StaywellMA

For Valentine's day I completed the Black Girls Run virtual 2 mile race on the treadmill at my local YMCA.I wasnt looking forward to this challenge because I hate running indoors. Its mentally decapitating for me. I am an avid outdoor runner. So, to endure the task, I decided to set the treadmill on a sprint interval training mode. This is better than running at zero percent incline because it doesn't accurately reflect outdoor terrain for completing races. Since my body requires 1 mile of running to "warm" up, the first 30 mins where just running at a 2% incline. After warm up, my 45 minutes workout consisted of 2 minutes speed work at a speed of 5mph at 5% incline followed by a 2 mins slow pace at 3.5 mph with 3 % incline. Interval incline training not only takes the boredom out of running indoors but can greatly improve your speed. The next time you run a treadmill, resist the urge to leave it at a zero incline and challenge yourself to a higher level.  H...

The past couple of months, my health equilibrium has been very unbalanced. I wasn't presenting with any symptoms BUT as someone who is very in tune with her body, I knew something wasn't right. A doctor's visit confirmed that I had somehow managed to gain 30 pounds. #UNACCEPTABLE My initial thought was pregnancy but that didn't seem to be the case as the results came back negative. I decided to follow up the screening with a blood test. Most health insurance cover standard blood tests in the same manner health screening for preventive  medicine are covered. For the blood tests, I did everything that my insurance will allow without any additional payments on my part. You can also speak with your health care provider to see  if they can frame a test as a "preventive medicine" so that you don't get billed for it. I did so for my thyroid blood test which was not medically necessary but I requested it for my own personal knowledge. Here are the blood ( ...

This past weekend my fellow BGR ambassadors and I organized a vision board party for the Boston group. It was my first time taking part in this type of activity. A vision board is basically an inspiration board of all the things you want to accomplish within a given time frame. I guess it could be synonymous to pin-interest. But I am not on pinterest so this works for me. What I like most about it is, the sky is the limit. You decide what you want to focus on. Even though our general idea was on running  races/goals, I chose to focus on the nutrition aspect. As a long time athlete, I know I am capable of training to meet any physical demands related to running. Where I struggle is Nutrition. And we all know that when it comes to healthy living, its 20% exercise  and 80% nutrition. Therefor, no matter the training intensity, you can easily revert all that hard work by making poor nutrition choices. This year I don't have any race goals. I will continue running an...

This year am taking part in the 4th edition of Marathon Sport's Winter Warrior Challenge. I'm running under our Black Girls Run Boston group for this January fitness challenge. My goal is to let it serve as a training platform for the 5 mile Super Sunday race I will be participating in alongside many Boston Brunch/ November Project members on February 1st.     Picture from http://www.marathonsports.com/ We are team   #28 and are currently ranked in the 31st position in this challenge of 125 teams. Am so proud of our girls!!!! I do  have to mention that one of the disadvantages of participating in this challenge is the inability to log in miles that are more than a day old. Therefor you have to consistently/daily log in your miles. However, am enjoying doing the challenge and leading run meetups with members of our BGR-Boston community. I know it sounds crazy to run outside in this extreme temperat...

I decided to start off my new year by doing the festival because I miss attending local community events.  2014 was very hectic; filled with travelling, classes and 7 different contract employments all clamoring for my attention.  Towards the end of the year I was physical drained and mentally exhausted. This led to  a challenge from my brother  to live a life with a minimal number of side gigs and to just enjoy having some free time off  Located at Lawn D adjacent to the convention center, the Fire and Ice festival was full of performances, food trucks and a maze made out of ice. Even though it was extremely cold, I had an amazing time. Armed with snow boots, cozy socks and a steamy Dunkin Doughnuts coffee, I questioned my sanity as I padded through the cold ice maze while snowflakes showered on my face from the skies.  What part of this was entertaining again? My favourite part of the night was the fire performances ...