End of the madness!

So the lead-up to Christmas was quite insane around here. Last year business pretty much died in December, and I was expecting the same again this year - however - quite the opposite happened! I ended up working right through December, even so far as into Christmas Eve! Still, all is quiet now (except for the sounds of the husband playing Forza 3 on his newly acquired Xbox of course...) and things have a chance of being slightly more sane in January. I have at least been keeping up with the training through all the madness - fitting in what I could where I could, but what's been weighing on my mind is the weight plateau I hit in November and wasn't able to shake. It's tough when I'd been losing pretty consistently over the past year to hit a point where I'd changed nothing and suddenly the weight just stagnated. Course, the smart amongst you will have read that and gone - ah ha, you said it exactly - you changed nothing! Bingo. So a couple weeks ago I changed things up a bit, both in diet and in exercise. I'm taking a bit more notice of the types of carbs I'm eating and trying to keep as low GI as I can now (I may go into a GI post when I feel I understand it more... Santa brought me a book I have to read!), and my training sessions at the gym have been stepped up. I'm still aching a bit from the session I had on Thursday morning - something about doing 101 squats with a bar above your head angers the quads - and then to carry on with another hour of training after that! I've changed my interval training from being time based to heart rate based now also - so shorter bursts for the moment but at a higher speed (I do my intervals on the treadmill). I'm running a whole lot faster than I thought I could now though, so obviously something's working!

Speaking of running, my last race of the season is tomorrow. It's the Toronto resolution run, a 5K race, and is a couple of laps around Exhibition Place. The weather looks like it's going to be good for it, and it's also going to be my first race as a Sugoi Brand Champion. I'm aiming to get a personal best time for my 5K - the last one I did was the Zoo Run, which is full of hills, and I managed it in 30m + change. Plans are to break the 30 minute mark tomorrow. I'll have some help also, as this is the first run that my husband will be running along with me - he's faster than me (so is everyone for that matter, but I digress...), so he should be able to push me to beat the 30 minute mark!

I'll update with race results tomorrow, although probably not many photos this time given that my photographer is running with me!