YOGAZORB Yoga Microfiber Towel is my current find of the month: not only it helps catching all sweat dripping down during all the yoga, pilates and other mat activities I do in my basement. It also does great job helping me to hold that "Downward-facing Dog" pose and keeps hands and feet from sliding.
Instructions: Put the towel over your regular mat, work out hard. Simply stick the towel into washer/drier to refresh after few sweaty workout sessions.
For me listening to music while running helps to take mind off things and focus on breathing, rhythm as well as form, it is almost like a meditation - I clear my head from daily hassle and focus on the run itself.
On a beginning I've tried to run with apple headphones, these which come with the iPhone itself, but I quickly learned how inconvenient it is: the wire was always in the way, phones were slipping out the ears, and so on. So I started looking for some wireless options.
Most of sport oriented headphones are rather on high end of the price and somehow all these I tried so far didn't have long life span (all though some of them came with nice warranty and replacement options which I was happy to use). But I did try few models.
And if you are wondering whatever to go with Jaybird X2 Sport as headphones for running and if trial and error is not a suitable strategy for you when it comes to finding a perfect headphones match, see the pro's and con's listed below.
I mostly enjoy running in the morning (as I mentioned before). But sometimes it also happens that the only time I have to run is when the sun in full power, 80F+ and such. I wouldn't take Ohio for one of these burning sun states before we moved here, but it can burn here, hell, a lot.
No matter what sun conditions you have, if you run every day, you will most likely end up having a pretty strong runners' tan around the areas which are usually covered by the running gear by the end of the outdoors running season.
I am not different. And my tan stays on for pretty long time. For example, I am covered with all kinds of stripes and lines from the last year sun still, and it is already a time to get new ones.
A friend of mine asked why I don't share recent pictures of myself, since the progress is best visible in photos. So I decided to share this one. This is how minus 32kg / 70.5lb look like on me (2 years passed since I started the journey):
My arsenal of weight-loss gadgets gained one new item: smart body analyzer WS-50 by Withings.
Not that I my old old fashioned scale doesn't do the job, it does most of things I need: checks and stores weight, BMI, fat and lean body mass, stores progress for multiple users, and does this all well for 10 years without even a need to change a battery (yay to Austria produced quality items :) ). But Withings smart body analyzer sure comes with few nice perks I couldn't say no to.
I moved to treadmill ever since temperatures got below 5C (40F). It might seem not that cold to some (after all most of cold weather running gear is labeled for 40F and below), but for me it is so much easier to persuade myself to stumble downstairs to warm basement, turn on "Doctor Who" on Hulu and do my normal 30-40 mins run on the treadmill in the morning, than to try to push myself out of the door to cold and windy weather, especially when it is also dark (and it is still dark at 5:30am).
Of course running on treadmill isn't the same as running outside, but hey, it is inside, warm and I don't need to put on more than one light layer of cloth on. I also can start and finish my run with 10-15 mins of walking without being afraid of freezing into an icicle.
My boyfriend however doesn't like treadmill, and he refused to run inside even when temperatures went down below -10C (14F). But he has a benefit of working from home and he can go for a run when sun is out. So after looking at him, I decided to give it a try too, at least on the weekend I have a benefit of go for a run when sun is up and all squirrels are already wide awake.
AS you can see, we don't have too much snow or ice yet, so my usually running shoes worked well. I put an extra layer on, and especially in leg area it helped a lot (the wind was pretty cold that day). And besides getting cold in my face/nose area when running against the wind I didn't get any problems, after I warmed up it wasn't cold at all. However having glasses on did make nose cold quite a bit, but it was sunny, so I had to have them on. I might need to try some facial protection next time.
Of course, I didn't even think on walking after my run as I usually do to cool down and I went inside finished up by stretching instead.
After all it wasn't as bad as I tried to imagine it to be, I guess it is important to wear right gear to not get too cold (or too hot to that matter), just enough to feel comfortable. If weather cooperates, I might take my weekend day time runs outside to spice things up a bit.
So as the title says, I've reached my weight goal, so here is photo of myself taken at December 26th 2015 at 69.3 kg / 152.8 lb:
It has been almost 2 years long road to walk (all the way from January 27th 2014 and 99.3kg / 218.9lb) starting at:
