Friday Figures (one day late)

This past week was rough. I hate feeling like I am not in control of my moods. I feel like I should be strong enough to remind myself that I don't want to eat an entire box of crackers, but sometimes the mind wins. I guess it's just a reminder that even though I am feeling in control today, tomorrow is a new day and I need to be prepared. I am still learning ways to handle binge urges. I have a book to read and a crochet project in the works so hopefully that will keep my hands busy and refraining from shoving snacks in my mouth.

Since the previous Friday, I only stayed on tracked 3 days. For 4 days (Sunday - Tuesday and again Thursday) I was completely out of control. I would eat lunch and then find a few other lunch options to snack on. It was disgusting and I felt awful. I hate knowing that what I am doing is hurting me and not being able to stop. I thought I was back in control Wednesday, but at the same time I still felt "off." I managed to track and stay in the correct caloric range, even with going out for dinner and drinks but unfortunately I lost it again on Thursday.

I really thought about not weighing in on Friday morning because when I binge I can easily gain 5-10 pounds. I thought about giving myself a few days and then weighing in, but I think I knew that I needed to face the number to actually see the damage I had done. (Plus, it can snap me out of it when I see how much I have gained.) I stepped on and was completely devastated to see 170.3 lbs. I wasn't going to post it here, but I felt like I needed to be able to look back on it and remember how much damage I can do in such little time.

I stayed on track all day Friday and finally felt out of my funk. I did my cross training and ate properly. Out of curiosity I stepped on the scale this morning(after only one day) and am already back to 165.5 lbs. I am going to use the 165 on my "Weigh in" page since I feel like that number more accurately reflects on the weight that I actually gained. The 170 was probably a lot of water/bloat.

I am actually proud of even posting the gain at all. I have a horrible habit of not really acknowledging my gains. I avoid the scale when I know that I am gaining and then when I do step on, I don't track it anywhere. I usually refuse to post or track (on sparkpeople) a new weight unless it is less than the previous weight. This is foolish on so many levels. It happened and I think it will help me to just own up to it and move on. Plus, next week's loss will feel even better!

Onto happier news: As mentioned all last summer, hubby and I love camping. We would camp every weekend if we could. Little lady has been camping since she was 5 months old. We always brought her a pack-n-play to sleep in, but this year we think she is ready for a sleeping bag (She will be 2 in April). On Friday, she spotted a princess sleeping bag while I casually walked up through a camping supply aisle. She loved it and just had to have it. :) The hubby thought it was a good idea so we brought it home and talked up camping. We decided to have a family camp out in the living room last night. It was awesome! Little lady has never really been a cuddler. She has always slept in her own bed. Occasionally we have thought it would be so cute to sleep next to her and we try to get her to sleep in our bed, but she gets so excited to be near us that no one sleeps until she goes up to her bed. I am happy to say that she fell asleep rather quickly in her sleeping bag between mommy and daddy. I loved waking up and seeing her cute face. I am extra excited for camping now! Our first trip is already planned for Memorial Day weekend! (P.s. It will be another biking trip!)

This morning, after a nice night on the floor, I had a scheduled 6 mile run. After the mood I was in all week, I tried convincing myself that no matter what I would run outside. I woke up to see 4 fresh inches of snow and a steady snow falling. Plus, my fleece was dirty. I reluctantly set up the treadmill and let daddy and little lady have some fun. I did it and it wasn't as bad as every run I did this week. My mind was in such a bad place that even running at all was a huge chore. Usually running for me is always challenging, but in a good way. I almost always feel amazing when I am done, but this week I still felt shitty even after my runs. I was glad that although 6 miles on the treadmill felt torturous, it was also amazing to know that I did it! I feel in control again and I couldn't be happier!

The adventure continues

So after our almost 10 hour bike ride 50 miles north, we went to bed feeling awesome! We woke up on Saturday, Day 2 of our vacation not feeling so great. We had planned on riding to the next city further north and getting breakfast in town there. For some crazy reason we actually went for. The hubby checked the map and thought it looked about 4 miles north. We didn't think we would have a problem biking 4 miles. We ended up stopping probably 3 times on the trip to town which ended up being 6 miles away. The path was paved. There was no excuse other than we were sore and should have trained a bit to ride 50 miles in a day.

We sat at breakfast and ate everything we could get our hands on (maybe that's where these 10 pounds came back from). We then began to face reality. We realized we may not be able to make the ride back home. We had thought two days of rest would be enough to recover, but we also forgot to factor in not having a car and actually having to use our bikes/walk to get everything we needed. We decided to walk around town a bit before heading back to camp and possibly calling to schedule a ride home for Monday. We walked to the grocery store and bought some pain pills, energy bars and energy drinks. We tried to go to the library so little lady could play and we could possibly just sit down, but of course it was closed. So we headed back to our bikes and began our ride home. I don't know if everything (pain pills, energy bar/drink) just kicked in at the right time but we were back to camp in no time and feeling great!

That ride changed our outlook. We had just ridden twelve miles the day after our 50 mile ride and survived. We started thinking of what our options were. We realized that we didn't have to ride 50 miles in a day, we could try to split the ride home up. We had decided to go low tech on this trip so we had no way of looking up information. We went to the camp office to try to get information, but unfortunately the area we wanted to stop in wasn't in their county. We headed over to the grocery store near camp (3/4 mile away) to get food for dinner and they actually had a phone book (remember those?). We looked up motel and campgrounds in the town that was right in the middle of the worst stretch of unpaved trail. There was a motel, but the grocery store clerk said they rent it out by the week and it's quite shady. The hubs called the campground and they said they were about 1/4 mile from the trail we were riding on and actually gave discounts to cyclist! We quickly reserved Sunday night there and felt excited again.

We went back to camp and made dinner and quickly tried our best to enjoy our last night at this campground. This campground does have a fish hatchery at it which is fun to check our and feed the fish. Little lady liked feeding the fish and this time she didn't try to eat the fish food her self. However, we really didn't enjoy our stay at this park. It was very crowded (I know Labor day weekend, what did we expect?) and the sites were crammed together. The absolute worst though were the people around us. They were so loud! They stayed up until 5am Sunday morning talking and laughing loudly. We were ready to get out of there by Sunday morning after a not so restful night.

Sunday we loaded up and hit the road by 9.30am. We would have liked to have left earlier, but we couldn't pre load the trailers since we were actually using everything we brought. We hit the trail and stopped at the first stop which was right before the unpaved portion. We fueled up on energy drinks and granola bars.
We only ran into one issue on the way to our new campground. The hubs loves a good short cut and had looked over our trail map to try to avoid the grassy trail area in the next town. He discovered a road that he swore would cut off a couple of miles.We hit the road he just had to take and of course it was a dirt road. Not just any dirt road though, a dirt road that consisted of about 7 giant hills. We had to walk our bikes up the last portion of each hill and then fly down hoping that we didn't hit any rocks and wipe out. It was terrifying! I was not happy to say the least. This was the portion of the trip that I was closest to tears. The bumps felt so rough to me and I felt awful for the little lady. She had been sleeping and the bouncing woke her up and she was crying on the downhills. He heard about that for awhile.
Once we were back to the trail we actually had an enjoyable ride to our campsite. There were no other good stops along the way so we had a back up drink and some snacks. We stopped along the trail a few times, but felt pretty good the whole way.

We absolutely loved the campsite we found. It was a bit more money than the previous campsite, but well worth it. They had a really nice playground for little lady, a pool (although we didn't bring suits), laundry (which we definitely needed to do), mini golf, arcade, camp store, and bigger sites with better neighbors. We were in heaven.

This is taken from the campgrounds site since we didn't have a memory card in the camera. This is actually our site. There is a mini golf course on the corner and we camped on the other side of it.

The next morning we woke up refreshed and ready for the final leg of our journey. We were 30 miles from home. We again had the breakfast of champs, energy bars and energy drinks and hit the trail. It was nice to get the worst over with first. It went pretty well, nothing to dramatic. I am sure we stopped on the trail and rested, but either way we concurred it. We stopped at 2 gas stations along the route and enjoyed snacks and water. Once we hit pavement, we were flying. There was 14 miles of pavement for the last stretch and no good stops. We flew through it even though we did have a ride an extra mile to head to our house from a different angle. We live on a slightly busy road on top of a big hill. We rode down the big hill early Friday morning, but were worried about traffic in the afternoon time of our return.

We survived! We managed to ride over 115 miles in four days both pulling at least 40 pounds behind us. I know for real bikers 115 miles in 4 days is no real challenge, but for us occasional riders, this is huge.

I didn't realize how badly I wanted this until we were in so deep. On the journey up when my knee started hurting I was so afraid we would have to call someone to pick me up. I am so glad it was just a slight pain and that I pushed through without damaging my knee.

When we thought we were going to have to throw in the towel before even attempting the ride home, I felt defeated. I was so thankful for the great 6 mile ride back to camp that gave us new light and a new plan.

I honestly believe this is the hardest physical feat I have ever accomplished. On the ride up my husband asked me what is harder, my running or the bike trip. I thought running at first just because I can't endure much with running yet, but once we kept pushing with bikes and I realized I was actually getting close to the point that I just couldn't physically bike anymore it became this bike trip. I have never actually hit the point of not being able to run another step physically. I definitely hit points of struggling to breath and walking a bit, but my legs never give out. The ride home I actually told myself that I would ride until we get home or my legs give out. Thankfully my legs held up and are feeling much stronger.

Camping in Pennsylvania

So we have obviously survived our back to back camping adventures. Our first of the two camping adventures to end to the summer was a five day camping trip in Pennsylvania with my brother and his family. It was a lot of fun and I am always impressed with how beautiful Pennsylvania is.

We left our house Wednesday morning as soon as little lady woke us up. It was an eight hour drive and we wanted to get on the move as soon as possible. I think we left around 8 AM. We actually had a really nice drive. Sometimes our drives can be a bit chaotic and we bicker (A LOT). However, this one was very calm and we had a few really nice chats. I think it helped that we were leaving in the morning with an already loaded car instead of leaving after work and rushing to load the car. We took our time driving there and got to our campsite around 5pm.

My brother had wanted to rent a cabin. We are all about tent camping, but we caved for him. The cabin was actually really nice and worked out perfectly with little lady. There was a screened in porch area which came in handy when it rained one evening. There was a little sitting room which fit the pack and play perfectly and then there was a bunk room that slept five people.

We spent our 3 full days (2 days of driving and 3 full days of camping = 5 day camping trip to Penn) hiking, talking and drinking. There were so many amazing trails to explore that we didn't get to explore them all. We were at Laurel Hill State Park and I highly recommend going there if you ever get the chance. (If anyone from Laurel Hill State Park is reading this, we totally weren't drinking.)

The hiking was definitely the best part. Our cabin was close to a trail that lead to the Ridge trail. It was supposed to be an easy trail, but there were some challenging parts to it. It was a little damp and had a bit of an incline. 

 

 

Here we are hiking the Ridge trail. Even little lady got to try our her hiking legs. This was not the challenging part.

 

 

 

The hubby was very excited to hike the Pump House trail. He promised us an amazing waterfall and he did not disappoint. It was an easy hike and the waterfall was beautiful.

Here is the whole crew. Hubby is on the left, then me holding little lady, my sister in law, brother and nephew.

We also got to go on a run (my brother and I). I was really excited to run with my brother. It was something I never thought I would be able to do. It was much harder than I expected though. I didn't even want to try to run the ridge trail since I normally run on a flat paved surface, but I was willing to try out this grassy path. I tried to keep pace with my brother, but thought I would die just getting to the trail. I quickly fell behind, but kept on running. It was intense and much more of an incline than I realized. My brother also reminded me that we were at a much higher elevation than I am used to. (I don't know if he just said that to make me feel better, but it did.)  I had to keep stopping for walking breaks and felt like a wuss. We also got turned around, thanks to my directions, and turned our quick 20 minute run into an intense 35 minute run. It was worth it though and I felt great afterwards. I never run on trails and it was a fun experience.

This was the start of the trail. Grassy with a slight incline.

We ran this trail straight down until it hit the Ridge trail. It was such a beautiful view. I took little lady with me to take some pictures after the run. I don't like to carry anything when I run.

Here is little lady enjoying her favorite part of the campground. She kept asking to swing, She is holding a flower that she picked and would not put down.

My absolute favorite trail was the Hemlock trail. It was gorgeous! We almost didn't even get to check it out. We were supposed to check it out Saturday, but little lady took a longer nap than we expected and by the time she woke up we had started to fire to make dinner and we didn't want to put out the fire and then struggle to light a wet log for our evening fire. Hubby and I decided that on Sunday morning once we were all loaded up, we would stop at the trail and hike for a bit before our drive. On Sunday morning we almost decided not to hike it and just get on the road, but something made us do it. We were so glad we managed to see this trail. We had to hike for about a half hour before getting to the Hemlock area and we actually almost turned around right before seeing this sign. 

This is in the hemlock area. It was so pretty it almost looks fake here. And yes, little lady's outfit looks a bit crazy. I put jeans on under her jumper to keep her warm and some of the dirt off her. 

So all in all it was a great camping trip. It was so good to spend some quality time with my brother and his family. We definitely want to check out more of the Pennsylvania campgrounds. (We sort of have a thing for Pennsylvania. Hubby proposed to me in a Pennsylvania campground, but that is for another post.)

On a side note, even with all the hiking I still managed to gain weight. I was proud of myself for making great eating decisions while on the road. I usually have a weak spot when traveling and feel like I need a candy bar or some type of snack on the road. I picked a healthy salad for lunch and didn't munch at all in the car. However, all the eating and drinking and the campground added up...to ten pounds to be exact! Awful! I am back to focusing on my eating though, so they will not be here long.

Today has been quite the adventure filled day and we have much more adventure coming up. We baked more zucchini bread and muffins (that way you can taste the bread before you share it with people). After the bread had baked, little lady and I headed out for a run. I did 2 miles, but it took me forever. I was not in the right mindset. It is so much harder to run with a jogging stroller than not. Every time I get a break from running with the stroller it seems so much harder to go back to stroller jogging. I could not find my rhythm this morning. I did finish though. (Earlier this week I quit mid run for the first time ever.)

We came back from our run and showered and got dressed for the day. I needed to run a few errands in our downtown area. I decided this was the perfect time to try out my bike with the bike trailer. (We have an amazing camping adventure coming up next weekend too which will involve a lot of bike riding and trailer pulling.) We got all of our stuff together and headed out. There are small hills on the half mile road to the trail. It is nice heading from our house because you can almost coast the whole half mile to the trail. That was enjoyable! It's just over a mile to town from the trail. We made it there quickly and stopped at the bank, city hall, the library and the post office. It was different riding my bike around town. I felt like a child again.
The ride back wasn't as fun. There is a slight incline on the trail and then I hit the hill to our house. Oh wow! I only rode on it once before and I seriously quit half way up it and walked my bike previously. This time I wanted to really try to tackle the hill, but I also told myself there would be no shame in walking a bike with a trailer. Thankfully, I didn't need to walk it. I made it! I was proud of myself to make it up the hill pulling about 30 pounds.

I parked the bike and turned to check on little lady. She was sleeping soundly in the trailer. I decided to quickly load the car up with our recycling and then wake her to finish the errands. (Her nap time wasn't for another hour.) Everything was set and I picked her up. She totally stayed asleep. Of course, if I had wanted her to stay asleep she would have woken when the bike stopped. I started talking to her and she seemed really determined to sleep. I decided we would just go off schedule today and she would nap and we would head out afterwards.She woke up 20 minutes later and had lunch. We then finished our outings for the day and came home to try for a nap. I wasn't sure how it would go, but it went well.

She is officially taking her afternoon nap now and I have managed to make lunch and clean 2 of the 3 bathrooms. I have to finish packing before the hubby gets home. We are heading out to go camping tomorrow (Saturday) until Wednesday. We are meeting up with my brother and his family.
My brother is stationed in Virginia and we don't get to see him very often. He came home for a week this summer and I was bummed that we didn't get to spend much time during that week with him (or his wonderful wife and adorable son). We decided to meet in Pennsylvania, about half way between our houses, and camp. I am excited!

After our five day camping trip, we will come home for a day and then get ready to camp again for Labor day weekend. The reason I really needed to test out my bike with the trailer is that we are going on a bike camping trip. We have been talking about it for years and it will finally happen. My husband built a trailer for the bike to carry our tent and supplies on and we have a trailer for the little lady. Thankfully, the only trailer in stock when I went to buy one was a double stroller so little lady will ride with the sleeping bags. We are so pumped, but I am a bit nervous. The furthest I have pulled little lady is 16 miles (We visited a friend on Mackinac Island this summer and I used her bike to pull little lady about the island twice). I felt great after the 16 mile ride, but this trip will be about 50 miles! I think we can do it. I am in much better shape than I ever have been before, which is probably why it's finally happening.