Can I do it all?

I would like to fit in everything, but it's not always possible. 

My plan for this Sunday was to bike up to the gym and do my full body workout with weights. My goal is to tone up my arms and back while still working on my abs.  I got my arms nice last summer and then stopped working them out and concentrated more on my abs. All my arm tone was lost. Starting over but not giving up on my abs. It all requires more time and effort every day! 

I bought yet another 2 pairs of socks for working out. These are my favorites and I can get 2 pairs for $9. I wear them only for working out. I wore them on my 7.12 mile bike ride up to the gym and home this morning. 

It's perfectly normal to have bikes parked inside your house. We kind of baby this road bike. Even the kids bikes we bring inside. Sometimes its easier then to hang them back up in the garage. Always ready to ride if they are right there in front of you. 

After doing my 30 minutes of a full body workout and biking home. Steve and I decided to go to the Farmers Market. It's been since last summer and we want to make some stir fry tonight. 

The market had a lot of flowers, herbs in pots, onions and radishes etc.. 

 We picked up some lettuce, sugar pea pods, kettle corn (I could eat the whole bag) and then went to the grocery store to pick up the rest of the veggies to make our dinner tonight. 

The best part of going to the farmer Market is the little restaurant next door. They have the best, fresh breakfast that we eat out in the alley way. We just have to cut through Mears Park to get to this place. 

We always split this big breakfast. Usually we have an omelet but today I wanted scrambled eggs. Not sure why I don't eat eggs more often, they taste so good. 

Delicious pancakes.. I was so hungry this morning I could have ate the whole breakfast myself. 

A quick walk back through the park to our car. We saw a bunch of people doing yoga in this park.. would have been a good idea if we came with our mats. It's been ages since I last did a gentle yoga class. I do a little yoga  every day. I definitely need to find a yoga  place again or find out when they are doing it again in the park. 

We have tons of trees and branches to burn up from all my landscaping I've been doing to our yard. We  need to have a fire every night to start making a dent in getting rid of it all. 

Steve and I decided to take a quick walk on the path. I trimmed back a path through our yard to get down to the parks paved path. It was so over grown with dead branches hanging down and small vines and trees. Steve likes it over grown so no one will walk up the path but I just like to get down there with out tripping or getting smacked in the face by a branch. 

We wanted to see how high the water was. We've gotten so much rain it's flooding every where! 

I'd love to take the kayaks out on our pond out back. Might have to do that one of these days. It takes 2 people to carry them and I'll need help or we need to rig up some type of cart that rolls them. I don't like to have to depend on anyone to do something I want. 

It was a beautiful night for a quick walk and then back to our fire.. roasted marshmallows with the kids and off to bed. 

Mix it up Saturday!

I've been working extremely hard on these abs since last fall, the middle of October to be exact. My plan was to do a plank a day. I started off with 30 seconds and have worked my way up to 2 minutes and 30 seconds. I do 2 kinds of planks, one with bent arms and the other with straight. Both I do for 2 minutes and 30 seconds with a break in between. The break is as long as I need. Mostly, I just rest for a minute or less and go right into the next plank. 

At the gym at least 5 days a week I do another 10 minutes or less of ab exercises with 3 different pieces of equipment. What is left to do? Keep doing my ab workout every day. Plus I need to lose some body fat. I know this is what is holding me back from seeing that six pack or a one pack. It's time to make some different food choices to reach that goal of losing some pounds and bringing out those abs for summer! 

I'm only going to give up all white bread. I'll still eat my Multi-grain bread with chunky Skippy PB. I start off my daily exercise with a half slice. On weekends I go for a whole slice of bread to keep me from getting hungry. The key to keep working out is to make sure your not starving. That can really mess with your head and make you quit your workout.

I just wasn't in the mood to run. I biked to the gym instead. I wanted to get in a strength training workout. I concentrated on my upper body. I figure with all the biking, that was enough for my legs. After 25 minutes or so.. I biked home another 3.5 miles. 

I wanted to try running right after getting off the bike to see what brick legs would feel like after just biking 3.5 miles. Yep, they were weird feeling. Heavy but surprisingly I felt like running fast. I just ran around our block three times for 1 mile of running at a fairly fast pace. I did check out the Garmin but since I had been biking part of the beginning of the mile I am positive my running times were off but I'd say average an 8 minute mile pace. I was just running a mile so no need to save up my energy. 

After 43 minutes, I was hungry again. Time to fuel up before doing the last bike ride of my morning workout. I ate another full slice of bread with PB quickly and off to bike I rode. I just haven't wanted to eat on the go while riding, but I'm sure I'll need to try that eventually. 

No workers today on the closed road. These machines are huge so I just had to get a photo. It's not too often you get up close to these diggers. I think me and my bike could easily fit in that dirt bucket. 

This section of torn up road was some real mountain biking. I liked the rugged-ness of it and can't wait to go to the local park and do some trail bike rides. 

Off to finish my bike ride, 20 miles. 

The last run to see how my legs would feel were after 20 miles. I ran the .2 around our block fast and my legs felt pretty much the same as they did after 3.5miles. Right now I can practice brick workouts after only a 3 mile bike ride since it will feel the same on my legs as a longer ride. Good to know I don't have to bike that many miles to practice this transition workout. 

I was thinking about this watermelon on my bike ride home. I was really looking forward to eating some cold, crisp, juicy watermelon and that's exactly what I did the second I was done for the day. It never has tasted soooo good! 

Do you remember me saying I'd mow the back yard today? Well, I'm off to mow.. no time to rest because I'm off to burn more calories.. how many calories does mowing the lawn burn?

 About 285 for 45 minutes

After I'm done mowing.. this is how I'm spending my afternoon.. At the pool and I'll do a few laps to get in some exercise. Running around in the pool helps warm me up from the cool water. It really helps me get use to the water temperature fast. 

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What ways do you mix up your workout? 

How many miles do you bike before doing a brick run? 

What's the last fruit you ate? 

Longest day- light.. Day of the year!

Did you want to know how I spent that longest day light Day? 

It started off early, running this dirt road for 4 miles, followed by a bike trip 7 miles to the store/coffee shop and home. 

If that wasn't enough exercise for the day, we decided to work out in the yard. 

Mulch for the yard was first on our todo list. 

We had to make two trips and each trip we filled the back of the old pick up truck. 

It was kind of nice to use it one last time before we said our goodbyes forever today. Steve can't be too sad, because he has a nice, new shiny Red Pick up to take it's place. 

Steve did all the mulch wheel barrow trips back. I just raked out the mulch under the deck. 

I just love it when everything is fresh again. We still have a ton of work in our over grown back yard... but we are making progress little by little. 

I'm not sure we still need the kids swings.. but I kind of think your never too old to swing. 

After doing all the mulch, I decided to mow the front yard. I'm saving the back big yard for tomorrow. We have the worst mower. The power drive went out and this thing weights a ton. I get a really good workout pushing it since it fights back. 

I was trimmer happy and got to work on all the weeds, branches and anything that needed to be chopped. Steve thinks I went a little too far in my trimming. He'd rather have our yard wild then tame. I'm looking for a happy medium in there some where. I have no idea of how many calories I burned. I probably spent about 3 or more hours of non-stop yard work. I was a sweaty mess but it felt good to get a lot accomplished and to be spending the day outside. 

I was extremely hungry and thirsty and cut open our first Watermelon of the summer. Why I waited so long to do this? I have no idea, it was delicious. I think I could have ate the whole thing myself. I was nice and shared the bowling ball sized watermelon. 

The day todo list was not over just yet! Steve power washed his motorcycle to get it all cleaned up. We had to take it in for new tires. Come to find out, we have to go back once the tires come into the repair shop. At least they are on order and his motorcycle will be ready to ride in less then a week. 

After the bank, Cub shopping for food and having Steve's brother/father over for dinner I'm exhausted. 

It's time to put these feet up and rest a bit. I won't be staying up a second past the sun set for the day..