Two Great Workouts... and a Nap?!

I don't have any pictures for this post, so here is a picture I took of Joey and Chick. Little Chicklet loves Joey and just went and curled up with him for a nap. Joey always looks uncomfortable (like, "why is he lying here next to me?!" but he deals well with it).

And here is a cute picture of Duckling--I don't know how he sleeps like that! Estelle does that, too.

My body must have seriously wanted to catch up on sleep--after dinner today, I was sitting in the living room talking to Jerry before he went to work...

...and the next thing I knew, I was waking up two hours later!

I texted Jerry to ask what happened and he said that I just fell asleep and he didn't want to wake me. He also said that Noah took my car to go to his college class (he'd had one classroom session left before the COVID shutdown, and today he was able to take the final exam and--hopefully--pass the class. He's a smarty pants, so I'm sure he will pass.)

I am clearly getting old. I never used to take naps (EVER) but over the past few weeks, I've done it twice. Today was just so weird because I slept so deeply. I didn't hear Jerry leave, didn't hear Noah leave, I was totally out of it. 

I'm mostly bummed out that my eating window closed while I was sleeping, hahaha! I had a very filling dinner, though. Right now, I just feel groggy and even more tired than I was earlier. I hope I'm able to sleep tonight after taking such a long nap today.

I got to check off two new items from the Cookies Summer Challenge list today: the Silent Walk (no headphones/music/podcasts/etc) and the 50/50 Walk (alternating running (or fast walking) and slow walking).

During the Silent Walk, I decided to try to work more on leash training Joey. Reader Karissa, who is a dog trainer, suggested in a comment that Joey tends to call the shots on my walks which makes it less enjoyable when I'm walking for deliberate exercise. When I used to take Joey for runs, he knew that running meant business--we don't stop to smell pee on the roses, so to speak. And then after the run, I'd let him smell everything and pee all over the bushes and all that to reward him for being focused on our run.

Now, it's hard to get him used to walking for deliberate exercise versus fun walks. So, today I worked on keeping him close to my left side with a loose leash. Every so often, I'd tell him "Okay, go ahead!" and he'd pee on the fire hydrant or telephone pole or whatever. Then we'd get back to business. It worked out pretty well! If I'd been listening to a podcast or audiobook, it would be way too hard to constantly tell him to "heel". I must have said "Heel" and "Good boy!" and "Leave it!" at least 10,000 times. The "leave it" is for sniffing out dog poop or road kill or other gross things.

Anyway, Joey did really great today! We'll need to keep practicing so it'll hopefully become natural, but using the "Silent Walk" today was very helpful.

For my second workout, I got all ready to head outside for a walk, but then I remembered that I wanted to watch my show on the treadmill (Sweet Magnolias). So I did that instead. And to check off an item from my Summer Challenge list, I decided to do 50/50 intervals of running and walking. 

It's funny how choosing walking for exercise has given me a bit of motivation to throw a little running in here and there. Today, I set my watch timer for five minutes each--run five, walk five, run five, etc.

I did my walking at 3.0 mph and my running at 5.0 mph. At first, I wished I'd chosen to do 2-3 minute intervals instead of 5 minutes, but I think the 5 was good. Long enough to feel a little tough (considering I haven't been running in such a long time) and having the longer walking intervals was a nice breather in between.

For the final five minutes, I started on 5.1 mph, and then each minute, I bumped it up by 0.1 until at 44:30, when I bumped it up to 6.0 mph for 30 seconds. 

I felt so good about that workout! Even though my running is relatively slow, I don't care about the pace right now. Just the fact that I was running made me feel good. And the best part is, I'm still planning on walking being my main form of exercise. When I try to force myself to run, I resent it. When it's optional, I sometimes get the urge to do it.

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As I wrote yesterday's post, I was thinking about how much I miss doing the Transformational Tuesday posts! I wasn't getting any more submissions, so I stopped doing the posts, but I'd love to continue them if people would submit photos.

Basically, Transformation Tuesday is just a post of before and after photos of anything you'd like--a DIY project, a new haircut, a rescue pet, weight loss, etc. I LOVE before and after photos, so please consider submitting one! Here are the guidelines:

1) Email one "before" photo and one "after" photo, of anything you'd like, to: transformations (at) runsforcookies (dot) com.

Please keep the photos separate rather than collaging them, and refrain from using words, filters or Photoshop on the photos (I like to keep the photos on the post relatively uniform). If necessary, I may crop or resize the photos simply to fit uniformly into the post, but I will try to keep them as original as possible. Also, if there is someone in the photo, just make sure it's cool with them that I share it here.

2) You may include a link to your personal blog or social media page if you'd like (no business or promotional pages--this will be at my discretion). Please include the following:

-One or two sentence description of the transformation

-First Name; Location; A few words of who you are (i.e. "New DIY'er" or "Cat Lover", etc). If you want me to leave out name/location, just let me know.

3) I will post whenever I get enough submissions to do so--it could be one week or it could be several. But I will post them!

Thanks for sharing :)

(Here are the previous Transformation Tuesday posts for ideas)

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Tomorrow morning, I'm supposed to meet up with Renee for a bike ride. I'm looking forward to it--I haven't seen her since before all the COVID stuff began!