Let’s talk boobs

That’s right folks. This blog post is going to be all about boobies — more specifically taming them.

For me, it’s difficult to make the time to do all the exercising activities I want to in the run of the week, and since I’m not willing to do it in the morning I’m left with working out after work, or on the weekends. I find that most people stick to what they love, whether it be running or going to the gym. Not a lot of people cross train, which I think is important to prevent injury. I learned that the hard way two summer’s ago when I busted up my ankle at soccer.

My battle as I said, is trying to find the time to do all of the sports I enjoy. I received an e-mail recently from my former soccer team mate asking me if I was going to jump on board and sign up for outdoor this season. After a weeks thought, I declined. The primary reason that I decided not to go into it this year was I felt like I wasn’t bringing anything to the team last year. I wasn’t pushing it hard on the field, I generally wasn’t happy even being on the field whatsoever. Legs (my favorite nick name ever) lost her mojo.

Soccer used to be “my” sport, until I discovered CrossFit that is. Climbing is still hovering in a close second place, but since I’ve been climbing since 1994 I feel like it will always be there and it doesn’t need to be a front runner. I’m juggling between getting in enough days at the CrossFit box, and climbing. Some days I’m sore from CF, and can’t climb. Oh, it’s a vicious cycle.

All three of these sporting events have something in common. No, not indecent exposure, in fact it’s the opposite. If you’re female, you’re probably going to want to wear a bra while working out, right? Tank top, optional. At least at the places that I seem to frequent. Don’t worry Mom, I wear clothes over top of my bra’s.

Or bra’s over top of my clothes. Because you know, that’s normal. It was for a Breast Cancer cause I organized. Most women nowadays wear bras, unless … you don’t need/want to. That’s cool. But I like to wear them all the time, especially when exercising. Let’s take running for example. We do a lot of sprints and 1km loops around the block at CrossFit. Wearing a supportive bra when you’re going all out trying to catch the person ahead of you, you’re going to not want to have any bouncing issues. Not like it happens to me with the size I am.

A few weeks ago I was in contact with a representative from Under Armour and got the chance to review a brand spanking new bra from them, the Armour Bra.

The most expensive bra I now own. It better be good! It retails for $69.99.

I can’t believe I’m modeling a bra on my website. But hey, it’s pretty full coverage and you’re not seeing much. I cropped it because you know, you don’t want to see too much sexiness going on here. Ya know what I mean? Uh huh. That’s what I’ll keep telling myself. This is a family safe blog after all.

All of the Armour Bra’s are color coordinated to the cup size. B cup’s are blue. C’s are pink (I kinda want the pink!!).

So, what do I think of the Armour Bra? The compression bra was something I thought I had to get used to but it wasn’t bad at all. I have a few sports bras which are difficult to get off over my shoulders but this one isn’t thanks to the adjusting band on the back like a regular bra. While I felt secure in the bra I didn’t feel like it had an exact fit, and I can’t exactly pinpoint why. Under Armour has amazing potential and already works for so many people. I’m an in between size and it’s difficult to get things to fit me properly. I measure at 33 inches around, so I went with my safe bet at a 34B. Apparently (and I believe so because I own both sizes) 32C and 34B are the same bra cup/size as one Victoria’s Secret consultant once told me. So I’m not sure if I would’ve done better with the 32 or not.

Inside the bra there are modesty cups, which are removable for quick drying if you had a hard workout session. I definitely took advantage of that feature after a few CrossFit WOD’s and had swoob (sweaty boob) happening. Doesn’t everyone? Too much information? Sorry. I’m like that.

I ended up wearing it to CrossFit a handful of times and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not a 100% on this $69.99 bra. The most irritating thing about it is the height of the back straps. I’m pointing to them in the second photo of where I had the issue.

I was doing a workout which consisted of a lot of push-presses, toes to bar, and box jumps. Any time I jumped up to the bar and started doing T2B’s I had to step down and readjust the bra to pull the straps back almost like I was re-adjusting my shirt so the seams would sit in place. I’m not sure if it’s because I got a size that didn’t fit me perfectly (but I’m pretty sure I know my bra size). The back strap around the base of my neck rose up making me feel like I was hunched. It was a strange feeling and I tried wearing different tank tops with it, and I still had that same issue.

That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to ever wear this bra again. I loved the coverage, and it stayed in place when I was jumping on and off the 20 inch boxes when doing the box jumps at CrossFit, the tata’s felt secured that way. The bra is seamless so no irritation or rubbing on your skin when moving about and sweating. It didn’t give me mono-boob. You know that typical sports bra look where your boobs look smooshed together? They didn’t look that way with the Under Armour bra. They separated and looked as if I was wearing a regular bra. It’s the little things that matter. It had me feeling assured, except for that riding up issue. But those exercises don’t happen very often at CrossFit, so maybe on the days I know we’re doing more strength or cardio and not doing pullups or toes to bar exercises, I can sport it.

Thanks again to Under Armour letting me have this opportunity to review the new Armour Bra!

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R.I.P 2011

Well 2011 has come to an end. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year! I’ve decided to do a month by month re-cap of my 365 days.

January
Early in January my Boyfriend and I crossed the boarder to check out the Detroit Auto Show. I’ve never seen anything so huge before, and me being not entirely a car-freak, I actually thoroughly enjoyed being there for hours  on end. Believe it or not, it was fun! I even sat in a fancy car and got chatted up by an ol’ feller. Unfortunately I tried to just get a solo shot of me “driving”, but it didn’t work out ;)

I guess you can’t really say it was his fault. Since I do like to strike up a conversation with anyone. Hi mister Detroit police officer! In case you’re wondering, we were discussing his cottage in Chatham, Ontario lol.

I went to my second (and much larger) blogger meet-up in downtown Toronto. I was a bit scared going into this one since I’ve only met 3 or 4 bloggers prior and there were going to be so many new, yet familiar faces from reading their sites. I had a great time however, and ended up hanging out with some great blog friends like Morgan, Susan, and found some new blogs like Meghan and Lisa!

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 FebruaryI started filming YouTube videos in November of 2010, and I ended up doing my first make-up swap with my friend Katie from Texas (youtube // twitter), I blogged about it and filmed it!

I tried CrossFit for the first time ever and blogged about it of course. I may even go as far to say as I’m addicted to CrossFit! I’m still going strong 11 months later. Wahoo!


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MarchScott and I took advantage of a Groupon and had a date night in Niagara Falls, the next day I shopped the outlets, lol!

I love surprise visits from my neighbours back home in Newfoundland!

We lunched at Tim Hortons while they were driving through my city.

I’d rather not re-live these hair disaster moments in my life again. But, here we go.I had been growing out my hair for about two years. Au naturale, no dying it whatsoever. I decided to try and go for my bold orange look that I had rocked back in 2005. It didn’t come out so great. Not what I asked for.

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AprilI discovered self-tanner. St. Tropez to the rescue of my pale skin!

I cooked a ham and scalloped potatoes for the first time for Easter. Also, please ignore my way-too-dark complexion. I’ve yet to get the hang of self-tanner at this point. :)

After many trips to the hair salon to fix my orange hair (orange gone wrong!), make it more orange, have it fade out. My hair stylist and I finally … broke up.

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MayScott and I drove to Burlington for my Birthday date night and had a classy dinner! Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday…to me! Happy Birthday happy birthday….happy birthday…TO ME. With a hot pink Nike Free’s purchase :)

I went to another large blogger meet-up. This time it was Angela from OhSheGlows birthday. She had a potluck party for her birthday. (Another) Angela  from EatSpinRunRepeat and I drove down together, to her house. Love this photo. I don’t remember what I’m saying but I’m making Morgan die of laughter here! Read about the meetup here.

Oh, I got lost in Mississauga in May as well. That wasn’t fun.

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June
My bathroom tampon carrying case was stolen. Ew.Eating out on our cute bistro set on our balcony. Clearly not much happened this month :)

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July

I bought an iPad 2 on a really crummy day, then I reviewed it.

I also played one of my last games of soccer, ever. I decided to quit. I don’t think I ever blogged about why I decided to quit. Maybe one day I will. It’s nothing major. I just had enough after getting injured frequently. After playing for over 15 years I just ran out of passion for the sport. My team mates even saw it this summer.

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AugustAugust was incredible. The beginning of August I flew down to San Diego, California and met up with some long-time internet friends for the BlogHer11 conference. It was such a relaxing, incredibly fun time with them. I did a ton of re-caps, so you can read them all here.

A few weeks later, my Boyfriend competed in his 3rd Ironman Canada triathlon in Penticton, British Columbia. His sister lives in BC and came along for our trip, and we volunteered at the Run-Aid station at IMC! We also toured around Skaha Bluffs for a bit too — a very popular climbing spot in Penticton.

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SeptemberA new climbing gym in my area opened its doors to us locals, in August. Our city has been lacking an indoor climbing place since they tore down the older gym back in 2006.

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October

I organized a Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign and launched it at work. Prize donations were insane and we raised over $700 with the 30-something employees I work with.

The staff I work with all dressed up for Halloween. I was Mary Katherine Gallagher, from Saturday Night Live ;)

I also flew home to Newfoundland, for the Canadian Thanksgiving, and made homemade pizzas with my cutie patootie nephews.

November

I caught walking pneumonia.

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DecemberI entered in the Tour de Bloc boulder competition and didn’t place last!

Staff Christmas party solo this year and asked your opinions on what I should wear. Just because Scott didn’t go with me this year, didn’t mean I was entirely solo. I ended up taking two of my single female colleagues with me! Two dates is better than one. Scott was out of town that weekend and unfortunately couldn’t make it with me. See past Christmas party, including this years outfits here.

Home for Christmas in Newfoundland!! (I’ve obviously yet to blog about that).

Whoowee, that took entirely way too long to write. Hope you enjoyed my 2011 recap! Night all!

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Running songs

Monday night I ended up running at 9pm with two friends. One of those friends I haven’t ran “alone” with (besides group trail runs) in over a month! It was good to finally get out there with them both and have a good relaxing run. Except it wasn’t relaxing for me. Once again my breathing started getting all crazy and it sounds just like I’m  hyperventilating, or that I have asthma. It gets embarrassing, because my body can do it — since I have done it in the past, and just this past 4 or 5 weeks my breathing has been slowing me down.

I mentioned last week I went to the doctor finally. But there hasn’t been an appointment yet set up for me to get some pulmonary function tests done. So I called my family doctor who is also my soccer team mate. She’s on freaking holidays. She did not make an appointment for me to get my breathing checked. What. the. hell? Just because she thinks I’m fine in soccer (which I sometimes am I mean, you get TONS of breaks with soccer) but c’mon you’re a DOCTOR. If I have breathing problems, just don’t tell me it’s mental if you’ve only known me during a brisk game of soccer, and you haven’t gone on runs with me. To say I am a bit upset at this, is a bit of an understatement.

But since she’s on holidays I somehow sweet-talked my way with the receptionist who will get the replacement Doctor to sign off on a requisition to get me checked out. So much crap to go through just to get peace of mind. Plus, I’m going on holidays soon for two weeks. At least the receptionist is being incredible and looking up places in my city (so I don’t have to travel to my family doctor’s city) so I can have all this stuff done.

So.  Continuing on the topic of running… I update my iPod once in a while (which I haven’t updated it, since I received it in 2007 I don’t think. I KNOW. Crazy.) But I just don’t download music anymore, and I don’t buy the $0.99 songs on itunes. So I’m stuck with either old music or no music when I go out on a run.

Some upbeat music that I have been wanting to put on my ipod lately?

  • I speak no Americano (I LOVE this! It’s insane, but so catchy)
  • Magic. Feat B.O.B. I already have this song, I just have to put it on my iPod. I can definitely see myself running a bit harder when this catchy tune comes on.

Do you run with music?  Do you listen to upbeat / mellow / hardcore music on your runs?  Tell me some songs! I need some new ones :)

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