See Cat Run

So I haven't posted in three weeks… sorry about that. To be honest, my heart's just not in it. Many people love it, but it has always been a chore to me. Hubs also does most of the cooking, so I wouldn't be posting about my own experiments. I don't really like cooking. I hate dirtying dishes (since I'm the one most likely to wash them), it seems like a waste. Confession: I use the same plate for toast everyday for a week, then wash it. Same with water glasses. There's also the fact that come August 16th, I won't have time to exercise, much less post photos of food and write about it. I'll be working 40 hours a week and taking two lab classes, on campus from 7 AM till 7:30 pm, four days a week. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, I'm having second thoughts about this triathlon. Maybe I've burnt out from suddenly going completely balls to the wall when I'd been used to not exercising at all and jumped into a 6 day a week training plan. But really, the swim practice is a pain. I'm enjoying biking and running and I might still try swimming 400 m. when I'm at the lake next week, to see how it feels without the ends of a lane to take a break at. I skipped both swims this week, it's just such a hassle to drive to the gym, pray for a lane with only one other person in it, and then go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, for half an hour. I think I'd rather stick with strength training, running, and biking.

But we'll see. It would be cool to say I've done a triathlon. Maybe this just isn't the year for me.

As to the future of See Cat Run… I'm letting my Bluehost account expire because it's just too much money that I can't afford to waste on something I don't really care about. Whether catruns.wordpress.com will be reincarnated, I don't know. I like the idea of blogging to keep my family and friends up to date with my life, but I dread sitting down to actually write. Let's go get a drink instead.

In case you're curious I'll be having this for dinner.

And all through Orlando, many princesses were gathering, all wearing tiaras!

Treats were received:

And clothes were laid out…

Alarms will ring early, hotels lack internet.

Now dash away, dash away, dash away all…

Have a good nights rest, and happy race day to all!

Or perhaps I should say "how to travel on a budget." Or "when broke." Hubs and I are taking quite a bit of food with us to minimize money spent on food out. Instant oat (maple brown sugar, low sugar), coffee singles, dried plums, dried apricots, apple sauce (mine natural, his with cinnamon and sugar), cereal, mixed nuts, chocolate chips (trail mix!), bars, bagels, my pills (last few doses of antibiotics, fish oil, calcium, multi), and some Yogi bedtime tea, just in case. Yes, and a bar of chocolate and some TJ's nutty bits. We're also taking a jar of peanut butter (for me), bananas (for me), apples (for both), and cokes (for him).

Clothes! I should probably toss in some undies before I forget

Electronics (two cameras with accompanying chargers and USB cables, ipod/headphones, Garmin, tripod, will add computer tomorrow), sunscreen, shoes, race waiver, hotel reservation info. Other toiletries to be packed tomorrow after they're used. The boots on the right are taller and slouchy, but since they're slick on the inside I fold them over to wear under jeans and up when I wear them with a skirt or over jeans. Ollie thinks he needs to come.

And I worked on my race playlist! I'm sure I'll continue to play with the order as the weekend goes on. I'd have more fun stuff on here, but iTunes raised their prices at some point, so I'm having to limit my purchases. These songs generally want to make me get up and dance and/or sing along. All I ask is that they keep my energy up!

I had my last run today before the race! It went very quickly, again! I don't know what is up with that! More worrying is the fact that I tried to slow down at the end and just couldn't seem to. Hope I don't burn myself out!! I was supposed to do an easier tempo run of 5 miles, two for warm up/cool down and the middle three at 10:55/mi.

• Mile 1: 10:34
• mile 2: 10:19
• mile 3: 9:41
• mile 4: 9:42
• mile 5: 10:14

I have no idea what our wifi situation is going to be like on the road, but I'll make sure to post sometime on Sunday! It's way past my bedtime… goodnight!

I don't have pictures of most of my food today. It was all pretty standard except my lettuce was mildewed (again) so I bought some hummus and pretzels to fill the void.

I've eaten a fair amount of whole wheat goldfish over the past few days: I ate half of these as a snack after work and half with dinner, using my cute bowl from Tina's OpenSky store.

Dinner is very much a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants experiment. I let half of my bag of 16 bean soup soak all day, simmered the beans for an hour, drained them, and tossed in a can of veggie stock, a can of no salt added diced tomatoes, a small chopped onion, half a bag of Italian blend frozen vegetables, a packet of chili seasoning, and a bay leaf (cuz when else am I going to use them) and let it cook for another 20ish minutes.

It tastes like a rather watered down chili. I think it will taste better after a night to meld though. We'll see. Less veggie broth next time, I think. I'm pretty psyched about pretty much having my dinners made for the rest of the week though. And they're vegetarian, maybe even vegan (I didn't read the ingredients of the seasoning pack that closely, but I'd imagine it is!).

But I did get a potential shirt for the race (no idea what the temps will be like at 6:00 in the morning yet), a new iPod arm band (the old one being on its last leg), and new headphones (the left one of my old ones died on Thursday). Still not thinking about it though!

Now to go try to figure out what the heck I'm supposed to be reading about for bio tomorrow.

I am bone tired so this is going to be quick.

I slept an extra half hour this morning (wasn't expecting to actually fall back asleep!) so it was oatmeal that was sacrificed. I packed up some oatmeal squares, raw nuts (walnuts, almonds and pecans) and craisins to eat at work.

But I did have time to eat one of our grapefruit before I left (barely time!). That's an 18 lb bag folks.

My cereal and nuts held me over all morning. Lunch was a spinach salad with mushroom, green peppers and leftover tofu. It seems to have eluded the camera.

I came home and head out for seven miles of speed work.

• Mile 0-1: (warmup) 12:17
• Mile 1-2: (goal of 10:03) 9:59
• Mile 2-2.5: (jog) 12:09
• Mile 2.5-3.5: (10:03) 9:58
• Mile 3.5-4: (jog) 11:41
• Mile 4-5: (10:03) 9:31
• Mile 5-6: (jog) 11:43
• Mile 6-7: (cooldown) 11:19

I have to say I'm quite pleased. I really, really didn't want to go. I'd been cold all day and it was cold outside. I've slept poorly this week so I had absolutely no energy, but I took some of Tina's "just do it" attitude and ended up rocking it! Once I started on the fast sections it was actually really hard to slow down to 10:00, and my usual goal pace for long and easy runs is a 12:16 these days, so I feel like I did really well. I've had only good runs lately (knock on wood!), maybe I'm finally getting the hang of it. I still don't feel like a real runner though, maybe because all of the "real runner" blogs I read just completed a marathon or run 8:30/miles. I know that everyone has to start somewhere, but it just hasn't hit me that I'm one of those people you see out running after work. Maybe because I feel so slow. If someone passes me I just tell myself that I'm going for distance, not speed. I don't feel like a real runner yet though.

After burning over 600 calories in just over an hour I needed food! I had a Quaker chewy oatmeal bar that's been living in my desk for a few months before leaving work, but it got burned off quickly! I had a glass of G2 as soon as I walked in the door to start on rehydrating. About half an hour later I looked in the pantry, saw a certain blue box and felt that I must have macaroni and cheese for dinner, which quickly turned into macaroni and peas (leftover from Tuesday night). It was just what I was craving and sooooooo satisfying. Probably wouldn't be nearly as good on a random night, but tonight it was perfect.

After watching the dogs play for 20 minutes or so (and texting pet pictures back and forth with my mom) my hunger was still there, so I had some cake. I may or may not have finished this whole slice. I'll leave that to you to decide. But hey, there are pecans, and carrots, and raisins, its not all bad!

I'm still sitting in stinky (and cold!!) workout clothes so I'm going to go shower off and hit the hay. My body hurts and wants the relief of our fabulous mattress (best wedding gift, hands down). Goodnight lovelies!

Hey guys and gals, I'm afraid I'm going to be MIA for another day or so, I way underestimated the amount of reading I'd need to be doing this week and since I'm trying to stay sane, sleep is currently taking preferences over blogging.

Happy 2010! My New Year's Eve was completely off kilter. Lunch wasn't served until 4:00 which means that after hors d'oeuvres and dinner at 8:30 I actually made myself sick.

For lunch we met a bunch of Hubs' family and I ordered the soup and salad with chili as my soup. And it was a full bowl of greasy deliciousness and I unfortunately ate it all. I knew I should have slowed down but it was just so tasty…

We had a variety of hors d'oeuvres to choose from at our friends' house. Shrimp cocktail, artichoke dip, spinach dip, ranch dip. I had about two bites of them all, plus more artichoke dip. Dinner itself consisted of homemade lasagna and an arugula salad with prosciutto, figs and shaved parmesan with a raspberry jam and balsamic vinaigrette dressing. It was delish! I had about four glasses of wine over the course of the evening with a slice of my mom's raspberry filled shortbread and half a mini cannoli for dessert. And of course champagne at midnight!

This morning started with saltines and after returning things and buying other things at Target I had a very late lunch of leftover burrito ingredients in a whole wheat taco sized wrap: rice, beans, and cheese. Eh, not impressive.

I had to wait until about 4 to go run since I ate lunch so late. I completed my 5 mile tempo run with only about 4 breaks but ran it at more of a 10:10/mile pace instead of the assigned 10:45. I was pretty proud of myself.

We weren't inspired to really cook so we used one of these:

I actually ended up eating the whole thing because it had too many bell peppers for Hubs. Everything but the shrimps were good. Oh well.

I'm actually getting hungry again… I think I just replaced the calories I burned on my run and didn't eat more 'dinner calories'. I may have some cereal and almonds soon. Yum yum!

Christmas Eve started with another egg-spinach-mushroom-onion-goat cheese scramble and rolls.

After breakfast I soon got to work on Christmas presents. I made my mom wedding cookies:

Broke for lunch of a salad made by Hubs: iceberg lettuce, croutons, craisins, and all the veggies already included in breakfast.

My youngest brother got a chocolate chip cookie pie

I attempted to go out for the scheduled speedwork that afternoon, but took the first mile too fast and couldn't make it all the way through. I was pretty frustrated but what can you do.

The middle child got fudge:

And Hubs and I ended our night with Applebees and more Lord of the Rings. The other restaurant we had planned to go to was closing too early for us to make dinner so we went to Applebees for the third year in a row. I got the grilled shrimp-spinach salad without bacon and did take a picture but it came out too blurry.

Christmas morning I got up with the puppy and made my dad's banana bread. It took an hour to bake which was perfect for me to shower and get ready.

After the bread came out of the oven a Sarah Lee coffee cake went in. I've had this for Christmas breakfast as long as I can remember. I'm sure they're horrible for you but oh so tasty. Hubs and I definitely polished the whole thing off between the two of us.

Christmas dinner at my parents house was great. Roast beef (I had half that piece and gave the rest to Hubs), spinach gratin (which I loved), carrots, and mashed potatoes. And rolls and red wine of course.

Dessert was a mocha cheesecake with chocolate coffee drizzled on top. Exquisite. Hubs helped me eat this slice.

Can you tell I bought a tripod the other day? Boy what a difference it makes.

Christmas supper was with Hubs' dad, step mother and brother and a family that we've both known since we were babies, though haven't spent time together with at the same time since. We might have been playmates when we were two and not even know it! I didn't want to explain about the blog so I didn't take pictures, but I kept it healthy and stuck mostly with vegetables and fruit.

Sorry about the hold up, Hubs second computer is down for the count so I haven't had much quality time with my Macbaby. Not to mention the fact that we've either been busy with friends in the evenings or busy ourselves shopping or working our way through the extended Lord of the Rings movies. We're currently halfway through. Elijah Wood still bugs me (he's why I refused to see the movies in theaters until I had a chance to see an old friend at one) and Legolas's lines are terrible but its still pretty fun.

I don't even know where I left off and I think I have more puppy pictures on my camera than food pictures. We'll do this logically: food pics in this post, Christmas eve/day summary in a second, and puppy pictures in a third.

Since I don't know where we left off and I haven't been very faithfully photographing my food, we'll just go by what pictures I do have.

The same night I made stirfry we also made mulled wine, but I appear to have left that picture out. Served in our water pitcher and filtered as poured.

I made this veggie scramble a couple of times in the last few days. Some eggs, spinach, mushrooms, onions and rolls on the side

I also had this breakfast a couple of times: two egg microwaved scramble on toast and a clementine. I love ketchup.

And my little boy wanted some peas!

At Walmart we found some Bird's Eye dinners on sale. This is a shrimp, chicken and Mexican rice combination that you just toss in the microwave still in the bag. It was okay. Nothing I'd seek out again.

More wine, of course.

Kroger sushi! Brown rice California rolls

Skipping over Christmas eve and day brings us to Belgian waffles from this morning, made using Krusteaz (nice name, huh?) mix.

Lunch was Panera! I haven't been to Panera in years. We had Lipton raspberry iced tea and I got 1/2 a bowl of black bean soup and half a chipotle chicken sandwich. I saved the chips for later this afternoon after a tiny amount of shopping. I got new slippers for $5 at Old Navy.

Dinner was another tasty salad put together by the Hubs. The last of some iceberg lettuce, spinach, onion, mushrooms, goat cheese, craisins, croutons, and Ken's lite balsamic dressing.

Our entree was spaghetti with popcorn shrimp. Both good separately so not bad together. A lazy man's dinner I'd say.

We're going to see Avatar (in 3D) tonight so I may not actually finish those other two posts before we leave in 20 minutes or so.