Physical Wellness: Marathon Training Week 4 Recap

Sunday:  6 mile run (8:46 pace) – Eric and I went to Michigan for vacation this week so for this run, he got on a bike and led me through his hometown. Running in Michigan was gorgeous and the humidity and heat was actually bearable. It was one of my most enjoyable runs!

Monday:  walking around – Eric took me around to his undergrad and other places

Tuesday:  4 hours of walking at a flea market

Wednesday:  5 hours at the beach walking and playing plus 1 hour swimming/playing in the hotel pool.

Thursday:  nothing that I can remember

Friday:  short bike ride

Saturday:  12 hours in a car driving back to Kansas

My crazy month of traveling is officially over so hopefully no more odd weeks like this with random workouts. Since I was on vacation, I really didn’t push working out too much sans getting my long run in. This week was more about spending time w/ Eric and his family and getting to experience his hometown/state.

Mental Wellness: But First, Lemme Take a Selfie

How many of you have posted a selfie? Raise those arms up nice and high…keep em up…ok so the majority of us have. Having a fab body image day? Take a selfie! Love your outfit/hair/makeup/etc? Take a selfie! Right?

Well, maybe not…a recent study linked selfies to narcissism, addiction, and mental illness. So does it really pay off to take a selfie? The obsession these days of getting the perfect picture and picking apart one’s appearance when selecting the perfect picture is getting out of control. This article introduces a young guy who took selfies to the extreme and would spend hours upon hours taking hundreds of pictures just to find the right one.

Now, I cannot be the only one here thinking…what? These are selfies that we are talking about. Selfies. How is this happening? It’s weird research to me, but I can definitely see the value in this research. It’s a quick read if you are interested and bonus, their sources are linked (hoooray!) so if you want to get even more info on this research, you can.

 

Physical Wellness: Marathon Training Recap Week 3

Sunday:  Long run – 5 miles at an 8:44 pace. I woke up at 6 am to run and there was a major storm rolling through, so I waited until 7 am and stuck to running loops around my apartment (1.25 mile) in case the storm got nasty.

Monday:  Arms (shoulder press, bicep curls, tricep extensions), speed work (400 m warm up, 12 x 100 sprint, 100 jog, 400 cool down)

Tuesday:  60 minutes of tennis

Wednesday:  Ab circuits (shot guns, leg raises, side drop, kettle swings, bicycles, Russian Twists)

Thursday:  Run club – 3.5 miles

Friday:  Bench press (PR 95 lbs!), Lunges (pulled hamstring on last set – 12×45, 10×55, 1×65)

Saturday:  Sat in a car ALL DAY b/c E and I are in Michigan on vacation!

Financial Wellness: Twitter?

How can twitter save you money? Check out this article by LearnVest.

Twitter is great for a variety of things and checking it out for discount codes and giveaways is also great. One thing that is new to me though is Twitter Parties. This article contains some good links to checkout if you are interested.

I’m not someone who is on Twitter 24/7, so I often miss the giveaway things, but the discount codes are great. Search for hashtags and shop smartly!

Also, check out Ebates to earn money back when you spend at certain stores. If you are going to be spending money, might as well try to earn some back!

Physical Wellness: Marathon Training Recap Week 2

This week was a bit of an odd week for me. I was in San Antonio for a conference for the first part of the week, but I still managed to get some workouts in. Here’s what my week looked like.

Sunday:  4 mile run (8:41 pace)

Monday:  1.5 miles of speed work (treadmill), arms workout

Tuesday:  2 miles of speed work (treadmill), abs workout

Wednesday:  Rest/Travel day

Thursday:  Unplanned rest/recovery day

Friday:  2.5 mile bike ride, squats, bench press

Saturday:  90 minutes of tennis

Thursday I was planning on going to run club but I needed an extra day of recovery. The conference definitely exhausted me both mentally and physically.

Occupational Wellness: How to Attend a Conference

I just got back from a conference in San Antonio and this being my 4th professional conference, I thought I would share some of my tips for attending a conference. Now, per usual, I’m no expert at attending conferences but I think I have picked up some good tips.

1.) Bring business cards. It makes networking so much easier and follow-up a breeze.

2.) Prepare icebreakers, especially if you are introvert. Prepare an elevator speech of what you do and where your interests are. Remember that networking isn’t all about you, try to figure out how you could help out the person you are networking with.

3.) Break out of your comfort zone but know when you need to revert back to your comfort zone or “reset”. For example, at my last conference I just hit a wall of meeting too many people and having too many interactions so I went up to my room and hit the hotel gym, did a quick workout and a quick shower. It was exactly what I needed to make the most out of the rest of the day. I missed a session, yes, but I wouldn’t have been able to make the most out of my other two sessions had I not “reset”.

These are just a few tips, basic tips for making the most of a conference. There are some things that are beyond your control, you can’t control the content of the conference (unless you are one of the presenters), you can’t control the location or the weather…but you can control how you attend the conference and what you get out of the conference.

Intellectual Wellness: Podcast Love

I wanted to give a quick shout out to some of my favorite podcasts to listen to and see if any of you have any great ones that you like to listen to.

Radiolab from WNYC
Amazing story telling from Radiolab. They take random topics, merge together stories and somehow make a coherent podcast that always interests me. It’s one of my favorites to listen to at work when I’m doing tasks that do not require a ton of brain power.

Stuff You Should Know 
Ok, the title says it all. And if you are looking for something you should know about, from death penalty to how temper tantrums work, these guys are to the go to guys. Enjoyable, easy to listen to, and very knowledgeable.

MuggleNet Academia 
If you are a Potter nerd like me, I highly recommend this series (although, to be fair, I haven’t listened to the other ones). I love this series b/c they analyze HP from a different point of view every time. My favorite episode is hands down the languages one where they brought in interpreters and they discussed the difficulty of turning the world of Potter into different languages. It’s awesome.

The Adam Carolla Show 
Eric introduced me to this podcast. I was listening to an episode one day walking home from work and I was actually laughing out loud walking down the street. If you have a dry sense of humor, like sarcasm, and enjoy a little news in your life, Adam might be the guy for you. Worth checking out.

What are your favorites? Share below

Financial Wellness: Ease or Smart?

I’ll admit, I have a secret love for a few YouTube channels and lately they have been showing all these “unboxing” videos. Whether it is makeup/skincare or food (for people and pets), it seems that these subscription boxes are the new “it” thang. I love it when people break down how much they paid for the box and how much the contents of their box were actually worth to see if it was actually a good buy. Now before I share an article, which I haven’t read yet (I wanted to put my thoughts first, read the article and then share any difference of opinions!)  I thought I would throw my 2 cents into the talk. Are subscription boxes really worth the money? I would say for me, no. I strive to only have things that I need and to not have a bunch of crap all over my apartment. But I can see where some people would find them nice. People who like to try different things would probably find use, also people who like to get mail that isn’t another credit card application or menu from the pizza place down the street. Ok, now to read the article. You can join me if you would like…here!

Ok, there are a ton of subscription services out there…why would someone ever need to leave their home? You can literally have everything delivered right to your door. That’s weird, right? Anyway, the jist of the article is that when considering a subscription service, ask yourself if you want or need this service. If it is a need and you can clearly justify it (like w/ the Target or Amazon subscriptions), then you are probably ok. If it is a want or borderline need, don’t think about the monthly cost, think about the yearly cost. Do you really need to spend $120/year on makeup? Do you even spend that much to begin w/? Is it something that is a financially smart idea to do? If it is, then go for it. Or if it is something that you think you might enjoy, you might see if you can get it as a birthday/holiday gift. The gift that keeps on giving! The other thing is to look at what the cancellation policy is. The article mentioned that some places, it’s go online and end, other places you have to talk to someone on the phone (shudders).

Bottom line or the tl;dr:  Is the subscription box something you need? When you look at the year cost, would you spend that much on similar products?

Update.

I’m slowing finding my groove again. Such is life of an amateur blogger. Grab a cup of coffee and let’s catch up, shall we?

Marathon training officially started June 1. This is the easy part. These are the workouts that I already know and love. The hard part comes in July and August when the runs start getting to be actual long run and the temperatures plus the humidity (thanks a lot Kansas) start to increase. It’s not going to be a picnic, who said your first marathon ever was?

I transitioned into a new role at work. It’s terrifying. And exciting. But mostly terrifying. I started getting used to people not expecting anything out of me and now I’m in on important meetings and doing work that no one else in the office does and drafting proposals…it’s definitely been a struggle and one that has played out here on my blog of feeling confident enough to do this work.

Work has been a struggle for me. Beyond in the actual work. It starts to wear on you when you hear people talking about you “behind your back” and begins to get to you. As much as I tried not to let the negative words effect me, I am one the broods on the negativity and I was soon sucked into it. I let the words repeat over and over again in my head…as much as people outside would tell me not to worry about it and to forget about it, I had a difficult time forgetting.

I deactivated my Facebook. I needed the break from that specific form of social media that is constant highlight reel upon highlight reel. I’ll admit, I compare myself in almost every aspect of my life to almost every person in my life. I’m insanely competitive. The highlight reels plus the onslaught of baby pictures plus the slew of misinformation that people post thinking it to be honest and real…let’s just say, I don’t need any help in the being a cynical 26 year old department and Facebook was helping me a little too much. So instead of whining about it endlessly, I just deactivated it. This isn’t the first time that I have done this, but this is the longest I have gone without it and I don’t see myself returning anytime soon.

I’m starting to feel pressure to pursue a PhD. But at the same time, I don’t know why I would ever do that. But maybe…

There’s a comment section right below here…catch me up on what’s been happening in your life. And let’s see if we can’t get some structure and schedule back to the good ole blog, shall we?

Oh and one quick edit, after being on this blog for over a year, I finally decided to make the commitment and spend the $26 to purchase my domain. This is now wellnessblogging.com, feel free to update your bookmarks 🙂