Chasing Ambulances

I have to say that I’ve not had a very healthy week so far.  I haven’t ran, I haven’t been eating well, and it has an immediate effect on my outlook on the world and myself.  I could really use a dose of my own advice today!

I am not feeling confident about the half marathon.  It’s still a month away so that is a lot of time, but last weekend’s long run really shook my confidence.  I didn’t feel like it should have been as hard as it felt, and the fact that I felt so sore afterwards means I’m not physically prepared – or as prepared as I would like to be.  I am getting the pre-race doubts.  I get them all the time.  I’m going to try to not think about whether I’m prepared for it until it’s much closer to the date and I’ll go from there.

Since I have been thinking about it this week, I thought I would talk about “The other benefit of working out.”

We all know that working out has a lot of physical benefits: improving cardiovascular fitness, reducing blood pressure, decreasing triglycerides and increasing HDL cholesterol, preventing osteoporosis, managing weight, building lean muscle – and much more.

My favorite benefit of all is the way working out – especially running – increases body confidence and satisfaction. 

After a run, I’m less likely to notice or dissect a body flaw.  There is a post workout glow period where everything is sunshine and rainbows. 

A friend recently told me that while she had been working out, she tried on a bathing suit and felt pretty satisfied with what she saw.  Then she got sick, and had not ran in two weeks, tried on the bathing suit and realized she was going to need to work out more. 

There was nothing so significant that happened in two weeks body-composition wise that would have been visible to the naked eye.  I didn’t see her in the bikini, but I’m pretty sure of this.

Working out is what made the difference – but not in the way she thought – she hadn’t lost definition or gained weight.  The rose-colored glasses that come with working out were just not on anymore.

My mom claims she feels no benefit from working out – she doesn’t get the “high”; she hates it (she claims).  But she’s been doing it a lot more in the last couple of years, and the way she dresses has changed.  Now she wears clothes that fit – that don’t hide her body.  Whatever she says about working out, it’s obvious that working out has increased her body confidence.

During periods of my life where I feel like my body will be exposed in some way – like when I was trying on wedding dresses or on my wedding day, I was sure to work out.  Not because I thought I could lose weight in a week – but because I knew my attitude towards myself would be better.

Attitude really is everything.

I’m just having one of those weeks I think.  I just feel like I’m in a funk and can’t quite snap out of it.

Today was a rainy day, so I was wanting comfort food.  There is a tomato soup at Panera that I really like.  Panera is a chain that was started from St. Louis Bread Company.  St. Louis Bread Company still exists, but only in St. Louis

Anyway, they didn’t have the tomato soup I wanted, so I settled for French onion.  It was just okay.

And I got it in a bread bowl, because that sounded comforting I guess!

Last night, Ada got a new toy and promptly tore into it:

That’s the “guts” all over the floor!

This morning was my first day with Girls on the Run.  Luckily, the “assistant coach” I am working with had already coached last year and knew a lot of girls on the team because they were repeats.  She took over a lot of the lesson – I kind of just let her – and I have to say that I was really thankful.  There were ten eight to 11 year olds there, and they like to TALK and don’t like to pay attention.  They are super cute but we have our hands full.  Honestly, I was expecting a quieter, more timid group.  But they mostly knew each other and had been through the program before, so they were anything but timid.

A few of them are naturally very outgoing and confident – more confident than I am in myself!  I really admired that quality and it got me thinking about where that kind of confidence comes from.  These girls must come from a supportive environment, among other things. 

It’s the kind of confidence I wish we all could have in ourselves.  Unbridled, uncensored, unapologetic and not in an arrogant, I-am-better-than-you-way – just confident in the way that YOU are is great.  Ask yourself what you’re confident about and post it in the comments for the 30 Days of Self Love post!

The last day of August is coming to a close.  I’m glad that soon we’ll be seeing cooler temperatures and better running weather soon.

I’m not so glad that Sunday’s run made me really sore.  Unusually sore.  I thought my training has been pretty good – not great – but not bad either.  Only a couple of weeks ago, I ran 11 miles on my treadmill so I thought 10 miles outdoors would be fine.  When I trained for my marathon, I interchanged running long runs on the treadmill when the weather didn’t allow running outside.  Granted, that was a different treadmill… Maybe that has something to do with it.

Anyway, I’m chalking it up to a lesson learned and a note to run the rest of my long runs outdoors.  What I’m experiencing is called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (or DOMS).  One of the things you can do to relieve this is light exercise – just going for a short, easy walk is good.  Another thing I should have done more of after my workout was stretching.  I do light stretching after all of my runs – I believe this is VITAL – but on harder workouts, I should be doing more stretching.  Longer, deeper stretches and not ignoring muscle groups that I take for granted. 

My quads and right buttock were apparently taken for granted.  Right now, they are not.  Believe me.

Right now I’m watching Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

In high school, I listened to a lot of Pink Floyd.  The Wall, The Dark Side of the Moon, Pulse (thanks to my brother’s collection for that one), A Momentary Lapse of Reason and Wish You Were Here were my favorite CDs.  I think it was right around the time that the Spice Girls exploded in popularity.  Considering what was out there, I don’t blame myself for my Pink Floyd phase at all.

End tangent?

Tomorrow is my first day coaching Girls on the Run.  I am super nervous.

It’s also the first day of 30 Days of Self-Love. 

This morning I got up to run a scheduled 10 miles.  I knew it was a little bit warm outside, but I was not prepared for how quickly it became HOT. 

After 6 miles, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, and my pace was starting to suffer.  I was getting tired and hot but not dehydrated.  Ada went with me for about 7.5 miles and she is worn out!  I’m glad I didn’t take her any further because I tried to get her to drink a couple of times but she wouldn’t drink much.  It was bad because I knew she had to be hot too.

At about 8 miles, a man slightly ahead of me stopped his bike to offer me water.  I had to have been looking really bad at this point, so I decided to take that as a sign to turn around and cut my run a little short.  I did 9.5 miles.  (p.s. how nice of it was him to offer?!  I wasn’t dehydrated–just hot–so I was ok, but there have been times that I’ve been really thirsty and lusted after the bottles I see bikers drinking out of…)

Hopefully next week will be better – it’s supposed to be 15-20 degrees cooler so that sounds good to me.

I found out on Friday that I will actually be head coaching for Girls on the Run which starts this week.  It’s a lot more responsibility than I had anticipated and it’s going to be a lot of work.  I’m a little nervous to be honest.  But as my mom said, “The more you put into it, the more rewarding it will be.”

Things I Cooked This Weekend File

1.  Yesterday I made DESSERT HUMMUS which I saw on Evan’s blog at www.foodmakesfunfuel.com.  I made it without the chocolate chips since I didn’t have any on hand, and with low carb syrup because I’m watching my sugar intake (but not my chemical intake…).  It was still really yummy!  It sounds so weird – chickpeas made into something sweet – but this stuff is dangerous.  It’s kind of scary how much is left in the fridge.  Maybe Mark has been sneaking some.  (I seriously doubt it though…)

2.  Low carb, gluten free buns.  You heard me.  A friend sent me the link to these and I was intrigued.  Three ingredients = buns.

They smelled like scrambled eggs in the oven so I was nervous.  I tried it with a turkey burger and all the regular burger fixings.  Verdict?: It’s no sandwich bun, but it’s a good replacement if you are looking to cut out carbs or gluten.  It did taste eggy (cause that’s what it’s made out of) but I could close my eyes and pretend I was just eating a burger.  Mark really liked them too.

I’m off to relax for a bit.  This weekend has been busy with errands and running around and such.  She looks the way I feel:

Hello

Yesterday after work I needed nut butter.  We had been out for 24 hours and this is a huge problem.  Whole Foods is conveniently very close to where I work so I stopped off there. 

MISTAKE.  Do you have certain stores in your life that are black holes for money?  Whole Foods is one of them — so is Target and Walgreens.  I can’t leave those stores without an armful of stuff I didn’t intend to buy when I walked in! 

I wandered around in Whole Foods when the purpose was to buy nut butter and cream of tartar.  Two things.  I left with a very heavy bag — three kinds of nut butter (SSHHHH. I know!), arrowroot, cream of tartar, an apron, chicken sausage, pumpkin seeds, and Artisana Cacao Bliss Coconut butter.  After leaving, I realized I also needed cream cheese.  Isn’t that always the way?

I took pictures but I forgot to bring my adapter thingy into work so pictures will come later.  Oh fine, here is one:

That’s the Cacao Bliss stuff.  I also was looking for some Garlic Gold, but didn’t see any.  I think our Trader Joes has it. 

I saw the arrowroot, debated buying it, and figured I could use it in something.  The jar says it’s used as a thickener.  Anyone have any ideas on how to use it?

I am a member of Healthy Living Blogs!  It’s a resource of all healthy living blogs where you can search for blogs by country or state, which I think is a really cool feature.  Here’s more info:

Healthy Living Blogs is a new resource for the health blogging community. Created by Lindsey of Sound Eats, HLB is a site designed to enhance the positive community of the healthy living blog world. Bloggers and readers can explore the site and find more blogs to love, bloggers in their area, and forums to deepen healthy discussion and support. If you’re interested in having your site listed on HLB, simply send the following information to healthylivingblogs@gmail.com and check the site out for yourself!
Email subject line: MEMBERS
Your name (please share if you prefer to go by first name, first and last, or however you prefer to be known on the Internet)
Blog Name
Blog URL (please start with http://, not www.)
Your twitter handle, if applicable
Your location (if you prefer not to disclose this information for privacy’s sake, that is completely understandable. We’ll simply include your blog listing in the A-Z listing, not by location, too)
Any specific labels (i.e. vegan, gluten-free, weight loss, running, etc.)

It was really easy to join!

Last night I cajoled Mark to go to the gym with me.  I have no trouble motivating myself to run, but going to the gym is kind of a drag sometimes.  We did some weights and walking on the treadmill.

I used to think that walking on the treadmill would not be a good workout.  This is false.  I think I learned from Angela that walking on the treadmill can really kick your butt.  As long as you keep the pace brisk and jack up that incline, I can get my heart rate as high as it is when I’m running. 

Last night I only did 15 minutes but kept my pace between 3.8-4.0 and the incline at 8, 10, and 12%.  Also, it makes a huge difference if you hold onto the machine.  My heart rate drops about 15-20 beats per minute if I’m holding onto the machine.  This means that I’m cheating myself out of a harder cardiovascular workout — pump those arms!  I look like an idiot, but I’m getting a good workout.  Walking fast on an incline builds leg & butt muscles better than running.  Walking fast is challenging and builds muscle partly because walking becomes inefficient at a certain speed.  Have you tried walking on the treadmill? 

Hope you all have a good weekend!

I eat a lot of yogurt, and usually I just get the plain, nonfat kind.  I’m pretty particular about it.  The flavored stuff has so much sugar and bizarre ingredients added that I usually won’t touch it.  Don’t get me started on Yoplait.  It’s not yogurt if you ask me.  Plus, eat the real stuff, and you get to eat a lot more volume.  More food = good, right?

There is always a lot of buzz in the healthy living blog community about Greek yogurt.  In fact, I see it so much that I sometimes wonder if anyone ever eats the non-Greek stuff like me – Greek yogurt is expensive!  But it’s good, and here’s why: the texture is awesome.  It’s creamy and thick – it just has good mouthfeel.  Secondly, there is a lot more protein in Greek yogurt. The only difference between regular yogurt and the Greek stuff is that the Greek kind is strained.  In fact, you could make it yourself if you wanted to.

• In a 6 ounce serving of Fage 0% you get: 90 calories, 0 g fat, 7 g carbs and 15 grams of protein. 
• Non-Greek plain nonfat yogurt has: 80 calories, 14 g carbs and 8 grams of protein (which varies slightly from brand to brand).

I forgot to mention that Greek yogurt also defies gravity.

Those Greeks are smart!

I didn’t sit down today to go on and on about Greek yogurt but that’s exactly what happened.

I ate some before my run and I will also add that it makes good pre-run fuel: I had an awesome 6 mile run this afternoon.  I didn’t feel tired and felt like I could have kept going.  Disclaimer: I apparently have a stomach of steel and dairy doesn’t bother me.

After my run we went to Sweet Tomatoes.  We’re not cool and we like salad bars so don’t judge.

There is an unwritten rule that if you’re eating salad for your main meal, it should at least be three inches high.

I like eating at salad bars with my husband because I never feel judged for how huge my salad plate is.  In fact, I think we are subconsciously competing about who can make a bigger salad.  Mark just told me that he thinks his was “way bigger” and now I wish I had taken a picture (that’s what she said). 

Oh, there’s a lot of stuff in there.  Eggs, blue cheese, peas, chickpeas, cauliflower, celery– I pretty much just threw the salad bar on my plate.

This soup doesn’t photograph well, but it was really good.  It’s called Canadian Cheese and smoked ham, but it was more like Canadian Cheese soup with an essence of ham. That’s not a complaint, just semantics…

I’m out.  Goodnight!

This month’s issue of Marie Claire had a really interesting article showing what women around the world eat in a day.  The women varied from a tribeswoman in Namibia, a girl who works at a theme park in the U.S., to a woman in Venezuela, to a woman in India who drinks her urine in the morning as a cleanse.  The article showed the calorie totals of their day, the womens’ heights and weights, and a picture of them in front of the food they ate in a typical day. (Unfortunately they didn’t give a sneak peak of the article on their website so you’ll have to run out and see it for yourself!)

It was certainly a loaded article – but I found just the facts really interesting.  The food some of the women ate was stuff I had never heard of, so I found that interesting.  Plus, there is something inherently interesting about reading & looking at what people eat!  Am I preaching to the choir right now or what?

For the longest time, my dad has always asked me what I ate for dinner whenever I called at night.  Well, Dad, now you can even see the pictures!

I wasn’t feeling well this afternoon or evening so my princely husband cooked me dinner.  He made me an omelette and turkey sausage.

It was really good   Thanks honey!

I can rhyme, yo.

Hope everyone is enjoying the last minutes of their Sundays … Mark and I are on a countdown until the latest True Blood and Mad Men air.

Yesterday I attended a coaches’ training for Girls on the Run – St. Louis.  As you may know, Girls on the Run is a national organization with chapters in over 150 cities nationwide.  St. Louis has the third largest chapter in the country, with over 90 schools in the area participating.  When I showed up for training on Saturday morning, I walked into a room with hundreds of women approximately my age who all are runners looking to help and inspire others.  The energy was amazing. 

The program itself is a 10 week program that girls between 8 to 14 can join.  The group stays small (no larger than 17 girls can participate per team) and meets twice a week for about 90 minutes.  The activities involve running, but also strive to teach the girls life lessons and build their self-esteem. 

I did feel some regret that I had not started earlier, because the program is so right up my alley, but right now the timing is really good.  My schedule is flexible and I can work early in the day so that I can get to the after-school training. 

If your schedule isn’t as flexible, you can always sponsor Girls on the Run by participating in their Solemates program.  The Solemates program means you help raise money for the organization when you run a race. 

If you don’t have a chapter in your area, START ONE.  Here’s how.

Tonight, Mark and I grilled some beef and asparagus.  The beef was shoulder filet, for those of you interested in cuts.  The beef was sold in a marinade already.  Bonus.

There is not much better than grilled asparagus.  I kind of burned them … I put our gas grill on high.  Oops.  Mark thought the beef was too salty but I was down with it.

I cleaned my plate, no problem. 

Did you know that the ability to smell and create “asparagus pee” is genetic? 

Only those with a certain gene can break down the chemicals inside the asparagus into their smelly components, and only those with the proper gene can smell the results of that chemical breakdown.

Now you do.  

I am missing one of the two abilities.  Now you know that, too.

Dinner tonight was a test in creativity.  We had a pizza crust (whole wheat from Boboli) and we had cheese.  The rest was a big question mark.

I like marinara sauce on mine, but Mark really doesn’t.  The solution was His & Hers pizza.  On Mark’s half: raspberry-chipotle barbeque sauce, hot banana peppers, red pepper flakes, chicken, mozzarella cheese, and rosemary.

I smelled the rosemary cooking and I said, “Did you really put rosemary on your barbeque pizza?”  Yes, he did.  I had a bite – it was hot (spicy), sour, and sweet.  Not my thing.  Actually, I thought it was pretty gross.  He said, “This is the best pizza I have ever made.”

Hers:

Maybe mine wasn’t as creative.  But it tasted good.  Mine was made with marinara sauce, mozzarella, italian seasoning, minced garlic and light cream cheese. 

Yum. 

The weirdest but best thing I ever had on a pizza was mashed potatoes on thin crust pizza in (ironically) Chicago.  I didn’t think I was going to like it but it was really good.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had on a pizza?

My husband taught our dog Ada to give him a hug.  She does it whenever he comes home and he says “Where’s my hug?”  So cute.

Since I’m so short, she clobbers me when she does it. It’s one of my favorite tricks that she can do.

Yesterday, I got a traffic ticket.  I was not really happy about it – I got it on my way home.  The officer, however, was a pretty nice guy. 

Later, we went to get dinner at a restaurant in town and we parked next to a cop’s patrol car.  Inside, one of the cops looked a lot like the one that pulled me over. 

I have strong opinions about law enforcement after handling hundreds of criminal defense cases and traffic tickets.  One of my many strong opinions is that cops have one of the hardest and most underappreciated jobs in the U.S.  I would hate to have to spend my day pulling people over – that moment almost inevitably becomes the driver’s worst moment of their day, and cops get the brunt of it.  There is no doubt in my mind that has to become old real fast.  The worst of law enforcement reacts in the worst way.  But there are some good cops.  I think that the cops probably deserved a boost that day.  So I decided to leave the cop an Operation Beautiful note.

I was a little afraid they were going to come out and taser me or something while I was doing this   I hope it made their day a little easier.

At least I promoted Operation Beautiful if nothing else.

Happy hump day

I’m experiencing my first blogging emergency.  My camera charger is DEAD, and I think I left my charger in Nebraska the last time I was there!  I can’t find it.  Right before my camera battery died last night, I was able to take some pictures of my dinner.  (Which I didn’t put up yesterday because I guess I got lazy!)  Beef & veggie stirfry:

What I did was really simple, and SO FAST.  I heated a tablespoon or so of sesame oil in two pots.  In one, I dumped the thawed beef.  In the other, I dumped the frozen mixed veggies.  Then, after giving the veggies a stir, I put the lid on and let it do its thing, occasionally checking on it and giving it a stir.  With the beef, all I did was add ground ginger and soy sauce.  I was pretty generous with both and let me tell you, it was a fantastic combo.  I wanted to lick the pan!  After 10 minutes, both components were finished and I mixed them together in the beef pan for that awesome sauce.

Mark told me I had to give him credit for this photo.  Pretty good for a point & shoot, right?

We could have added rice and added more sauce but I didn’t have the patience for that because I was pretty hungry.  Instead, we had a side of honeydew.  Random.

Yesterday I did this workout:

What that means is that I did 10 minutes of warmup running, 1 kilometer at 7:55/mile pace, 2 kilometers at 8:00/mile pace, 1 kilometer at 7:55/mile pace, and another kilometer at 7:55 pace with 400 meters of recovery in between each, followed by 10 minutes of cool down.

I have a love/hate relationship with interval workouts.  Too much math, too much mile/kilometer conversion, for running.  What I love is how I feel afterwards.  Fast.  Good. Exhilarated. For anyone that’s never had a runner’s high, I would suggest speed intervals.  I rarely get the “high” from a longer run, but I do get it pretty often with speedwork!

Last week I talked about my mini-goal #1 – to just track my food intake.  Well, it turns out, that’s not really hard.  All I wanted to do was track my intake, with no regard as to whether I went over or not. I have no problem doing that if I’m totally accepting of the fact that I may go over – and oh, I did, every day.    My problem is that I don’t track well when I know I’m supposed to be eating a certain amount.  When I know I’ve gone over, I stop tracking – so that I can pretend it didn’t happen.  Alternatively, I don’t track, knowing that my day will be challenging and I end up overeating because, once again, my head is in the sand.  There’s no evidence, so it never happened – how lawyerly of me.  So my mini-goal # 2 is to stay within my points.  This is a much harder goal to achieve, but it’s vital that I do it if I’m going to be successful.  It’s pretty much the cornerstone of the program.  I’ll need to continue to work on tracking no matter what as well.

Well, I’ve got to get off to Best Buy to see if they have the right charger.  Pray for me that they do!  Today I haven’t had the best luck.  I better not have just jinxed myself!