Windy 3 Miler

I finally motivated myself to get out of the house and outside in the cold to run. Since my training schedule has been nonexistent over the last week with the snow and holiday get-togethers, I'll be playing catch up this week!

It was rough getting my foot out the door with the windy weather. It's 30 degrees here but feels like 17 with gust of wind up to 39 mph.

I had to return our DVDs from last night so I carried the movies for my first 2 miles until I reached a RedBox to return them. The last mile I ran against the wind which explains the decrease in time.

Here's what the Garmin reported:

Distance 3.01 mi
Time 29:59
Calories 317
Avg pace 9:57

Splits

Mile 1- 9:32
Mile 2- 9:59
Mile 3- 10:12

I'm not thrilled with this run but after a week off and crappy eating it will have to do.

After I thawed out with a hot shower I made some lunch. While cutting the veggies for my salad I dipped some in the container of hummus. (no pic)

I had a huge salad with carrots, sugar snap peas, green pepper, sliced almonds, and Annie's Goddess dressing.



I also had some crackers with homemade plum jam. Thanks Aunt Bonnie, it's delicious!



Time to start cleaning... oh what fun!

2010 is right around the corner and I still haven't posted my goals. Have you though about your goals yet?

Hip pain with the Sista

Yesterday was a super productive day! We had a ‘to do’ list ready and checked it all off which is an awesome feeling. Jeff got up early to take Elli out and to my surprise also served me breakfast in bed. So sweet. He made me oats with dried cranberries, fresh blueberries, slivered almonds, and a touch of agave nectar. It was so yummy!

After getting ready we headed out to complete our list of things. We went to the grocery store to pick crab meat for my MIL. She makes crab cakes every Christmas and we found a good deal. Then we headed out to the county to order our kitchen backsplash tile. I’m so glad this is final done and can’t wait till it’s installed.

Our next stop was supposed to be the Christmas tree farm but on our way we passed a tree stand that advertised all trees $25. What! We were feeling cheap so we stopped and found a beautiful Scotch pine tree. We’ve never heard of the Scotch pine before but it’s a nice looking tree that ended up costing $28. Not sure how they managed the additional $3 but it was still a good buy. The past couple years we have paid around $70 which seems insane considering we’re never really home for the holiday.

We set our tree up to see how Elli would react and she could have cared less. I thought she would try to play with it, eat it, pee on it, who knows what. Anyhow we decided to let it sit one day and soak up lots of water and are decorating it today.

Our naked tree


I finally went for a run once the tree was up. According to my training schedule I was suppose to run 2 miles but since it was a nice sunny day I went for 4 instead. Besides I couldn’t wait to run with my sista aka my Garmin! Yeah, that’s her name now. Sista! It’s appropriate since we’ll be spending a lot of time together exploring the city.

Jeff snapped a picture of me before we headed out.



And one of Elli too… with his earmuffs on :)



Running with my sista really pushed me to run faster. During the first mile warm up I was confused with the display screen and couldn’t see how fast I was running. I need to change the display but got used to it on this run. After my run I couldn’t wait to log into Garmin Connect to see my stats. Here goes…


Distance: 4.01 miles
Time 39:48

Splits

Mile 1- 10:44 (warm up)
Mile 2- 9:47
Mile 3- 9:41
Mile 4- 9:26


Seeing my time each mile pushed me to do better. I hope that this will help me to achieve a PR at my next race.

Bad news

My body is screaming for rest! Apparently my hip hasn’t completely healed from my fall 10 days ago. After the 4 miles I felt pain in my right hip and by the evening I could barely walk.

I am the type of person who hates being hurt and tend to push myself too hard which of course makes it worse. Today I will be resting and that I can justify since I worked out every other day this week.

Well I’ll be spending the last day of my weekend decorating the tree, packing lunches, planning meals for the week, doing laundry, and whatever else I can get into. Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be resting. We’ll see how that goes.

Enjoy the day everyone!

Change in schedule

So I don't forget, here is dinner from last night. Baked sweet potato with earth balance and cinnamon, steamed green beans, and black beans with onion.



This morning was not a typical morning in our house. Jeff had to leave at 5:30 a.m. to catch the train to DC for the day. This threw me off a bit since I usually get up at that time and he is still snoring away in bed. The weather is crappy today and it's raining pretty hard, so I decided to stay in bed while he got ready. I woke around 6:00 to take Elli out and couldn't believe how sore and stiff my body was. I guess that workout yesterday worked my muscles more than I thought. To my surprise I was really feeling it. Since the weather sucked and I was sore I decided to skip my run this morning. Instead I started my morning off with a good cup of black coffee,



read some blogs and then did some much needed yoga.



This yoga series on Fit TV is just what I needed today. It felt so good to stretch my sore muscles.

Afterwards I took Elli out again and showered for work. By the way, I plan on running my scheduled 2 miles either tomorrow or Friday. Depending on the weather. I'll do the Ace Fitness workout again the other day.

My breakfast this morning was pb oats with raisins...mmmmm..yummmy.




• ½ cup oats
• cinnamon
• raisins
• quick squirt of agave nectar
• 1 spoon full of nature’s promise organic pb



After breakfast and reading Bobbi's post I felt like I needed a little bit more of a workout. Since my upper body wasn't sore I got out my little 5 lb. wieghts.

• Hammer curls (3 sets of 10/arm)
• Standing triceps extensions (3 sets of 10/arm)
• Double-arm raise (2 sets of 12)
• Shoulder presses (3 sets of 10)
• Chest fly (3 sets of 12)
• Upright row (3 sets of 10)

(Big thanks to Fitnessista and Bobbi for these links)


Then it was time to get to work...

I worked from home today so I was able to prep a few things for tomorrow. During lunch I made my first breakfast cookie to try tomorrow morning. I followed Fitnessista's recipe here.

I made mine with the recommended oats, raw almond butter, unsweetened soy milk, and my "add-ins" were vegan chocolate chips and raisins. I cannot wait to try this!




Training
I was checking the schedule of events for the race and also found this training schedule. It's a beginner training plan but seems more intense than the one I got from Runner's World. I might mix the two together and see what works for me.


Here is what I whipped up for lunch. I had some green and black beans leftover from dinner and added this Kashi whole grain pilaf and carrots sticks.



Added taco sauce and it was perfect! Lovely lunch and very satisfying.



I even had black beans and pilaf leftover for dinner tonight. Works well since tonight is "clean out the frig" night.

Well I hope you have a wonderful night :) We're half way through the week! Yay!

Let’s have dessert first

I always liked the saying that you should eat dessert first to make sure you have room for it.

Last night after dinner I made the Nasoya sugar cookies. They were huge and had a nice flavor! Much sweeter than I expected from the ingredients and they had a cake-like texture. Oh yeah, they look more like Easter cookies since we don’t have any green/red sprinkles.



I got a little creative with my dessert.



The end result: sugar cookie soy ice cream sandwich! This vegan treat was sinful and oh so tasty.



Onto this morning’s workout… I tried something new today. Yesterday I discovered the Ace Fitness website and their At-Home workout caught my eye. I have to try new things at home since there will be no gym in my life. This was a good workout to do and I’ll probably do this on my days off from running. It was pretty quick, about 25 minutes, and targeted several different muscle groups. The warm up and cool down include yoga poses and the workout is pretty basic. Take my advice and play some music if you decide to give this a try. It got a little boring and music would have jazzed it up. I was too lazy to turn any on.

I also ordered 3 of Jillian Michaels’ DVDs from Amazon this week. I read from other bloggers that she has some great workouts.



My plan is to make our basement a comfortable place to workout and keep things interesting. Unfortunately I’ll be stuck inside a lot through the winter months. I just hope the weather doesn’t keep me from running outside, safely anyway.


I changed my oatmeal this morning since there was no fruit on hand.

• 1/3 cup oats
• 1/4 cup Bear Naked granola
• Cinnamon
• 1 tsp agave nectar
• 1 spoonful of natural pb



I added too much water to the mix so it wasn’t as good as it would have been. I also finished off a bottle of Trilogy Kombucha that I had at work. This stuff takes some getting used to but I find myself craving it now, weird.

Back to training- I’m jumping around a bit today.
I charted my training schedule today since I like to check off the days as I go along. I used Runner’s World to create my schedule through the Smart Coach application. It’s a moderate schedule with Saturday as my long-run day, a total of 15 weeks ending on race day. I’m not sure how to post the chart so I’ll try my best to explain it. I will run on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday (weather permitting) and cross-train/rest the other days. After running 2 half-marathons I am comfortable tweaking the schedule if needed but this is the plan.

Week 1: M 2 mi, W 2 mi, S 2 mi – 6 miles total
Week 2: M 2 mi, W 2 mi, S 3 mi – 7 miles total
Week 3: M 2 mi, W 3 mi, S 4 mi – 9 miles total
Week 4: M 2 mi, W 3 mi, S 5 mi – 10 miles total
Week 5: M 2 mi, W 5 mi, S 6 mi – 13 miles total
Week 6: M 2 mi, W 5 mi, S 6 mi – 13 miles total
Week 7: M 2 mi, W 5 mi, S 7 mi – 14 miles total
Week 8: M 2 mi, W 6 mi, S 7 mi – 15 miles total
Week 9: M 2 mi, W 7 mi, S 8 mi – 17 miles total
Week 10: M 4 mi, W 4 mi, S 4 mi – 12 miles total
Week 11: M 2 mi, W 6 mi, S 8 mi – 18 miles total
Week 12: M 2 mi, W 7 mi, S 9 mi – 20 miles total
Week 13: M 2 mi, W 8 mi, S 9 mi – 21 miles total
Week 14: M 2 mi, W 7 mi, S 10 mi – 21 miles total
Week 15: T 2 mi, Th 5 mi, Sun Race Day! 13.1 mi

Hopefully that makes sense. I find it difficult to squeeze in long run during the week since I work full time and try to run in the mornings. So I tend to adjust this schedule as needed.


Ok enough about running for today!


What was on the menu for my other meals today…

Lunch- Amy’s Organic Vegetable Barley Soup, carrots sticks, and two clementines. I also had Celestial Seasoning’s gingerbread spice tea since my office was freezing.



I’ve realized from all my lunch pictures lately that I am very wasteful. I consider myself to be fairly ‘green’ so are all these disposable spoons necessary? I have reusable plastic spoons at home and need to start packing them for my lunch. I promise to start working on that.


Dinner- Baked sweet potato with black beans and green beans (me) and baked chicken (Jeff)
I'll post that pic tomorrow.

It's now time to clean up from dinner and watch Fringe (DVRed from last week).

Help me out and cross your fingers that we don’t get the icy mix their calling for tomorrow morning! I’ve gotta run!

Have a great night!