary! I was sick this week (a hangover from the week before) and didn’t get much done in the way of exercise. It was also pretty rainy, so walking was a no-go.

Week 43

Starting Weight	Current Weight	Goal Weight	Projected Goal Date	Week #/ Day
270	268	175	2017	43/ 5-6

Date	Activity	Total Miles this Week	Beginning Mileage	Ending Mileage
7/20-7/26	Walk and Hike	16.48	537.44	553.92

Location	Notes
Reach another mountain crest. Turn Southwest for descent and walk along cliff edge.	Again, I didn’t do much in the way of hiking this week, but I did go into town in Hendersonville a few times.

That's all for now! Next Monday, I'll post another update!

Update Walk to Mordor Week 36

Walk to Mordor Week 36 Update!

Week #___36___ Day __25_____ WTR Goals: Mileage___20___ Weight __265____

Starting Weight	Current Weight	Goal Weight	Projected Goal Date	Day
270	267.9	175	2017	25

Date	Activity	Duration Miles	Beginning Mileage	Ending Mileage	Location*
6/1	Walk	1.12	401.46	402.58
6/2	Walk	4.72	402.58	407.3	While looking for a place to camp, hear a horse: Glorfindel.
6/3	Walk	2.52	407.3	409.82
6/4	Walk	2.04	409.82	411.86
6/5	Walk	3.24	411.86	415.1
6/6	Walk	2.13	415.1	417.23
6/7	walk	1.55	417.23	418.78
Totals	This week:	17.32	Total Miles:	418.78

This was a good week. I went to Koko Fitclub 3 times and I learned how to do plyo-jumps. My legs are killing me. My ballet studio is redoing the floor and the coats of finish need to dry. Since it has been raining here on an off for weeks, it is taking longer than expected.

Friday I met with my wonderful friend Max to pick out music for an upcoming vocal and piano recital. I'm really excited to make music with Max since he is super musical and really "gets" the music of so many different composers. I'll keep you all updated on the progress we are making.

I'm getting really frustrated with the slow pace of my Mordor travel. I spend a lot of time in the car or sitting, so I do what I can when I am able to be active, but I can only do so much before I end up walking around in circles to try to get my five miles per day. Next week I'm going to be on vacation, so I'll be walking around a lot more. When I finally get to North Carolina (still not set date for that, urg!) I'm going to go hiking or walking every day! (Unless it is raining because walking in thunderstorms is not fun).

That's all for today. I'll post some awesome vegan food pictures tomorrow!

Tips for Workouts, Sore Muscles, and Pain

~~~~~~~Workout Tips!~~~~~~~~~

Everyone's body works differently, but there are several tips that I believe everyone can benefit from when trying to maximize your workouts.

1. Sleep

Sleep is important for healing your body and keeping you healthy. If you are only sleeping 4 hours a night, you are not getting the most out of your workouts. I like getting between 6.5 and 8 hours of sleep per night. Also, I find that I sleep better if I am in bed before 11:00 PM. If I go to bed later than that, I don't get a good night's sleep and I am cranky and tired the next day. I love the sleep motion feature on my FitBit that lets me know if I am restless when I sleep.

2. Water

Drink water before, during, and after your workout. Not tea. Not coffee. Not juice. Water. When you sweat, you are losing lots of water and your muscles need that water to start the repairing process after your workout. If you drink sodas, you need to drink even more water because they are full of sugars and sodium that can dehydrate you if you don't imbibe the H2O. If you don't like the taste of water, add a few drops of juice into your water to lightly flavor it. (Lemon, pomegranate, orange, and apple juice work well for this purpose).

3. Warm Up

Always warm up before you start your workout. Make sure your muscles, joints, and bones are ready for your workout. Examples of good warm ups: Walk before you run. Do some plies, leg lifts, relevees, and small kicks before a ballet class. Do some light stretches and/ or cardio work before lifting weights.

4. Cool Down/ Stretch

After your workout, make sure you stretch/ cool down. This will keep you from having muscle cramps later. I make sure to stretch my calves and hamstrings because I tend to get leg cramps more than arm and back cramps or pains.

5. Eat Fresh Fruits and Veggies

These are so much better for you than a protein shake. They contain many more vitamins and minerals and are full of water, all things you need to replenish after a workout. My favorites are: Apples, Bananas, Watermelons, Pineapples, Beans, Peas, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Carrots, and Oranges.

6. Take Rest Days

It won't do you any good to work the same muscles every single day in the same way. Let your muscles rest so they can repair before your next workout and you can build muscle and strength.

~~~~~~~Pain and How to Deal With It~~~~~~~

I have tight muscles and tendons in the backs of my legs. As a child I couldn't even touch my knees, let alone my toes. I have to be very careful when I work out that I stretch and warm up properly or I will have horrible cramps in my legs when I go to bed at night. I always start to cramp when I hike, so I make sure to stop and stretch my legs after about ten minutes of hiking to keep them from getting too bad.

I also have a bad ankle from breaking my leg when I was thirteen and several sprains I've had falling down stairs and off of sidewalks (I realize that I sound like a klutz, but I really have fallen down a lot). When I hurt myself, I wear and ankle brace and ice it to get the swelling down.

Best ways to help muscle pain/ cramps
1. Take a hot bath with Epsom salts and soak the pain away.
2. Drink a lot of water
3. Eat a few bananas
4. Use Absorbine, Bengay, Salonpas, Tiger Balm, Icy Hot, or some other form of pain cream, patch, or liquid.

For pain from injuries: RICE
Rest- healing will be done faster when you rest
Ice- get the inflammation down so blood can flow better to the injured tissues to commence healing.
Compression- Also helps with swelling and support of the area
Elevation- Elevate the injury to reduce pain

If all of that doesn't work, take an ibuprofen and go to sleep.

~~~~~~Specified tips for Ballet~~~~~

If you take care of your body, it will take care of you. I find this is true in regards to ballet.
Take care of your feet after class, so they will be ready for the next class: cutting toenails, bandaging and/or lancing blisters, taking care of your calluses.
Eat in time to digest before class so you won't slosh around as you dance.
Drink lots of water after class so you replace what you sweat out.
Sleep well so you won't be tired and hurt yourself in class.
Tiger Balm and AbsorbineJr works the best on sore muscles after class.
Go to class regularly to workout the soreness, and you will have a constant low level of soreness instead of a huge amount every few days.
Keep your shoes and clothing patched up and without holes so you don't get friction blisters.

Those are my tips. This is what I do to keep myself out of pain or reduce the pain that I am in. Let me know if you have any other tips in the comments below.

Early Morning Ramble

Or, what else can you do when you wake up at five o'clock in the morning

 

This is the problem with going to bed at 8:15 pm, you wake up before dawn and you wonder why you can't get back to sleep.

 

After rain

I was so tired from working out yesterday at koko. They are doing this new challenge where you do pushups, planks, and those jumping squat things and you get points and whoever gets the most points will win a bottle of wine. Well, I can't do pushups. I don't have enough upper body strength and a long body to be all jelly like while I'm trying, so I stuck with the other two. I did the plank for 14 seconds. Not bad for having never done it before. Then I did 17 of the jump squats. They aren't as bad as ok thought they would be, I just think I'm super sore because I want warmed up when I did them.  I then did my normal two cardio sessions and one strength session. I'm trying really hard to be ready to hike this summer.

 

Climb the oak tree

Hiking is one of those things I have done my whole life. I didn't start enjoying it until I was older for several reasons. The first was that I fell down a lot as a child. I think my body constantly growing messed up my center of gravity so much that I would lose my balance and footing easily and fall down. I am a master at falling down. I do it with grace and finesse. All joking aside, I did fall down a lot and scraped my knees up and had dirt and mud all over me. I didn't really enjoy hiking that much then. Another reason I didn't like it was that my calf muscles would cramp really badly after about twenty minutes of hiking. Now I know how to deal with it because it is normal for my legs to do this, but then it was just a painful experience and I would want to cry and sit down (which doesn't work when the rest of your family wants to keep going). My best way for working out the muscles when they start cramping now is to walk backwards up the hill. Don't do this if you are near a cliff or on treacherous footing. But a nice wide, relatively smooth trail will be fine. This will really stretch your calves and hamstrings. The third reason I didn't really like hiking: bugs. I'm not saying I'm afraid of bugs. I'm actually the one who is usually catching them to bring them back outside. I'm talking about gnats, mosquitoes, and bees. Gnats somehow always go up my nose and into my eyes. Really bad if you are wearing contacts. Mosquitoes bite me. If there is a mosquito within a half mile of my location, it will find me and bite me. I'm not kidding. And bees think my blonde hair is a giant flower and dive bomb it over and over again. The best thing to do for all of these: wear a hat, wear unscented deodorant and shampoo, and eat garlic. Garlic will keep the small bugs away, the hat will keep them away from your head and face, and boring deodorant and shampoo will not attract them in the first place.

 

Pasta with Vegan Pesto and Daiya

Recently, hiking has become much more fun for me. I usually don't fall down (and when I do I'm wearing boots with high ankle support so I don't sprain them again) and I can keep up with my dad and brother most of the time. I'm planning to do lots of fun hikes this summer!

 

Angel Hair with Vegan Pesto and Tomato Paste

I've included some pictures of foods I've eaten recently. Do you like it when I add these to posts? Let me know in the comments below.

 

Sushi Rice with Eggplant Punjab

In a few weeks I'm going to be traveling more, so you will see both fewer posts and more pictures. I hope you enjoy my travel posts because there will be lots of fun happening in them.

Watermelon and Pineapple with Orange Juice

Peter Rabbit Garden Salad Wrap with veggie sticks and a green juice from Nutrition Company

Leftover Black Beans and Brown Rice

Potatoes baked in olive oil with sautéed onions and red bell peppers and daiya

Potatoes with veggies, daiya, and coconut bacon!