Good morning and happy long weekend to my fellow Canadians.

The majority of last week was spent wrapped up in this:

I couldn’t put this book down. The basic premise is this: guy gets a letter telling him to think of a number between one and a thousand. He does as instructed and the letter writer somehow guesses the number. Guy gets murdered. Turns out, others have received the same letter and met with the same fate, prompting a search for a serial killer.

The best part about this book is discovering how the killer was able to guess the correct number for all of the victims. If you like twisted thrillers that keep you guessing, this is a great choice. I’m looking forward to reading the second book in this series… when it comes out in paperback. Cause I’m cheap.

Speaking of being cheap, this week I experienced my first trip to Costco.

That’s right. Up until Tuesday, when I went with Josh to pick up a few things for a family barbecue at his mom’s house, I had never set foot inside a Costco. The first thing that struck me about this store is that it’s like being inside a giant maze. They make it impossible to find what you’re looking for, probably so that you’ll be tempted by all sorts of useless junk that you never would have come across had you not been wandering around aimlessly. Like the year’s supply of beef jerkey I almost bought.

Well, given my predilection for eating spoonfuls of almond butter right out of the jar, you can imagine how thrilled I was to find this ginormous jar of MaraNatha almond butter for the same price I normally spend on a jar half the size at Whole Foods.

Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let Josh use his mom’s membership card and we were rejected at the cashier. They were really mean about it too. Like relax guys, we were just trying to buy a few groceries on his mom’s behalf, it’s not a matter of national security or anything. And you really should’ve taken our money considering the number of Krispy Kreme samples we helped ourselves too. Your loss.

Besides, I fully intend to go back with Josh’s mom to get my almond butter so y’all were just delaying the inevitable. I will get my discounted almond butter and I will never pay $50 join your stupid club. Take that, Costco Mississauga!

Exercise

Sunday	RPM
Monday	Body Pump + 3K Easy Run
Tuesday	Rest
Wednesday	8K Tempo Run
Thursday	Body Flow
Friday	11K Run
Saturday	Body Pump

The first thing that probably jumps out at you (if you’ve been reading for a while) is the lack of New Rules of Lifting for Women workouts. I hurt myself doing Workout A last Thursday, which got me wondering if I should put the whole program on hold for the next two months while I train for my half marathon. I don’t want to overtrain and I’m concerned about injuring myself by trying to do too much at once. 

I decided to pick the brain of a friend of mine who’s a personal trainer and whose opinion I trust completely based on past advice she’s given me. She advised me to continue to strength train two days a week but don’t make any major increases in weight or do anything that my body isn’t already used to. That way, I’ll avoid overtraining and injuring myself but still maintain muscle mass while training for the half marathon.

Part of me will feel like I’m quitting if I put the program on hold but I also want to really focus on improving my running until the end of September. I still haven’t decided yet but either way I’m not going to beat myself up over it. I’m a fickle exerciser – I already knew that about myself awhile ago. I go through phases where I throw all of my energy into a particular workout, get bored with it after a few months, get really enthusiastic about something else and the cycle starts all over again.

Right now, I’m having a lot of fun with running so I’m just gonna… well, run with it. I might not be consistent with the types of workouts I do but I owe myself some credit – I am consistent at being fit, period.

How about you? Is there a particular workout that you stick to religiously or do you go through workout phases?