Saturday, February 24, 2007

150!!!!!!!

Yeeha! Well, it's been quite some time, so lots to write about. First off, I have weighed in at 150 for three days straight. For me that's pretty fantastic. I've lost about 25 pounds since I first got to Hawaii. I can't believe I actually weighed in at 175 at one point. I told myself I would never let myself get out of the "healthy weight" bracket. It's amazing how easy it is to just let the weight slowly add up. Anyway, I have been working hard.
I've been running pretty often training for the Great Aloha Run. Nate had to go to Syracuse for a week and a half to spend time with his mother who just had a liver transplant, his sister the liver donor, and the rest of his family who has been taking care of them. I figured I would take that time to focus on exercising a lot, and eating really well. I cut down on most of the carbs I eat, packed lunch every day, and ran or walked every day of the week. I actually woke up really early a couple of times and took Titus running before work to watch the sunrise at the beach.
On Sunday the 18th Myia and I went on a dead-head voyage on the SSV Makani Olu, the sailboat that our company uses to take the boys on voyages to the other islands. It was rough! We left the pier and it started to get really wavy once we started heading out past Diamond Head. You would get up to the top of a wave, ride it down and then smash into a wave coming from the other direction. It was really crazy. Myia didn't quite get sick, but slept near the wheel for most of the trip. I was enjoying myself for a while, but it got old holding on for dear life. Halfway through the trip Myia went down and slept on one of the cots for a few hours. I hung out with the Captain and some of the crew. We saw a whale jumping out of the water near Makapu`u Lighthouse. I wish I could have gotten a picture. I thought the trip was supposed to take about 8 hours, but we didn't end up getting in until 8:00pm, which made it a 10-11 hour trip. The last 2 hours were the most painful. lighthouse, then Rabbit Island, then the Mokes. Then we had to go all the way up to We seemed like we were pretty close, we passed the Chinaman's Hat before we could enter Kaneohe Bay. I didn't realize that you can't just go straight in because of the sand bars. So I was sadly surprised when we didn't just turn in, but kept going. I was so miserable at the very end, and tired.
out to 11:34 minute miles. That'sMonday was the Aloha Run. 8.15 miles. I got my race time back, I ran it in 1:34 and averaged great for me. Ananda and I ran it together and she kept me going all the way until the end. There was definitely some points when I just wanted to walk. It's very different running on a new course where you don't know when you'll see the next mile marker. I've been training on a loop, it's about 2.5 miles long, and I know it so well that I always know exactly how far I've run and how far I have to go. Running the race you're always looking for the next mile marker to see how far you've made it. It was pretty awesome, there were about 12,000 people running. 20,000 people signed up, but apparently people don't always follow through. There were about 1,000 people running the race in Iraq, they do it on the same day and set a course for 8.15 miles for all of the soldiers from Hawaii.
After the race I felt pretty tired and sore, and didn't run for the rest of the week. Nate came home on Tuesday, and I vowed to keep eating well. I actually have been able to continue to eat well and on Friday I stepped on the scale and it read 150. It stayed at 150 for the next two days despite having a Snickers Ice Cream cone.
This morning I woke up incredibly sore from doing Yoga yesterday. I had a wake-up call about how little I have been cross-training or stretching recently. My arms are killing me today. I feel a little better after going on a hike this morning to the Likeke trail to the waterfall. We checked out the geocache that we found on my first hike and made Josh and Denby find the microcache "no more mister nice guy." I am an idiot and forgot that I said that I was going to bring Titus on the hike. Everybody else had their dogs.
I'm setting my next long-term goal as 140, hopefully by the half-marathon in June. My short term goal is just to break 150, so 149. That should take one or two weeks.
The plan is to run on Mondays and Thursdays, Yoga on Saturday mornings and hike on Sundays.
You should check out Myia's blog on how she's gotten so thin:
click here.

Monday, February 19, 2007

My Trip to Boston

So I wrote a blog about my trip to Boston the day I got back because I was so excited about the trip. I'm not sure what happened, but the blog no longer exists. Maybe I didn't save it, that's the only thing that makes sense. Anyway, I had a great time in Boston. I got there and it was cold and I was tired, but Anna and I took a walk through Angela's little town anyway. We basically just checked out the cool architecture and took a lot of random pictures of houses and doors.
I got to spend some time with my new nephew that evening and had
a fantastic dinner.

Arin came the next night, Friday night, and we had some Shabbat dinner. It was pretty tasty. It was interesting having the food blessed before eating, and dealing with their rules about the electricity. The meal was really, really good, with lots of hala bread and salmon. Ang was very flexible, they did their thing, and we did ours. We took turns changing Akiva and holding him. He is so adorable.
Andrew arrived
via bus on Saturday morning. We played a ton of games and changed and held Akiva some more. Andrew was really funny holding little Keevers like he was so fragile he was gonna break him at first. Alec also came to visit later on Saturday, through hell and high water. We went for a walk through town and stopped at Starbucks. It was cold, but I had a great time. We all had a chance to talk about our lives for a little while. We went back to the house and ate some more and played some more games. It was worth everything to see my sisters and brothers with the first of the next generation of George and Pauline Sullivans.

We went to church on Sunday morning, and then had a delicious breakfast cooked by Roseanne at her sweet little apartment.
Afterwards we hit the Museum of Science, which ended up being very cool and interactive. We went to a 3d Mars production, that I hate to admit was kind of lame. I also had a weird, sweaty older man, who may have been a little f**cked up, talking to me the whole time. Alec had to be rushed to get on a bus and we went out to get some Kosher Chinese Food. It was rather good. I also happened to be starving. After Chinese we took Andrew to the bus. We headed home and changed and held Akiva a few more times.

Monday morning we went out to look at Bridesmaid dresses and wedding
dresses. It was fun trying on a whole bunch of different wedding dresses. They were all so beautiful. I knew as soon as I put it on, that the dress I got was the right one. It was awesome having the saleslady put the veil on my head. I almost cried. Then Ang, Arin, and Anna all found some bridesmaid dresses in blue. They looked beautiful. It was sad that my mother wasn't there. She will love my dress when she sees it.