Rethink your day with the new Polar Loop

DISCLOSURE: The following post is sponsored by FitFluential LLC on behalf of Polar.

You guys all know how much I am LOVING being Ford’s Momma. Honestly, I’d be content to park myself in our rocking chair and hold him all day long. But… #1- that’s not possible – the bills have to be paid (they won’t take diapers for payment – bummer). And #2- I need to get back into shape.

I gained a lot of weight when I was pregnant with Ford. I’ve lost about 2/3 of the weight, but still need to lose the rest so I can get back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. I also need to get ready for a half marathon in May. I’m NOT concerned with how fast I can run a mile, or how fast I can complete Fran (at least, not right now…). I just want to be active every day.

Here’s where the new Polar Loop comes in. It’s one of the coolest fitness gadgets I’ve ever seen. It’s an activity tracker that monitors all of your daily activity. Here are some of it’s cool features:

• It can be worn 24 hours a day and can distinguish 5 different levels of activity, it even knows when you are sleeping (like Santa! ha!). Bonus: It stays charged for about 5 days, I’ve only had to plug it in twice since I’ve started using it.
• It’s waterproof. (Hello Tri-Athletes! or in my case – it’s been through baby bath time and lots of bottle washing!)
• It gives you a daily activity goal and lets you know what you can do to reach your goal. It tells you how many minutes you can jog, walk, or be “up” (in my case – bouncing Ford to sleep while I walk around the apartment).
• The display also shows how many calories you’ve burned, how many steps you’ve taken and the time of day.
• It syncs with Polar’s free online tracking service, Polar Flow and gives you a lot more info and insight on your daily activity. If you are a data lover – you will totally dig this. Polar Flow is also available as an iPhone app. The Android version should be out in the next few months (I’ll definitely be downloading it as soon as it is available!)

It can also be used in conjunction with Polar’s H6 or H7 Heart Rate Sensor so you can get credit for any exercise done. When the heart rate sensor is synced with the Polar Loop you can scroll through the display and it will display the calorie burn and the percentage of time spent in fat burning mode & fitness mode (similar to Polar’s other heart rate monitors – remember when I reviewed the Polar FT40?). When I wore mine last week during a treadmill run I hit my activity goal for the day and the display had a little fireworks show. It’s pretty cool!

Wearing the Polar Loop for the last 10 days has been eye opening. I thought I’d easily hit 10,000 steps at work, but I guess I’m not on my feet as much as I thought. I’m on my feet more at home with household chores and taking care of Mr. Ford and Olivia. I only hit my activity goal ONCE since wearing the Polar Loop, they day I ran. In my defense – I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather – sore throat and horrible congestion. I can’t take any cold medicine or decongestants because I’m still breastfeeding. It definitely makes me eager to get back into my fitness groove – hitting the gym and treadmill at least a few times a week. As a new Momma I’m still struggling to get into a routine, but luckily with the help of my Polar Loop – I can tell when I’m lacking activity and do something about. All the little things add up. Like parking farther away at the grocery store or at work, walking over to the hospital to drop off paperwork, or even dancing around the house with Ford.

How would you Rethink Your Day with a Polar Loop?
What would you do different to increase your daily activity?

DISCLOSURE: The following post is sponsored by FitFluential LLC on behalf of Polar. All opinions expressed are my own.

Tinkerbell Half Marathon Recap

I know this is almost a month overdue.
I really don’t have any good excuse as to why I haven’t posted it… we’ve just been busy living life!

Be prepared for a TON of pictures!

First of all, the weather in CA is absolutely wonderful! It was so gorgeous when we got off the plane in Long Beach. We got to our hotel, dropped our luggage, got some lunch and hit up the expo. It was a blast. We got a ton of compliments on our jackets. Thanks to my super talented cousin we had the best looking Tinkerbell jackets there!

Met up with Alice as soon as we entered the park! 🙂

We hit the hay fairly early since we had an early wake up call the next day.
it was TIME to FLY! 😉

Linds and I had to start back in Corral C (since she was running under Sundance’s bib) and the start was way congested! Holy smokes there were a TON of runners! We didn’t cross the start line until 20 minutes after the initial start!

We ran out around Anaheim for about a mile and then weaved our way back into the parks! The next 6 miles (I think) were in Disneyland, California Adventure, and Downtown Disney.

It was magical. I didn’t even feel like I was running!

We stopped for a lot of pictures! The lines were long. When you have 2 corrals of runners in front of you… there are a lot of women in line! haha!
Had to stop for a pic with Captain Hook & Smee!
Tinkerbell was on top of the drum, but it was hard to get a good pic of her!

Stopped with ALL the princesses. This was one stop my Mom and I passed on last year, and I regretted it.

Ran through the castle and stopped to take a picture!
I didn’t take any pics once we got out of the parks, and I finally grabbed my camera as we were coming down the chute –

we resulted in this gem of a photo!

Love ya Linds, don’t hate me for posting this pic! 🙂

We had a blast. Linds and I had a great race! We only stopped to walk during water stops and had to make a couple potty stops. She was a champ… she was having some seriously shitty IT band pain and we still pushed each other to sprint it in at the end. 🙂

Here are a few more pics from our trip…

I’m a huge Winnie the Pooh fan! Makes me feel like a little kid again!

Anyone else run the Tinkerbell Half? Anyone doing the Princess Half and getting their Coast-to-Coast medal? (if yes… I’m extremely jealous!)

Tinkerbell Half Marathon 2013 – Here we come!!

the 3 of us…

are headed to CALI to run this…

and we are SO excited!!!

excited to run in the most magical place – Disneyland!

excited to get out of the COLD weather!

excited for a girls weekend!

 

 

Anyone else running the Tinkerbell Half Marathon this year?
My Mom and I ran it last year, you can read the recap here. 🙂

 

Polar ft40 Heart Rate Monitor Review

Happy New Year everybody! I’m only a few (okay… a lot of) days late. Diz and I have been battling nasty head colds and we’ve (well, I’ve) been checked out of the internet/social media world for the last little while (and our internet has been down & we were at the mercy of our landlord trying to fix it, which took about 4 days…). I’d like to tell you that we’re feeling better, but I think we just keep re-infecting each other.

but hey! Check it out — Polar and FitFluential sent me the FT40 Heart Rate Monitor to try out and review.

It seemed like everyone BUT me had a heart rate monitor! I’ve heard a lot about heart rate training and zones, but that just seems so complicated!

Polar USA to the rescue!

The FT40 simplifies heart rate training, so even a blondie like me gets it!

Your heart rate is only TRUE and accurate measure of your intensity level while exercising. How I best understand it is my “fast” running pace is (lately) anything sub 9:00/mile, my bff Janae’s “fast” pace is like 7:00/mile – but our heart rates would probably be similar if we were running our “fast” pace, because everyone has a different levels of fitness.

The FT40 allows me to train smarter, NOT harder.

Like, at Elevated CrossFit, we’re expected to workout at a certain intensity level for each WOD. Not too easy, and not too hard (well, no puking…). That’s the key to reaching any exercise goal – working out at the right intensity level.

And the Polar FT40 makes it SO easy to measure how hard I’m working. It’s got this great feature called the Energy Pointer that really makes it simple to tell which exercise benefit I’m getting. Fat Burning or Fitness Improvement. It tracks the length of my workouts, my average heart rate, my maximum heart rater and how many calories I burn during that time. According to Polar, the Smart Calorie feature has been validated to be the most accurate estimation of calories burned commercially available. How cool is that? You know you can never thrust the machines at the gym, they always seem to overestimate how many calories you burn.

So you wanna know how it works??

I wear the handy-dandy heart rate sensor and strap (as pictured above!) and it wirelessly submits the data to the wrist unit. Easy, right?!
(something super cool I noticed, while I’ve been running on the treadmill at the gym, the sensor must also connect to the treadmill because it tracks my heart rate on the treadmill display too. sa-weet.)

The FT40 was super easy to set up, it just needs basic info and you’re ready to begin. It literally took me 2 minutes.

I’ve worn it while running and while doing CrossFit. During my runs, I’m in fitness mode for the majority of the time, with the exception of the warm up and cool down. During CrossFit WODs I’m in fat burning mode for the most part, usually around a 60/40 split. I was finally able to use my Polar Heart Rate Monitor last night during a strength WOD and I was in fat burning mode the entire time, it wasn’t until the sprints that my heart rate spiked up into the fitness mode.

I knew I LOVED strength WODs for a reason! 😉

here are a few screen shots from different workouts

the Polar FT40 has been a great addition to my workouts. I love that it has an accurate calorie burn and I can (easily) tell whether I’m burning fat or improving fitness. It’s comfortable to wear and I’ve never chafed with the heart rate strap (and I usually chafe with EVERYTHING). The fact that it is SO easy to use is a HUGE plus for me. I hate having to go through 8 different screens to get one bit of info, then another screen for another but of info on my Garmin. With my Polar FT40 – it’s all right there!

Do you guys use a heart rate monitor? Anyone a Polar LOVER like me?

**DISCLAIMER – FitFluential, LLC and Polar USA provided me with Polar FT40 to review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**

I got my Mom to CrossFit! & a Reebok Coupon

Remember my previous post about bringing all the blogger girls to Elevated CrossFit for ‘Guest Days’?
Well on the last day I was somehow able to convince my Mom, Joanna & Carly to join me!
Let’s just call it a #CrossFitMiracle 😉

My Mom has always been a little (okay – a lot) afraid of CrossFit.
She worries about not being able to move for a week after, not knowing the movements, and not being able to move for a week after. 😉

The key was getting Carly and Joanna convinced to come try it. They usually do long runs on Saturday, and well, my Mom didn’t want to run alone, so she had to come to Elevated CrossFit too.

Our workout was fairly simple –

AMRAP 10 minutes, in teams of 3, complete the following:

athlete 1 runs 200m, the other two will be doing as many reps as possible of:
athlete 2: KB Swings
athlete 3: Push Ups

Joanna, Carly and I were on a team, and my Mom joined in with Cayson and her Mom – and I’ve already forgotten our score. We had a great time and that’s all that matters.

Everyone did awesome! I was so proud of my Mom and Carly and Joanna. They were out of their element but still kicked major butt!

After we got done with the WOD we were goofing off and trying to get everyone to do hand stands against the wall.

poor Carly… she slammed herself into the wall and Joanna and my Mom were there to catch her and hold her up,
but she couldn’t stay up on her own –

which is why it’s just us 3 in this pic.
We were all laughing hysterically.

Then I was trying to do some more pull ups unassisted and Carly managed to snap this pic on her phone –

really blurry, but still, it’s proof I can do pull ups. 🙂

I could only get 4 or 5 strung together. My arms were FRIED from all the workouts that week.
I even tried to do a few handstand push ups.
I was going for 5 in a row, got to 4, then basically crumpled into a sweaty heap.
Thank goodness I had an ab-mat to break my fall!

p.s. Reebok sent me the red tank, it’s actually the CrossFit Racer Long Bra Top. It’s awesome.
The great thing about their CrossFit apparel line is that it’s made with CrossFit athletes in mind.
This tank fit perfectly, was soft and comfortable, and didn’t cause any chafing or raw spots.
And like all my other Reebok tanks, it utilizes the PlayDry technology which means it moves moisture away, accelerates evaporation, and increases ventilation. So for a sweaty chick like me – it’s awesome because it keeps me cool (literally) and makes me LOOK good. 😉

The next morning I texted my Mom to see if I could run on her treadmill.
I really wanted to try out my new Bose SIE2i sport headphones that Reebok sent me.
My Mom responded that they (Joanna and her) were out running about a mile from my house and that I should join in and run them home.
So I quickly changed (got bundled up – it was freakin’ COLD outside!) and headed down the road.
I ended up only running 3 miles but it was fun to hear them complain/rant&rave about CrossFit.

and I fell in love with the Bose SIE2i sport headphones.
Hands down, the MOST comfortable earphones I’ve ever worn.
and most definitely the best sound quality in any sport headphone I’ve ever owned.
I love that there’s a remote on the cord and lets you control volume and change tracks on my iPod nano. No fiddling with the buttons on the actual iPod, or trying to take gloves off to get the scroll wheel to respond. Those Reebok & Bose people are pure genius!
the armband fit pretty comfortably over my long sleeve top and only slipped down once.
AND  it has a shorter cord, so no more getting tangled up in my watch, water belt, or yanking the earphones out of my ears when I accidentally snag the cord. (it does come with an extension piece if you do need the extra length).

 

The folks at Reebok sent me this coupon code to pass on to all my readers!
I’m a huge fan of their apparel and shoes!
(and the new Bose SIE2i headphones – but the coupon won’t apply to those)

 

Their apparel is great and designed with athletes in mind. Every piece of clothing that I have from Reebok has quickly become a favorite.
Comfort, fit and quality are all top-notch!
They never restrict movement, never chafe, and look great!
Make sure you check out their SHOP! The coupon is good through the end of the year!

*disclaimer – Reebok provided me with the Bose SIE2i headphones and the CrossFit Racer Long Bra Top at no cost to me. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely my own.*