Thursday, February 25, 2010

Snow!

We are getting a lot of snow today so unfortunately I wasn't able to run outside, and I didn't work out at all actually! How odd. I had to work a little late and then I ran over to the mall to find some things for my trip.

I ended up getting some black yoga pants from Aerie to wear on the plane, a couple dressy tops from Express and a couple pairs of pants from The Loft. It was a little more than I would have liked to spend but most pieces were on pretty big sales and I had a coupon for Express.


Last night we went to dining week here:

http://www.lemongrasscny.com/


And, no I didn't actually order this although it looks delicious. I just wanted to give you an idea of what a good job they do with presentations there. There were a lot of interesting dishes I wanted to try, but I stuck with a very safe choice off of the specials menu, the Green Curry chicken. It was very good and quite spicy.
Tonight I got home late and made a quick egg salad with a Thomas' mixed berry english muffin. I'm obsessed with them!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

speed workout

Last speed workout before next Thursday's race (leaving Saturday!)...



1x800m int
6x400m int with 400m recovery in between fast intervals.
about a mile warmup and cool down so between 5 and 5.5 total.
I forgot my watch but from one of the other girls I think most the 400m were between 1:28 and1:32ish? I know there was a 1:29 and a 1:28 I was happy about! Not sure about the 800m...



Had a bit of a side cramp warming up again. Odd. I thought it might be from G2 (Jeter Juice as I refer to it) so I ate a clif bar and 1/2 of one of these pre-run:


I had the tropical punch flavor which I like because it tastes good. Yeah, so I'm bad about the artificially sweetened beverages. I'm kind of a diet soda junkie too.

Made a quick spinach salad with a hard boiled egg, a couple strawberries, feta and balsamic and had a berry english muffin with it when I got home.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Monday Monday

Workout today: A little bit of bowflexing (10 mins mostly chest/arms) followed by 40 mins bike and then some abs and planks on the floor.

Last night's dinner:

Roasted Garlic Cous Cous with Mushrooms, Spinach and Feta

Pan Seared Sea Bass with Kalamata Olive Tapenade




It came out pretty good. Not the best looker (the tapenade tastes a ton better than it looks!) It seems like Sunday's are the only time I have to make something cool for dinner. I need some quick week night ideas!! We try and eat pretty healthy during the week and we both have pretty simple tastes as far as preparation goes. I'm not really one for a lot of rich sauces or antyhing. I really like fresh food simply prepared so this was a complex meal for me.

Anyway, I can't take a focused picture to save my life so I don't have one of it plated.
Tonight we just baked some lightly marinated chicken breasts, steamed asparagus and leftover cous cous...which is good hot or cold!!

Tomorrow will be a long day with my last speed workout before the big race (next Thursday -March 4th)!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

weekend...minus the work part.

Had to go into work yesterday but it went well so not a bad weekend.
This is the last weekend before I leave for Africa!!

I really wasn't feeling the whole workout thing yesterday and knew I needed to run so I dragged myself to the park. It was windy so I told myself I could turn around after a mile as long as I tried to run fast. I did mile 1 in 7:36 (into the wind) and mile 2 in 7:18. So 7:54 overall. I have run 2 miles faster than that so I'm hoping running into the wind slowed me down.

Today I ran and didn't take my watch but I mapped it out using
www.mapmyrun.com and It said 4.58 miles. This was an awesome run. I didn't bring my watch so wasn't worried about time and it just felt really good. Maybe the last 1/4 mle was tough because I was pushing it but overall it felt awesome. Based on ipod timing (Where I add up the lengths of all the songs that played while I was running) it was 36:54. Which I think is just over an 8 min/mile pace? I'm mostly happy about how good it felt though. I don't know if its just that its getting towards the end of winter and I'm tired of running in the cold weather or what but I've been sort of unmotivated.

Going to make a fun dinner tonight so I'll try and post a pic.

Friday, February 19, 2010

sleepy

So tired today. Spent the night visiting with my sisters and only got 2.5-3 hours of sleep oh well.

I mentioned in my first post I used to be a skater. I have to say how disappointed I am with the results of the Olympics last night. I'm a fan of Evan Lysacek, I like his skating and think he has great technique (minus the step up into his axel) and he looks great out there...long clean lines. However, I don't think he won the olympics. Not even close. And don't even get me started on Johnny Weird ending up 6th! Jeremy Abbott was my favorite on the US men's team but he lost it by messing up in the short. I think Evgeny Plushenko's difficulty put him way above everyone else. What happened to all the quads? Kurt Browning was landing clean quads in competition over 20 years ago!! Evan didn't even do a triple axel-triple toe combination. I think skating is a sport because of the tricks, jumps and spins, but mostly the jumps. When they changed the scoring system they lost that. I guess some people are happy with it this way and this is what they want skating to be but I am vehemently oppose it! I don't think its a sport anymore when you lose the emphasis on the difficulty. You make it a dance. Which is fine and entertaining but it shouldn't be called a sport and it shouldn't be an olympic event if that is the case. With enough practice anyone could do the footwork and transition moves but not everyone is capable of doing quads. When you look at what Shaun White does and the advancements in that sport (snow boarding) even though its relatively new it's so innovative and exciting, how can you compare that with this watered down skating we are seeing? And White goes for the hardest tricks even though he doesn't need to because he's a true competitor and he wants to set a standard for the future not just settle for a gold medal. I'm not sure who would want to keep watching skating if this is the way it is headed in the future. I'm a skater myself and am not interested in watching anymore.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Finally!

Ugh, long day at work but good overall.
I ate decent, and fit in a workout.
I walked at lunchtime (We have long hallways at lunch) and then when I got home I did 30 minutes on the bike trainer followed by 10 minutes of lifting and another 5 or so of ab work. It hurt.

Then...we went here:
http://www.bcrestaurant.com/dinner.html

It is dining week downtown so they had 3 courses for $25.
We had a bottle of wine, Ravenswood Cab (meh, drinkable but not exceptional)
and I had ceasar salad with calamari and rainbow trout with beet/walnut/couscous.
Also had bittersweet chocolate torte but most of mine is in the fridge now (I was full).
Long day tomorrow so I'm headed to bed soon. Night!!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Speedwork...

So tired. Since when did my speedwork night become my long run night too? haha. I really need to pick it up again with the longer runs after this 3.5 race I have coming up.

Okay, we did about 1 mile warmup and 1 mile cool down with
800m = 3:08
600m = 2:21
400m = 1:31
400m = 1:33
600m = 2:25
800m = 3:26 (Totally died on this last one, the girl I was running with smoked me...luckily I was too tired to be embarassed.) I think we did 600 recovery between the 8s and 6s and 400 recovery between the 4s and 6s. So, I'm guessing a little over 5 or 5.5 miles altogether?

Either way, glad I went. Not the best day of eating but I did a little better. Nothing noteworthy, although I am having a couple of bites of dark chocolate with dried raspberries in it from the bar I got for Valentine's day and a small glass of zinfandel right now.

Monday, February 15, 2010

teaser

So...I know I'm sort of not keeping up with the times here, but I haven't exactly got around to trying Yoga yet. I want to, I do...and I think I'd like it okay it's just that I don't know any of the poses so I can't do podcasts or anything and ideally I'd like to go to an actual class to get started. And, going to a class means fitting it in my schedule which I'm not ready to commit to yet. So, in lieu of Yoga, I kick it old school with my Winsor Pilates maximum burn dvd.





I haven't done this in a while (and by a while I mean like a year) but I wanted a rest day from cardio and something less strenuous since I need to do a speed workout tomorrow and wanted fresh legs. Now that I've done the pilates and remember how much it hurts I think I made a bad decision but oh well. The running time is abotu 50 minutes long. But, I'll be honest, it's a little slow moving for me. I mean not the exercises themselves but there's still some downtime in the transistions. Not bad though. And it hurts. If I did this more regularly I might be better at it but there are still a couple moves I really struggle with. I do the ab series pretty regularly so I have gotten a lot better at the "teaser" moves but I had sort of forgotten about the whole elephant walk push up thing near the end. Anyway, it's a decent strength workout and its definitely beneficial in terms of flexibility, etc. My abs and muscles always feel it, making it probably a bad choice to do tonight but a good choice overall.
Today was pretty uneventful honestly.
Dinner was salmon, asparagus and couscous but the rest of the day wasn't so great food wise. Meaning I didn't make the best choices. So I'll work on that tomorrow!
Night all!

Some cheese with that wine?


My sister and her boyfriend came up to visit this weekend!

First...I had to get her up early...

Then we went winetasting!!


Ravines (probably my favorite of the day)





Fox Run

We started at the top west of Seneca Lake at Fox Run and then went to Rooster Hill (another favorite!), McGregor and Ravines. We got off to a late start but still tasted some quality wines! I think we came home with about half a case. The finger lakes are known for their Rieslings which I love. I'm not a fan of Oaky whites or overly sweet wines and the finger lakes Rieslings are a much dryer style than the traditional German ones which are much more honeyed. The ones produced her are dry and crisp!!
It was a fun day capped off with a late...late...late dinner. Someone forgot it was Valentine's day weekend and places would be packed.
Sunday, started the day out bright and early (well 7:30 is very early for a Sunday after drinking wine all day) with a 4 mile run. I didn't time it, the beginning was sluggish but the end was much faster. Met friends for breakfast and then we had to go to this Daytona 500 party. I'm not a NASCAR person. I played with the kids all day. Ate way too much though and have to do damage control the rest of the week. boo. Celebrated Valentine's again when we got home after some Olympic viewing ;) GO USA!! I love the Olympics!!



Friday, February 12, 2010

We don't buy no drinks at the bar...

we pop Champagne 'cause we got that dough...

Hello lovely peeps.

My blog has no pictures yet because I need a new memory card for the camera. It is currently filled with video and it seems much easier to get a replacement then delete and upload everything off the old one. So, apologies but hey no ones reading this yet anyway right? So you can admire my lovely header picture for now. I took it, isn't it great? haha j/k but I do love it.

So I can't write much now. Currently waiting for my sister and her boyfriend to arrive who are visiting us for the weekend!! So excited!! Just had some chili G made for me and sipping some champagne for a pre-Valentine's day celebration while we have some alone time. Sooo good. He also hand-dipped us some strawberries for dessert. Really sweet.

Anyhoo, after I got home from work and teaching skating I did my bike trainer for 40 minutes plus a few minutes warm-up and then did some pilates ab work on the floor for maybe 10 more minutes.

I was going to skate instead of biking tonight but I didn't have enough time to change into skating appropriate clothes. I can teach in jeans but it's difficult to actually skate in them. haha.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Got my greyhound on.

Soooo...usually I'm pretty good at kicking my own ass during workouts and I actually really like running on my own, but every once in a while you really want to feel like you got hit by a bus and for those times its good to train with other people. Particularly other people that are way faster runners than you. Well, faster at least.

I got to the track tonight and couldn't run a lap without stopping. Disaster. I was having weird side stitch issues on my left side. I tried this for like 3 laps and had to walk halfway through each one. Then I stretched some, walked around, tried to breathe deeper...I think its leftover weirdness from my stomach bug last week. Anyway, luckily I was able to finish warming up the last few laps with the other 2 girls I ran with and recover in time to do a nice interval workout:

1x800m - 3:11
1x600m - 2:21
4x400m - 1:33, 1:35, 1:33, 1:33

I'm really not sure how long our recoveries were, 400 for the quarters but maybe 600 for the other distances...I don't really pay attention. Probably ran between 4.5 and 5 miles overall. I started out all gung ho and disappointed we weren't doing all half intervals and by the end I'm the one that gets my ass kicked. haha, it's so obvious I need to work on endurance and negative splits!!

Anyhoo, I'm showered just had a slice of deli turkey, 4 carrots and a couple olives for a post run snack. Random right? Someone needs to go food shopping. (It's me).

Good Morning!

I have a busy day ahead of me today! Work til 6, and then I'm going to try and make a meeting and then I have to do a speed workout from 7:30-8:30 tonight. Why am I waiting until so late to run you may ask? It's because it snows here...a lot! I still brave the elements and run outside most of the time (I don't have a gym membership right now) but it makes it difficult to do interval work on slippery roads. So once a week we can use the university track to run on so I'm headed there to do them indoors. Probably some combo of 400, 600 and 800s with a mile warmup and some recovery time in there. I'll post what I do later or tomorrow.

Last night I was late getting home from work and had plans to watch the SU game so I didn't get my bike trainer workout in first. Which meant I had to come home and do it at 9:30pm! Not the best planning. I just took it easy and did 1/2 an hour and then some pilates and strength work on the floor for about 10 minutes. I was still pretty sore from earlier in the week.

Today I have to go to a retirement luncheon and pizza and wings are on the menu. They're not in my plan to eat right now so hopefully I can successfully navigate the situation. Maybe there will be cake though??? hmmm.

Have a great day!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

First Post

Okay, okay I guess I'm sort of late hopping on the blog-wagon but I figured what the heck? I spend a reasonable amount of time online anyway, so here goes...my first entry.

I guess I haven't really decided the direction I want this little blog to go in yet or how dedicated I'm going to be to updating but I'll try and be pretty consistent with keeping it up to date.

I guess to get you started here is some info on me.

I'm 29 yrs old, female and I live in Central New York with my fiance (got engaged this past Christmas eve) after years and years and oh yeah did I mention years of dating. Seriously, almost 8 of them. :)

I like to run. A lot. And I like to talk about running a lot. The good news is I like to listen to other people talk about running too so feel free to share your stats/accomplishments with me. I find it really motivating and interesting to see how different people approach their workouts. I'm still sort of new to running and until about 5 years ago I hadn't run a mile. But now I have run a marathon (Philly in 2008) and am contemplating another one this fall.

I work as a software engineer. A lot of sitting at my job.

I teach figure skating on the side. Right now just group classes more basic skills but I'd love to get into it more if I have time. I skated myself through college.

I'd love to do a triathalon this year! Ideally a half-ironman!

I like to cook and am sort of a foodie so I'll be focusing on that a bit on here as well.

I love wine and live near the Finger Lakes Region of New York State so I am fortunate enough to get to go wine tasting quite frequently.

I love music, but am not really into movies or tv. But I LOVE sports. In particular The Yankees and College Basketball (Syracuse!). I try and read but honestly don't have too much time for that.