Mary of A Merry Life had made a comment on Twitter yesterday about maybe wanting to do a workout pledge.  She was considering doing 30 seconds on the treadmill per comment.  I told her to be careful, because she tends to get A LOT of comments, but then nonchalantly said I’d match whatever the pledge was in a workout.

And so it began…

By the time commenting closed at 2:30pm CST, there were 180 comments, which equates to 90 minutes on the treadmill.  Holy shit!  But that isn’t even the best part!  What I thought was going to be a small challenge involving Mary and I, became SO MUCH MORE.

As of this writing, there were at a TON of other people doing the pledge as well!

• Mary
• Jen
• Lauren
• Josie
• Tina
• Tania
• Meegan
• Kepa
• DCKate
• Beej
• Jodi
• Andrew
• Shelli
• Amber
• Jess
• Sean
• Karen
• Kat
• Lynne
• Michelle
• Lynn
• Gina
• Rachel
• Mary’s Mom

The coolest part about that is that I don’t even think that is a complete list!  That is what I pulled from Mary’s posting, but more and more people are joining the fold in the post comments!  I find it absolutely fascinating that this pledge became just as much a community exercise as it did actual, well, exercise!!  This blogging community truly is awesome, there is just no other way to say it.

Anywho, so about the run.

Ninety minutes on the treadmill, right?  Easy peasy.  Oh wait, I want to actually try to run all of that?  That may be a different story…

…or maybe not…kinda…

7.91 miles in 90 minutes!!!!  BOOYAH!

The longest I’ve spent on the treadmill in one session, and the farther I’ve ran in one sitting.  WooHoo!  Now, I did have to walk for a few brief moments (sidestitch sucks), but whatever.  I also tried to maintain a slower running pace than usual.  Generally, speaking, I don’t really like  to go below 6.0mph, but I’ve never tried running for this long before, and I wanted to conserve my energy, so for the most part was running was kept at about 5.5mph.  I did run one full mile at 6.0mph though, and I even had a couple of brief flirtations with 7.0mph, so WooT!

Once I got an idea of how my pace was, I told myself, and the tweeps, that I wanted to get at least 7.5mph under my belt.  Seeing as how I got .41miles over that, I’d say I did okay. 

ALSO, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been running my treadmill runs on a 1% incline…this was true today…mostly.  For the last 10 minutes I ran at 2%.  It actually wasn’t that bad.

And check this out…I even got a shout out on YouTube!  Thanks Kepa!

Haha..yeah…I don’t think he REALLY hates me though…hehe

Last but not least…Beej suggested we post pics of ourselves after the workout, so here you go, me in all my sweaty, grody, glory:

Sexy, right?

That’s all I got for now.  Be sure to follow the progress of the fellow runners.  Most are livetweeting the run, and you can track ‘em with the hastag #amerryworkoutpledge.

Have a great evening, everyone!

This past weekend was truly one of the best weekends I’ve had in a very long time.  I had so much fun, met a ton of new people, made a ton of new friends, learned quite a bit more about the blogging process, got all sorts of free swag, etc…etc…etc…

Here a few pictures from the weekend:

This was the view from my hotel room for the weekend, which was at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, where the conference was also held.  Now, I live right outside of Baltimore City, so this wasn’t anything I haven’t seen before, but this was first time actually spending the night in the city, and it was very nice seeing the beautiful Inner Harbor out of my window.

Me with the lovely Sue (aka MrsFatass), who was my Fitbloggin’ BFF   We had a ton of fun (and a few Tequila shots, WooT!).

Me with the lovely Carla (aka MizFit), at a bar on the Inner Harbor.  She is just as awesome in person as she in on her blog.  I loved every minute of being in her presence.

Holy crap, look at all the free shit I got!!!!!  We recieved a gift bag at registration full of stuff from POM Wonderful, Quaker, Skinny Cow, to name a few.  Since I registered for the New Balance 5k, I also got free running shoes…to KEEP!!! WooT!  Everyone who signed up was also given a Gruve.  A Gruve is a little thing you wear on your waise that tracks how much you move and keeps track of the calories to burn.  We all thought we were only trying them out, and would have to return them…but then they should we could keep them.  WOOHOO!  I didn’t wear it much during the conference, but I’ve had it all since then and may try to write a review soon.

MORE FREE SWAG!  This was a gift from Sue.  Those of you who follow me on twitter may know about the whole big love thing I have going on with her, Ryan (aka nomorebacon) and Sam (aka Slimminsam).  I didn’t wear the shirt out   but I did sleep in it and it was super comfortable

This was the whole lot of us on Saturday morning, right before the Fitbloggin’ 5k.  I was uber tired and extremely hungover, but I ran it.  My time was much slower than Mighty Medford (ran it in about 40 minutes), but that’s okay, because I will rock it next year

I love Jennette Fulda.  I had recently read her awesome book and love her blog, and when I found out she was going to be at the conference, I knew I had to meet her and get her autograph.  Success!!!  I probably came off as being really wierd and creepy (I’m sorry if I did, Pastaqueen!) but this was like meeting a celebrity, so of course I wasn’t going to be able to keep it together.  I’ll have to work on that.

All in all, this was truly an incredible experience.  I wish I had more pictures, because I met so many awesome people!  Mary, AJ, FitInMyHeart, JourneyBeyondSurvival, Jen in Real Life, Fitarella, Benjamin Teal, TrulyTrayce, YumYucky, LoserforLife, and so many others!  I also learned alot about the blogging process, which I hope will help improve my writing here.

WooT!

How was YOUR weekend?  Were you at Fitbloggin?  If you were, what did you think?

I can’t wait for next year!

Here is a quick rundown of my weekend, in bullet form (ala Jessie).

• Saturday and Sunday workouts kinda rocked.  Saturday workout consisted of an 8.7 mile walk on Saturday, which I did while wearing a 25 pound weighted vest and 5 pound ankle weights.  In hindsight this was probably a very bad idea (thanks David for the heads up!).  There are many good ways to get more out of walk, weighing yourself down really isn’t one of them.  Sunday workout consisted of a 5.6 miles walk (to one of the office gyms and back).  While I was at the gym I completed 60 minutes on the ARC Trainer and 30 minutes on the exercise bike. WooT!
• I finally realized that I really REALLY should get new shoes.  I love my current shoes (Nike Reax), but I looked at the soles of them and realized that I had worn away a large portion of the tread.  I still have some money left over from paying bills so I’m going to try to head to a running store tonight or tomorrow to see what I can do.  I put these shoes through alot, and I wore them as regular shoes alot too, so I guess it was their time.

• I watched a ton of CRAP on TV.  After working out on Saturday and Sunday mornings I didn’t feel like doing much else, so a large chunk of Saturday was devoted to a bunch of crap movies on Lifetime (the majority of which involved Teen Pregnancy, culminating the “World Premier Event” of the Pregnancy Pact), while a large portion of Sunday evening was devoted to Chowdown Countdown on the Travel Channel.
• I made it to World 6 in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and made it past the first castle.  The fact that you can only save your game after the castles is really pissing me off too.
• I took part in an event on Twitter that I believe is now being called Big Love.  It was between myself, MrsFatass, Nomorebacon, and Slimmin’ Sam.  I don’t really know to describe it, but you can scroll through my twitter page if you are truly curious.  You can also follow me while you’re at it, cuz that’d rock!

That’s pretty much it as far as the weekend went.  I have at least one more workout today to help ensure a nice weigh in tomorrow, and then probably some more crap TV tonight. WooT!

Happy Monday, everyone!  How was your weekend?

I’ve been noticing that my subscriber count has been climbing a bit recently, and that I’ve been getting some shout outs on my fellow bloggers sites, whether it be due to the New Year Running/Biking Challenges (which I have been kinda whoring myself out over, admittedly) or for some other reason.

Shout outs = more readers = more motivation and accountability = more WooT!

I wanted a take a quick minute to thank everyone for the support I’ve gotten so far, and to encourage everyone to spread the love and check out the links to the right of this post.

over there —————————————————–>

These are all people who are on their own journeys and offer plenty of reflection, humor, tips, etc… This is ALL while being super supportive of those around them.

In a word, they ROCK!

I try to add sites as I find them, and I try to follow those sites daily.  If I have missed anyone, or if you are on your own journey and want to be added to the list, just let me know!  If you don’t have a site (or twitter, or whatever), feel free to talk about it in the comments, or shoot me an email.  We aren’t alone in this, and I like hearing about other peoples successes!

In the meantime, sh*tload of work to do today (ugh), and challenge updates (and maybe some snow) tomorrow.

Have a great day ya’ll!

Anywho…T. G. I. F.!!!!!  And thank god thursday is over, not only did I basically FORGET to eat throughout the day (no mid morning snack, no lunch, although dinner kinda cancelled anything out) but I was able to get absolutely no sleep either.  I didn’t do anything different, no more coffee than usual and the like, so I don’t know.  Hopefully that won’t repeat itself this weekend.  When I don’t get enough sleep I am usually sickeningly chipper for a few hours, then a total a**hole the rest of the day.  I’m still in the somewhat chipper stage, even though I bit the head off one of my co-workers earlier (in my defense, she asked a really STUPID question).

I’m a nice guy all around though, I swear, and I did apologize to her.

So far, besides wacky Thursday, this week has been going well.  I have a few more subscribers and twitter followers (Hi ya’ll!), the scale is doing what I want it to do, workouts are going good…

…and…calorie counting isn’t as big of a b*tch as I thought it was going to be.

I was hesitant to do it b/c it seemed like it was going to be a major pain in the a** and was going to take forever. Granted, it does take a little time, but I the pros definitely outweight the cons.  It makes me think more about what I am eating, especially when I see that meals that i thought were moderately healthy (ie, my last two nights of dinners) are in fact still total crap.  Knowing this, while depressing, is still helpful, and will only allow me to make even better choices in the future.

I can’t get onto twitter from work, so I can’t go in and pull my calorie totals now, I’ll try to do it sometime this weekend.  I’ll probably try to find a calorie tracker website to post the information to as well, so I can get more of a breakdown of what I am eating.

One thing is abundantly clear though, the eating out CONSTANTLY needs to stop.  I’ve gotten lazy in this regard, b/c its easier to go out then to cook, but there are tons of ways around that, that my waist line and my wallet will be thankful for.  I’d rather know 100% what is in my meals, calorie wise, ingredient wise, whatever, instead of having to estimate and round up b/c I don’t know what Bill Bateman’s (or whatever restaurant..thats just the place I’ve eaten at the past 2 nights) prepares their food. 

In other news, I’m 1/3 of the way through my goal to spend 60 minutes on the exercise bike and 30 minutes on the stairclimber this week.  I still hate the stairclimber with a passion, but I can get through this.

Just look at that smug bastard.

Dunno what the weekend plans are yet, but then again I usually don’t know until the last minute anyway.  I’d like to devote a few hours either Saturday or Sunday morning to a total cardio blowout, though.  That should be fun (wasn’t being completely sarcastic w/ that statement either).

Have an awesome weekend, everyone! 

OH! and some other random stuff…

Everyone should check out The Mizard of Miz from Jack Sh*t (start at the bottom and work your way up).  One of the funniest things I’ve read in while and further proof that this whole weight loss thing can be fun sometimes (instead of being constant, unending, soulsucking torture…oops, I guess chipper Steve is gone).

And, because I like free stuff: 

That spiffy little link right there just got me 5 entries into a drawing for free Clif stuff and a visor (anyless money I have to pay for food, the better!). BOOYA!  I like his website so far too, he has some pretty interesting articles and really cool dog.

Also, everyone should check out Jessie’s blog.  She’s a little perturbed about a weight gain this week (as you will see in photo form when you click on the link) and she needs some lovins.  I personally think she is being too hard on herself since she has already lost a CRAPLOAD of weight, but I digress.

Okay, now I’m done (I think).  Have a good weekend!