Junethon Day 8, 9 & 10! (And cheesecake)

So... I've been really bad about posting every day about Juneathon, been slightly busy with life stuff going on, but I have managed to still get a work out in, even if just a small one!!


Juneathon Day 8:

Type: Arc Trainer
Duration: 30 minutes
Distance: 1.82 miles
Calories: 301

Type: Weight lifting
Duration: 20 minutes

Type: Jogging-cool down run
Duration: 5 minutes
Distance: 0.50 miles
Calories: 53


Junethon Day 9:

Just went for a quick run around my apartment complex. Had to work off the epically delicious, chocolate dipped cheesecake I ate at the Wichita Riverfest.

Type: Jogging
Duration: 0.98 miles
Distance: 10.11
Calories: 120

So.... needless to say, I highly doubt that the 120 calories burned from jogging was sufficient enough to burn off the whole piece of cheesecake... but... it was a start. This is a picture of the chocolate dipped cheesecake... it was delightful, and quite like licking ice cream, except it was cheesecake. Epicness.












Juneathon Day 10.

TENNIS! There are some pretty decent tennis courts in my apartment complex (who knew), so my roommate and I went and played a little bit. My game seems to be slightly improving, which is cool. My backhand still needs SERIOUS work, but I can  hit a pretty mean straight shot, and the occasional almost-out-of-bounds-make-you-run-for-it shot. So, yay. Progress being made! If anyone plays and would like to help me practice, hit me up!

Type: Tennis
Duration: Approx. an hour
Distance: n/a
Calories: ??

Happy weekend to ME, happy Monday to all you normal-work-week folk!!

Exercise and Cookies! (Because those two go hand in hand, right?)

Hello and Happy Wednesday!

This is going to a slightly contradictory blog... because I tend to like contradictions on occasion, especially when they involve cookies, such as this one does. But first, I need to do my due diligence (see what I did there?) and talk about Junethon Days 4, 5  & 6.

Day 4: Another simple work out, as I had a fairly busy day and didn't quite have the time to make it to the Y.

Type: Running
Duration: 7.6 minutes
Distance: 0.80 miles
Calories: 80

It was a quick and fast run down the street to pick up my car that was parked at a friends apartment complex. No offense to Wichita, but it's slightly sketchy at night, and it was dusk when I got home, so I definitely wanted to run a little faster than normal to get to my car!

Day 5: ROLLER BLADING! I had not roller bladed in YEARS before I moved to Wichita but a few friends/coworkers have blades and so I decided, what the heck, let's join the fun! So, I bought a pair (surprisingly not as expensive as I thought) and went roller blading for the first time about a month or so ago. It went well for the most part, I got back into the swing of it pretty quickly... until almost a full lap around the park. I believe we did Loop 1 in Sedgwick County Park, which, I just checked, is 3.46 miles. I made it probably about 3.40 miles before I fell. And what an epic fall it was. I ran into some twig/stick thing that I failed to notice lying in the pathway and somehow just completely lost my legs. My friend Kate was behind me and said that I was airborn a few feet above the ground and then BAM!! My butt hit the ground, legs in front, hands down to try and stop my fall. The wind was completely knocked out of me and I could not breathe, much less talk for about 30 seconds. My hands were a little scraped/bruised, my tail-bone was pretty bruised/sore but for the most part, I was okay. Went another lap around the park without incident. Not bad, if I do say so myself!  My second time, yesterday evening, went flawlessly! Almost 6 miles without falling once! I think I got the hang of it!

Type: Roller Blading
Duration: 54.49 minutes
Distance: 5.85 miles
Calories: Unknown

<--- These are my roller blades. Pretty sweet, eh?









 


Day 6: Plyometrics!!
I actually managed to get my butt up early(ish) this morning, since I need to adjust back to a normal sleep schedule, and went to the gym before work. Met up with my friend Kate, and we did Plyometrics. For those of you who don't know what that is, let me explain!

Plyometrics is a sort of interval training. I ran track in high school and Kate ran cross country in college, so we are both familiar with and enjoy this kind of work out. First, we jog three or four laps around the track, which isn't a full size track at the East YMCA. It takes 11.2 or something laps around the track to complete a mile. So these are fairly short intervals. After jogging, we sprint the long stretch and walk the short curve, and do that for 2 or 3 laps. Then we do a series of butt kicks, knee-highs, lunges, grapevines, running backwards.. etc., all going fast on the long stretch and walking around the curve. It is actually a really good workout, and I am usually sore for a few days afterward, plus I sweat a lot, so I figure it must be working!

Type: Plyometrics
Duration: 45 minutes (approx.)
Distance: Unknown
Calories: Unknown


Up next in the blog of Becky: COOKIE EXPERIMENTS!

So, I kind of enjoy cooking and baking. (Shhh don't tell my mother!) I do though, I always enjoyed and still do enjoy spending time with my mom in the kitchen, making pies and cookies and breads and what ever else. Anyway, yesterday I decided to experiment with some cookies. My mom used to make cookies using cake mix, and they were always amazing. Plus, my sister Sarah sent me some really awesome new cookie sheets for my birthday, so I had to break them in! The Great Cookie Experiment began with a box of yellow cake mix, peanut butter, peanut butter M&M's and other random ingredients. When you transition a cake mix to be cookies, your goal is to make the batter thicker. Since I happen to REALLY love peanut butter, I thought, what better way to add thickness and consistency than peanut butter? Here is the ultimate break down and process:

-Cake mix into a big mixing bowl.
-Add half a cube or slightly more of softened butter
--Add 1/3 cup of vegetable oil
-Add as much peanut butter as you like! (If you're me, that's a lot)
-Add anything else you would like in your cookies (If you're me, that's peanut butter M&M's.)

Roll into balls and place on a cookie sheet. Oven should be pre-heated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I think I baked mine for about 10-12 minutes, but just check and make sure they don't get burned!!

These cookies were a big hit at Kate's blender drinks party last night! Whooo! Great Cookie Experiment GONE RIGHT! Shout out to Kate-Thanks for having an awesome blender drinks party last night, the drinks were really yummy!!

That's all I have for now, I hope your week is going swimmingly (no pun intended for those in the Colorado Springs/Denver area that are seeing mass amounts of rain right now) and your Thursday and Friday's are spectacular!

Juneathon Day 3!

Today's (technically yesterday's) work out was quite simple and short, due to working most of the day and not having the energy or will-power to go before work. Lack of sleep from overnight shifts finally caught up to me I think! Anyway, I just went for a quick run around my apartment complex before dark.

Type: Jogging
Duration: 9 minutes
Distance: 1 mile
Calories: 120

So, a very simple and easy Junethon day 3, but exercise nonetheless!

It feels really good to be getting into a much more fit and healthy lifestyle, although my diet could still use some work... (I really like yummy food...) It's just weird to me how a few years ago, it was hell to do any kind of exercise (for reasons to maybe be discussed in a later blog post.) But today, working out is fun, sweating feels really great and I love the feeling of sore muscles the next day because it means my body is getting better into shape. :)

Happy weekend to me, happy Monday to you normal work-week folk!

Juneathon Day 2!

This is going to be a quick blog post, since I have to head to work soon. (Last late shift for a few weeks, whoooo!)

Going go the gym today took great motivation. I have been working till around 4 or 5 in the morning the last 3 days, and that has taken its toll on my body. It's pretty difficult for me to sleep during the day, so I've only managed about 5 hours of sleep each morning. But anyway, since I committed to doing #Juneathon, and I accepted a challenge (See Barney Stinson meme to the right ---->)
I got my butt out of bed and went to the YMCA this afternoon. I kept my work out simple today and didn't do as much as I normally do but here it is:

Type: Arc Trainer
Duration: 30 minutes
Distance: 1.64 miles
Calories: 282


Happy Saturday!!

First Blog Post/Juneathon

Hello people of Internet Land.

Let this be known as the first blog post of wxbeck!

I guess I will start off with a little about me and the intent of this blog.

I am 23 years old. I grew up in Northern Colorado and that is where I consider home. I currently live in Wichita, Kansas and am really enjoying it here (minus the lack of mountains). I graduated with a BS in Meteorology from the University of Northern Colorado in May of 2011. I worked for a small weather company in Cheyenne, WY for a little over 2 years before I was hired at AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions, Inc. here in Wichita. I am so grateful for this opportunity to learn a TON more about the weather and become more experienced. The weather isn't half bad either, minus the tornadoes hitting my apartment complex. ;)

Probably the number one thing to know about me  is that I am crazy about the weather. Everyone always asks: "How did you become interested in the weather? Did you have a crazy experience?"  The answer is no. I am 99% sure I was born with my passion for the weather. I can remember being in elementary school and always going to the highest point on the playground to look west to see if there were dark clouds. Because at that point, all I knew was that storms usually came from the west. I also remember staying up very late at night to watch the lightning. I would sit on the floor in front of my window for hours and hours watching the lightning, just so utterly and completely fascinated by it. Our dog Emma was scared of the thunder, so she and I would sit and I would comfort her while I watched the lightning. Favorite childhood memory :)  I do enjoy storm chasing; there is almost no feeling in the world like the one you get when you are standing and staring at a massive supercell, feeling the outflow on your face. One definite perk to living in Kansas.. there's a lot of storms! So, all that being said, I feel very fortunate and lucky to have a job in the career field that I always wanted to be in, doing something I absolutely love, in the middle of where the craziest storms happen (scary as they may be sometimes...). 

 How cool does that thing look?? It's called a low-level mesocyclone. Now you know a big word! If you didn't already. :)

I have several other passions in life, and it's hard to rate them in a specific order, so I'll just talk about them randomly.

I love the outdoors. If it were feasible to spend 90% of my time outdoors and still have a job, I would do it. The mountains are and always will be where my happy place is. The place where I can sit and think and every single worry I have just fades away as I gaze at the stunning beauty around me. (Deep, I know.)  No, but really. There is just something so incredibly moving about the mountains to me, they have always had that kind of religious feel to me, as anti-religion as I am. I am still hoping to summit my first 14er this summer. Wish me luck! I also love hiking in general (Horsetooth Rock is one of my all-time favorites), fishing (I'm not half bad actually), and camping. Camping is so much fun. I mean, who wouldn't like to go for days without showering, sit around a campfire battling mosquitos and eat burgers, hot dogs and s'mores non-stop? Seriously though, I love it and I am so glad my parents started started us camping at an early age! This amazing picture below is of Longs Peak and was taken by the incredibly talented and very amazing Nick King.  :)

Next up, music!! I got started with music at a fairly early age, taking piano lessons in the third grade. Those continued through most of high school. I also attempted to play the flute for a year (epic disaster) and sang in choir in middle school and 3 years in high school. But I don't really do any of that anymore, except play random pianos I find.  I love and appreciate music now because of the way it can change my mood and portray a feeling almost better than just saying it.  The combination of lyrics and music can be an incredibly moving thing. I know there are several songs that have gotten me through hard times, been my go-to lift me up song, my motivating song, my screw the world song,  my I just want to rock song, my rock with the windows down song... etc. Maybe at some point in a later blog post I'll go into detail about what those songs are. I think there was one of those posts on Facebook a while ago about various songs you would pick for things. That was cool. Someday, I will own a piano this beautiful and play it all the time! Wishful thinking... :)

Last but not least, the other thing in life that I am pretty crazy about is penguins. Yep, those silly birds that can't fly and waddle around all cute like!  Seriously, look at this guy! How can you not think that is adorable? I once applied for a job in Antarctica. True story. I hope someday in this life time, I am able to see penguins in their natural habitat!

I said last but not least about the penguins, but I forgot to mention the other reason for starting this blog. My good friend Char told me about this challenge called Juneathon, and since I really enjoy exercising and being active, I decided to take the challenge.  Here is the link to the site:  http://www.juneathon.com/  Basically, it is a month long challenge to run or exercise in some way, every day for the month of June. I guess I started a day early, since I had a pretty good workout on the 31st, but I'll just list my work out that I did earlier today... er... yesterday, since it is now the 2nd.

June 1st: (These are estimated values, since I didn't write down my work out... :/)

Type: Elliptical
Duration: 30 minutes
Distance: 2 miles
Calories: 250

Type: Weight lifting
Duration: 20 minutes
Calories: ??

Type: Cardio/Running
Duration: 8 minutes
Distance: 1 mile
Calories: ??

I hope I am able to complete this challenge, it will be just that, between working and vacationy summer stuff! But, I think I will have plenty of encouragement from the others doing it with me (Char, Chris.) :)


I guess that wraps up my first blog post, if you made it all the way through, props and thank you! 

Happy weekend to you those of you who have normal weekends, happy working weekend to those of us who work on Saturdays and Sundays! :)

P.S. (Is it weird to say P.S. on a blog post?) Anyway, I neglected to mention another passion I have, so I'll just have to dedicate a whole other post to it at some point. I really really really LOVE to travel!