Hallefrickinlujah, I Found A Sports Bra I Don't Hate

Hello, Fiona am I ever glad to meet you! 

I spent last Friday night becoming slowly enraged while searching for a REAL sports bra for a plus sized lady with large breasts at two well known sporting goods stores. 

The first one was ridiculous - they had NOTHING over an XL in active wear and their sports bras were a joke.  Fashionable and cute, yes, but meant for women who are a B cup or smaller.  I guess they are under the assumption that only thin people exercise.  I would say that's a good assumption in general, but hey, what about those of us who have to start where we are before buying tiny "guava" colored sports bras with thin pretty straps?  I tried the largest bra they had in the store and I couldn't even get one boob in there.

Anyhow, I found them on amazon for half price and will be going back to buy more.  While I still have a little bit of bounce on impact, it's quite muffled by the stitching and the high upper hem.  Much less bounce than any other bra I've had before.

It also wicks away the sweat, too!  LOVE.

March 14, 2011

Today I did the unthinkable - I got up early enough to go to the gym BEFORE WORK.  It helped that Wilbur wanted to go swimming too.  He doesn't need to Uncover His Inner Athlete, he wears his Athlete on the outside.

I'm doing a hybrid of the Couch to 5K and Hal Higdon's Novice 5K Training Program.  Today I walked for 5 minutes, and then did intervals of 90 seconds of running and 60 seconds of walking for 25 minutes, and then walked for an additional 10 minutes at a nice clip to get me to 1.65 miles.  I did 2 miles on Saturday and Sunday doing the opposite interval - 60 seconds running, 90 seconds walking.

I walked a 5K back in November and did pretty well for a walker - 50 minutes.  I'm shooting for the Moonlight Run 5K in New Milford.

As far as weight training, today was a rest day.  My triceps and hamstrings are pretty sore.

The goal tomorrow is to get up early enough to hit the gym before work again (if I do it, it will be BEYOND miraculous) and do my chest, back and leg stuff before my 5K training.

Food wise, today was pretty clean, but not as clean as it could have been.  I worked through lunch and hit up the vending machine for a buttered roll and a Chobani yogurt.  Breakfast was a high protein smoothie from the gym and dinner was perch and roasted red potatoes.

I am still really craving chocolate.  I need to find a way to satisfy the chocolate jones without going overboard.

My Athletic Past

When I was a skinny kid back in the 70's, I was always running around or climbing something.  My mother cut my hair short because I always came home with twigs or small mammals stuck in it.

I lived in a neighborhood full of boys, so I ended up playing a lot of whiffle ball, a lot of touch nerf-football, even some tackle on my front lawn (until they started tackling me when I didn't even have the ball, and then I figured out something ELSE was going on!).  My grandfather built us a back-board, and we had lots of basketball games, or just Horse going on after that. (An aside: He actually built it a foot higher than regulation, so to this day I tend to overshoot baskets.)  Naturally, I was an avid rollerskater in the early 80's since that was the social event for 8th-9th graders nationwide.

In 8th grade I was the 2nd string center for the inaugural Girl's Basketball Team at my parochial school.  I won the trophy for "Team Player" at the Sports Banquet that year, but nobody knew I was always passing the ball to my teammates because I was terrified to shoot a basket myself.

While I loathed softball and field hockey in high school gym class, I loved volleyball and weight lifting, especially weight lifting! I loved feeling myself get stronger and stronger and the heavy weights I used to lift become almost too easy to lift.  I also liked tennis and racquetball. 

What happened?

Well, the short answer is I found laziness, beer and pot.  Freshman year in college, I was away from my very controlling mother for the first time and I went nuts.  I drank at least 5 nights out of the week, ate pizza at 4:00 A.M., and Dorito's introduced it's "Cool Ranch" flavor.  I smoked crappy homegrown Illinois pot and ate a lot of Pringles.  Most girls gain the "Freshman 15"...I gained the "Freshman 70".  Most of that was beer-related, but I also became pretty sedentary during a major depression that was also going on at that time. 

I've spent the majority of my adult life about 100 pounds overweight.  There was that one year in 1995 when I got sick and tired of being the "funny fat friend" and went to Overeaters Anonymous and got really hardcore and dropped 97 pounds.  But by the time I got down to a weight that looks thin on me, I realized I had even bigger problems -- alcoholism and a raging drug addiction.  So, I surrendered and got sober and started going to meetings...and what do they have at meetings?? Free cookies.  Slowly slowly slowly but surely, I gained the weight back.  And then some.

There has been some flirtations with fitness.  There's been some gym memberships and attempts at dieting and other gym memberships.  I did the Couch to 5K Training back in 2005, dropped 30 pounds, and then pulled my achilles tendon while in bellydancing class, ruining my hopes to run in the 5K for which I was in training.  And the weight came back as I sat around reading Anne Perry novels.

So here I am!  I'm almost 43 years old and am dealing with the wreckage of my lazy past:  Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome/Insulin Resistance/Metabolic Syndrome, 100 extra pounds, intermittent back pain, and general fatigue. 

But I understand the science - I know that cause will lead to effect.  I know that if I put forth the effort, there will be results.  So, I'm going to slowly but surely look for the athlete that I know is still underneath the extra weight and the years of inactivity.  I'm going to coax her out with some shiny new rollerskates, maybe!