2010 February | See Cat Run

Last long run!

It hasn't hit me yet that in 6 days I'll be running a half marathon. I'll be in Disney world. I'll be on spring break. I'll have met almost all of my favorite bloggers in person. Next weekend is going to be huge. And I don't want it to hit me yet, because I don't want to get nervous. Going back to not thinking about it now…

I am telling myself that I'm going to eat a bit cleaner this week in order to be in top form for the race and to finally kick the remnants of this cold to the curb. Hubs and I have gotten into a really bad habit of just running over to the east side of town after picking the other up from campus and grabbing dinner. Well he's decided to go vegetarian again so that eliminiates the possibility of fast food for dinner. Works for me just fine. Unfortunately he has my car today, so I haven't been able to go to the grocery store, but we have the ingredients for a shrimp and veggie stir-fry and I have the ingredients for chili, which I've been meaning to make for a good month now, so we'll make it through.

I've gotten to eat something slightly new the last two mornings for breakfast. When I visited my parents about three weeks ago my mom gave me a cup of steel cut oats to try. Since then I've either had brunch plans or haven't had a clean pot to my name so haven't succeeded in making them. Well this weekend we had no plans and I had clean pots, so cook they did.

I started out toasting them in butter for about two minutes, as the great Alton Brown recommends. I then poured four cups of boiling water over them and let them simmer for about half an hour (it ended up being a little over half an hour because I lost the simmer and had to wait to get the consistency right). About 10 minutes before they were supposed to be done I added a whole banana and stirred and stirred. I finished them with vanilla extract, brown sugar, and cinnamon. And then because I was a little intimidated I added some cinnamon Life cereal and peanut butter on top. (To be honest, I was having trouble keeping my hand out of the Life box that morning).

0227101012-00 (forgive the crappy phone photo, I was having a minor freakout that my camera wouldn't turn on. it's all better now)

So how are they? Good! I think I like the texture better than regular old fashioned oats. My mom makes a big batch in her crock pot for the week, but I'm not sure I'm willing to fill our dishwasher that often to do the same. We're bad enough at keeping the sink empty of dishes as it is. I might buy a canister of steel cut oats and save them for a weekend treat though.

So that was yesterday's photo but I had the exact same thing (just more) today. I have one portion left and hopefully I can get it to be a little less gelled when I heat it up tomorrow, because I didn't really like it as well today.

After breakfast settled my buddy Sarah picked me up for our weekly long run. We're both sick, she was aiming for 22 and I was aiming for 11. Well I ended up running out of pavement so I quit at 10.5 and don't feel too bad about it since I only had 10 on my training plan anyway. This run felt really good! Two great runs in a row, I hope I can keep this up for another week!

Mile 1: 11:36
mile 2: 11:17
mile 3: 11:14
mile 4: 11:41
mile 5: 10:55
mile 6: 11:14
mile 7: 10:36
mile 8: 10:11
mile 9: 9:57 (!!)
mile 10: 10:05 (!)
mile 10-10.5: 5:13

May I remind you that my goal pace for the race next weekend is a 10:44, so to be able to pull off that kind of pace now… well… I'm trying not to get my hopes up. I will have a whole 2.5 miles of unconquered territory to run. Around mile 7.5 we stopped by the nice house that puts out water for Sunday runners. They had mini Clif and Lara bars out today! I grabbed a Lara bar to save for later, but I think the water definitely helped, considering how our pace increased.

I came home, got in a good stretch (I was hurting a bit) and then made myself a green monster. It ended up being a double! I don't have much around, but I used a banana, a few handfuls of spinach, a scoop of whey protein powder, water, and ice. I think I used too much water, actually. It tasted very watered down. Oh well.

I took a shower, took a nap, finally put away my clean clothes from last weekend and now am washing more, and decided on an early dinner. I had a Gardenburger California burger (the last of my stash, I'm kind of sick of them anyway), a piece of whole wheat lavash bread that Hubs grabbed at Earthfare on Friday (x2), and my last boxed Trader Joes Indian side.

The Pav Bhaji was like thick, chunky, very spicy tomato soup. I loved it, except I had to constantly chase tiny bites with either bread or water (thus the two servings of bread). Cleared out my sinuses though!

We're still having a handful of issues with housebreaking (in that if we aren't downstairs to see him waiting by the door, he goes inside) and instead of doing my homework reading for Tuesday, I'm going to relax with my book and these goodies instead:

A glass of my favorite wine (Archer Farm's Vintner's blend wine cube) and a piece or two of dark chocolate. Let the detox begin tomorrow

Reason to celebrate

There's a new post on See cat Run! I'm sorry I've been so scattered… I tend to be a bit of a baby when I get sick and just hibernate the virus away. I do have two meals that I can share with you though

Tuesday was National Pancake Day so Hubs, a friend and I headed to IHOP right after work for our free pancakes (and some fruit). Later that evening, after a two mile run, I decided that some vegetables might be in order and tried one of my trader Joes finds:

I think it was good? Honestly, not the best time to try it. It burned my already sore throat and I couldn't even taste it thanks to the cold. I'm sure I would have liked it on a regular evening though.

Today I went back and forth, back and forth, all day as to whether to run or not. I woke up exhausted (though I've been sleeping remarkably well for having a cold, love Nyquil!) and was still coughing a bit, but I was feeling better by the end of the day. The plan was to try for 4 or 5 but feel perfectly okay if I needed to stop early. I was scheduled for a 7 mile tempo run today and a two mile easy run tomorrow so I was hoping to do 5 today and 4 tomorrow and still come out even. Well I got going and felt great! I swear Matt's tip of breathing in for two steps and out for three really, really, really helps once you get used to it (from his latest Running Shorts article, here)! I looked at my Garmin at one point as was cruising at an 8:53/mi!!! Needless to say I reined it in a bit. Well I let myself turn around at about three (my fingers were a bit numb and I missed the start/stop button on my Garmin a few times) and run just six. The thinking is… I did an extra mile last Sunday, if I do tomorrow's run and an extra (which I'm planning on) this Sunday, dropping one today (while I'm still recovering) will still come out even . I like. So here's what it looked like (though the splits are off since I missed "start" a few times":

Mile 1: 11:06
Mile 2: 10:35
Mile 3: 11:40
Mile 4: 9:17 (!)
Mile 5: 9:41 (!)
Mile 6: 10:00ish

My goal pace was supposed to be a 10:44/mi again. Not too shabby!

After a stretch in front of the space heater I put together about 8 oz water, half a scoop of protein powder, and about the same amount of Ovaltine. I don't really recommend it… It would have been much better with a milk substitute than water. I would have liked a green monster, but we're out of spinach. The ovaltine somehow seemed like a reasonable substitute.

Dinner proper was Near East couscous (herb chicken? flavor) with a few cashews and some Green Giant steam in the bag cheesy broccoli. Over all a much better dinner than the Kraft mac'n'cheese that was trying to tempt me. Lacking in whole grains, more veggies, and more protein, and it still had cheese, but it could definitely be worse. I'm probably going to have a grape fruit for dessert.

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While I'm here, I'd like to give a little more link-love to a gal named Sophia. Her post yesterday really struck a chord with me. She wrote about her parents attitude towards their recent wedding anniversary and how we really shouldn't need one or two days out of the year to show our loved ones that we love them. That day should be everyday. She's much more eloquent about it, but its a subject that has come up a lot between Hubs and I and something we both need to work on. I saved it on my google reader and plan on going back and reading it several times over the next few weeks to really emblazon it on my brain. Thanks chica!!!

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Off to cut that grapefruit. Goodnight y'all!

Sickly start

What better way to start out a rainy Monday on which you have your first cold in 10 months than with OIAWCWJ? (That's Oats In A White Chocolate Wonderful Jar for non healthy living bloggers)

Seriously, awesome. I started getting a sore throat on Friday and managed to fight everything else all weekend but yesterday I forced my body to choose between my first double digit run and staying healthy. Silly me for thinking I could have both. (My plan only called for 9 but I'm so behind on weekly totals that I figured I'd do 10 yesterday and 11 next week). I started out the run with tired legs, but they soon perked up. Sarah and I stopped to buy water (it was warm!) and use a bathroom around mile 6.5 and made another water stop (nice neighbors leave a water cooler and cups in their yard!) around 7.5. It got hard around 8.5 but I finished! Gives me great hope for the race (in 12 days!)

Mile 1: 11:45 min
mile 2: 11:32
mile 3: 11:25
mile 4: 11:36
mile 5: 11:37
mile 6: 11:28
mile 7: 11:17
mile 8: 11:20
mile 9: 10:46
mile 10: 10:35

We took two other walk breaks when I got side stitches. Those last two miles were definitely a 'get me the f- home' on my part.

So this morning I woke up congested which has just gotten worse as the day goes on. But I had the very last of my WCW and a nice, interesting, tasty salad for lunch. This was actually last night's dinner too, but the sauteed veggies (asparagus, shallot and red pepper) tasted so much better today. Served on mixed baby greens with goat cheese. So delicious.

Dinner ended up being ginger salad, miso soup, grilled veggies, shrimps and scallops and white rice. Yummy! Definitely worth every penny and I have two more meals worth of leftovers. (No pictures because we were with friends who I haven't actually talked about the blog with.

And now I"m going to continue my slothfulness (read: no homework), curl up on the couch with a good book, and wait for the nyquil to kick in. Goodnight!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you've had a lovely Valentine's/Singles Awareness Day, whichever the case may be.

My day started out with an egg sandwich:

I've had a lot of these this week. Just look at the color of those eggs! These aren't just any eggs, they're Eggland's Best eggs! Trust me, these are the eggs I wish I could afford to buy all the time. The color is so much better (must be that grass) and I'm all about keeping the laying hens comfy, beak and all. Anyway, most mornings this week these kept me full long past snack time but I ate one today at about 9:30 and I was hungry by mile 2 of my run (started at 11:45 or so). Very frustrating and discouraging.

It was a hard run, even with my friend Sarah. There were several walk breaks. I was really dragging and she was happy to walk, having hurt her knee on Thursday. But I ran a total of nine miles!

Mile 1: 11:48
mile 2: 11:42
mile 3: 11:50
mile 4: 11:20
mile 5: 11:57
mile 6: 11:59
mile 7: 11:44
mile 8: 11:26
mile 9: 11:20

I honestly didn't keep track of the walk breaks but there were five or so and I say they were a block or so each. In my defense, most of the run was on an uphill grade. We climbed a total of 800 ft on that route. Hills!! Bah. Can't get away from them in this town.

After stopping back by my apartment so she could borrow one of my dresses to wear to dinner tonight, she and I went to Your Pie for lunch! We invited Hubs, but he doesn't really like it. After running nine miles, I was perfectly happy to eat the whole 10 inch pizza. No photo because she doesn't know about the blog (I don't think) and I honestly didn't even take my phone with me. I had their whole wheat crust, marinara, mozzerella, baby 'bellas, red onion, and basil. I honestly doubt that I really even consumed that many more calories than what I burned. No guilt fast food, love it!

We then went our separate ways and I took a nap, then rolled around on the floor with my foam roller. My hips were definitely feeling that run.

After a shower and catching up with blogs (so weird to be totally caught up) Hubs and I went to Mama's Boy for dinner. Last year they had a special menu laid out for Valentine's day with muscles and rose flavored cupcakes. This year I was very disappointed to find that it wasn't the same. They had two special entrees but otherwise we were given their regular menu to order from.

We started out with a glass of merlot each, though they keep their wine bottles on top of their beverage cooler, so it was a little on the warm side. I did end up ordering one of the specials, almond crusted grouper with sweet potatoes and yu choy. I ended up subbing okra for the yu choy and was a little disappointed. Next to the seasoning on the fish and the potatoes, the okra was very bland. (sorry about the dark photos!)

Hubs originally ordered the meat loaf, but they were out, so he settled for the shrimp and grits and was very happy that he did so.

With no special desserts to choose from we opted for the molten chocolate cake (with vanilla ice cream). It wasn't exactly molten, but was nice and moist. Very tasty.

This is the first time I've been disappointed with Mama's Boyo and its a very mild disappointment at that. Both of our entrees were excellent but I was looking forward to more rose cupcakes or at least chocolate covered strawberries though.

Now its way past bed time. Goodnight!

Blogger self comparison

(Only the fourth time I've started typing this post… lets hope Firefox doesn't kill the page like Chrome did)

Alright guys and dolls, I'm going to skip the typical food post tonight in favor of something a little more serious. When Ange first posted about Blogs and the Social Comparison Trap last year (already a year? it can't be) I completely blew it off as something I never do. Well I realized tonight that I've been doing it for awhile.

I've been a little bummed about how slow I run compared to so many of the popular bloggers I follow. Running more than a mile at 9:00/mi? Not for a long time to come! But I knew that they must have started just as slow as I am so I managed to push it to the back of my mind.

And then in January so many of them ran the Disney marathon and have me wanting to run a full marathon next year, even though for so many years my mother and I would shake our heads about an old friend who is now a marathoner (many times over and running an ultra next weekend!).

Now, these blogs have given me a lot of inspiration. It is because of thesm that I began running and its become a pretty big part of my life. It was reading about the Disney Princess half marathon on Gina's blog that I was inspired to try for a half. In fact it sounded like so much fun that I couldn't wait for registration to open, worried that all of the slots would fill up and I wouldn't be able to do it (I'd clearly never registered for a race before).

For the record that race is three weeks and two days away.

I was so psyched last weekend, after an easy training week, to get back on track with longer runs, knowing I'm reaching the climax of my training. Looking forward to running for an hour and a half with someone who probably knows me best, every weekend.

And then yesterday, before my seven mile tempo run my back started hurting and I just couldn't twist quite right to get it to pop and settle back to being pain free. So sometime over the course of the morning the muscles around that spot tightened up and knotted up, and before I knew it I was walking back from class, not quite able to keep a grimace from my face because of the pain at every jarring step. I still held out hope, knowing that there was snow in today's forecast so I couldn't put it off a day. But when there was still some pain when I tried running a few steps with Ollie I decided to play it safe. I figured that on a run that long my muscles were bound to tense up even farther either out of stress or an attempt to protect the injury. So I spent the evening with a tennis ball between my back and the back of my chair and with a heating pad. There's seven miles gone from the week.

Today it did indeed snow. It's a friggin' winter wonderland out there. Snow that Georgia usually only sees once every ten years or so. They were calling for up to four inches and I think we're about there at this point. I contemplated running when I got home, and probably could have, but my mom mentioned that the pavements were starting to get slick over in Atlanta so I chickened out. It was only two miles to miss, but I haven't actually completed my weekly mileage in quite awhile. It's rained or I've been sleeping poorly. One reason or another I skipped out on a lot of my two milers.

So I'm down a total of nine miles this week. Not a big deal in the long run, I'll still be able to run the race, but it may be even slower than originally planned. Or I may have to take walk breaks. While either of those would be frustrating on their own, knowing that I'd have to come back here and report back that I had to take walk breaks would somehow feel like failure and having to broadcast that failure for the whole world to read. I am beyond frustrated at this point.

I'm going to have to sit down and tweak my training plan a bit, and at this point I don't know what this is going to do to the rest of my weekly totals. I was supposed to run 20 miles this week (another disappointment, missing that nice round number) and you can read anywhere that increasing by more than 10% a week increases your risk for injury. So I probably shouldn't jump into next week's 21 after last week's 12 (a built in easy week) and the previous week's 16 (I missed my final 2). I guess I can just keep skipping my Friday two milers and cut down my Thursday runs a little.

But getting this close to the big day I am really, really disappointed in myself for not following the plan as close as I should have. For setting myself up to not be able to run the best race I could have. For potentially setting myself up for failure. My father's an architect. I inherited his perfectionist tendencies. And his tendency towards procrastination.

I know that running 13 miles in itself is impressive. And I know that I'm already doing the things that used to awe me about the running bloggers I read. I'm still having to convince myself that I am officially a runner. I was never a jock. Never an athlete. I always used to say that I got the interest in learning, my middle brother got the artistic genes, and my youngest brother got the athletic genes. But I am a runner. I've run for an hour and a half, for fuck's sake, and didn't even notice the time passing (good company will do that). It just hasn't sunk in that it was really me doing it. That I am doing it. That this is me. I'm one of those running bloggers. Maybe once I have the finisher's medal on my wall it will finally hit me. Maybe it never will.

In any case, tonight it really hit how closely I've been comparing myself to these other bloggers. The thought even crossed my mind that I don't want to try to meet anyone while in Orlando because they're so much *better* than I am. I can't measure up. I'm too lame. I think I've kind of built them up as almost celebrities in my mind. I mean hundreds of people comment on a single post, they get thousands of page views a day. They've made it big time. And I'm fighting against the feeling that I can't live up and its a disappointment to myself.

So that's where I am tonight (the fact that I ate a ton of sweets today isn't really helping) and maybe why I haven't been posting as much as I should lately (homework being a very convenient excuse). But so that this post isn't completely depressing here are some puppy pics, just for you guys (okay, and everyone following me on buzz and everyone I'm friends with on facebook, but you know…):

Surprise snuggles! I turned around a found them spooning. So cute!

Ollie's first snow:

Too few hours in the day

I know I've said this fairly recently but where do my days go?!? After work I had to take pupsters to the vet for his third round of shots and then head out for a quick run. After doing the dishes, printing out our tax forms (finito!) and my bio article, plus eating dinner, getting a file format converted, I'm finally sitting down to blog/homework and its already a quarter till bedtime. Guess I'll be up late-ish again.

Breakfast was a new experiment. I picked up some hot multi grain cereal at Trader Joes on Saturday and decided I'd test it out today.

This picture washes it out, but it looks like more colorful oatmeal (and cooks the same)!

I should have taken a picture before I added the cinnamon because it's definitely a prettier cereal than oatmeal is, much more depth to the browns. But with the amount of cinnamon I add it looks significantly darker after mixing. Oh well! Here's breakfast with a heaping scoop of WCW:

I bought some more nuts at the store last week so I've been eating a mix of raw almonds, pecans, and walnuts for my work snacks. More nutrients for me! I usually chase them with some crackers or cereal, but I didn't take a picture of that.

Today while pondering my lunch options, knowing I had tofu and rice to take, I realized that I would be eating 100% mono-color carbs today if I didn't change something right then. So I packed a small salad, just spinach and baby carrots. Eaten with Newman's Own cranberry walnut vinaigrette which is a bit too vinegary for me, but I'm going to finish it before starting a new bottle.

Here's the tofu and brown rice. I promise it tasted better than it looks, though I did forget to flip the tofu while cooking it so some pieces were pretty tough.

I seriously considered not going for my run because it was getting late and pretty misty out, but I was only scheduled for two miles, which is nothing compared to 8. And I'm less than a month away from my half marathon so I figured I should probably keep my weekly mileage up. I know what exactly one mile from my neighborhood is so I did a quick out and back and left the electronics behind. Since I walk to the main road before I start running (it makes a good warm up/cool down) I don't actually know how long it took, but I was running faster than usual so I'd bet it was less than 22 minutes.

I forgot to pull my hair back until I was walking away from my apartment so I ran with it down, in the mist (what I think weather.com usually calls fog). As you can tell I was rather nonplussed with the results (of course I'm already not so pleased with the cut I got Friday but that's a different issue):

I was under the impression Hubs was going to be making fried rice for dinner but when he got home from the store he said he'll make it tomorrow. Instead we had another DiGiorno frozen pizza. Yummy! I really do like these things, we bought several of the spinach mushroom pizzas on sale a few weeks ago and are almost done with them. And yes, we always split them down the middle and polish them off in one night. What can I say? its a treat.

Alright, I have goals for homework completion and only 45 minutes to finish them!!! I'm off!

The Secret Life of…

Well I promise I'm not trying to be secretive, I just seriously need to work on my time management skills. I promise to make this blog a bigger priority in the next few weeks, starting tonight!

Hello to everyone who's come over from Bender's blog! I'm pretty psyched to finally have my first guest post up. I hope you stick around!

Since I've sort of assumed I wouldn't have time to post I haven't been taking many pictures, but that just means I don't have to pick to closely to find highlights!

While I've been gone I had my first really good OIAJ (oats in a jar)!

It was my typical mix of oats (either 1/3 or 1/2 cup), water (twice the amount of oats), half a banana, tons of cinnamon, and a drip of vanilla extract.

Hubs also made me a blog worthy dinner recently: coconut tilapia with mango salsa

He followed the recipe but used coconut oil instead of canola and we skipped the apricot dipping sauce (to save money) and used some mango salsa that we already had (LOVE this Newman's Own!)

I also made my first acorn squash with maple syrup, brown sugar, and butter. It was okay. Not my fave but not bad either. Not something I'll look for any time really soon.

I also have a new favorite peanut butter:

This stuff is seriously magical. I can't wait to try PB&Co's Dark Chocolate Dreams. Believe me when I say that this has been a part of every breakfast for the past week and a half.

Tonight while my tofu was cooking Hubs made himself a Bird's Eye Voila skillet meal that smelled so good I had to taste it.

This is their garlic shrimp flavor and oh boy… the seasonings are great and it tastes like its been drenched in butter. I really don't want to examine the ingredients to find out what exactly is in it because I ended up skipping the tofu (lunch!) and having the other half of the bag of this. Yum! So my brown rice and tofu ended up being portioned out to tupperware in the fridge. It tastes better after it has time to marinate for a bit anyway

Alright, sorry to be brief but photosynthesis and laundry call, as does bed, but I need to get at least some work done on the first to before I can answer that last one. I promise to try to take pictures of all my food tomorrow and at the very least blog about dinner

See Cat Run

Adventures in running and budget eating