Home again!

There’s nothing like the feeling of coming home after being away for awhile…especially when you were away by yourself.

Yesterday wasn’t particularly thrilling.  More meetings.  But I did get to spend a little time on the beach afterwards…in the process of which I think I ruined my camera.  I had a water bottle in my beach bag and it leaked and water got on the screen.  I’m letting it dry out and hoping for the best.  So…say hello to iPhone pictures.  They’re actually not bad!

Have I mentioned that aside from running and blogging and following my animals around with a camera, I love to read?  I polished off three books on this trip.  I finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (love this trilogy), Let the Great World Spin (I don’t know why, but I never got into this one), and Sarah’s Key (liked it).

 

 

I started this morning off with a strawberry banana Vivanno smoothie from Starbucks.  I slept a little later than usual (8:30 or so) and knew I’d have to eat lunch before my flight, which left at 12:20, so I wanted something light and refreshing.  I love these!  (The chocolate flavor is kind of ass-tasting, though.)

Anyway.  Shuttle to the airport, then bopped around the Fort Lauderdale airport looking for lunch.  I have to commend them—their healthy options are much better than those at the Kansas City airport! 

Hummus and wheat pitas, a fruit cup, and iced coffee. 

Question: does anyone REALLY like honeydew melon?  I feel like it is just kind of a generic filler for fruit cups, but it has absolutely no flavor and nobody I know LOVES honeydew.  I skipped it.  It just tastes like saliva to me and is a waste of chewing effort.

I also only ate maybe 1/4 of the hummus cup, which was massive.  It was good though!  Very peppery.  My two cravings after being away from home were hummus and peanut butter. 

I also picked up a Special K bar for the plane ride.  Gross ingredient list, but easily portable, good macros, and it was actually pretty tasty.

It kind of scares me that this was billed as a “meal bar” though.  It only had 180 calories!  That is NOT a meal.  Unless you are a toddler.  And then, well, I know fuckall about children, so, maybe even they eat more than that.  Who knows.

I arrived at KCI a few hours later to a surprise visitor!

Tim said Milhouse missed me and wanted to come.  

I think he was happy to see me.

The afternoon was spent lazily unpacking.  Poor Tim had a migraine and was in bed, but happily he’s feeling better now.  We grilled steaks, and I made a fruit salad and Alton Brown’s Stovetop Macaroni and Cheese for dinner.  (The mac and cheese was good, but WAY rich, even after halving the butter and cheese.  We also thought it was a little salty!)

In other news…this week officially marks the start of marathon training!  I have a kick off meeting with Team in Training on Saturday, and my official marathon training schedule (which will be on my new blog, which I’ll announce soon I PROMISE) starts tomorrow.

In other other news, please send good vibes in the direction of my ovaries tomorrow morning.  I have a follow-up ultrasound after my gynecologist discovered what she thinks are cysts at my annual last month.  Hopefully it’s nothing!

Tomorrow I will also begin the official name change process!  Good times.

What is your stance on honeydew and other melons?  Does anyone actually LOVE it?

Need for speed

Hummus craving?  Satisfied.

Love it.  Although garlicky hummus breath is an issue.

I also had my usual spinach/balsamic combo, some cantaloupe (although it was hard and flavorless and I’m probably just going to dump the rest), and yogurt with granola.

Work today was CRAZY.  I wasn’t feeling the gym.  But I knew I should.

I decided that not feeling like going + blistering from the orthotics meant that I should keep today’s workout short.  I decided to run two miles.  After a mile, I decided to run much faster than I usually do and cranked the treadmill up to an 8:30 pace.  And…I felt fine.  It was hard, but not un-maintainably so.  In fact, I sped up and finished at a 7:50 pace!  All in all, I ran my second mile in 8:22, a new personal record for me.

While I was running so fast, (aside from biting my tongue REALLY HARD OW) I was thinking about fear.  I think I stick with “comfortable” numbers on the treadmill because I’m afraid of failing.  I know I can run a 9:50 mile, and I’ll do it well.  An 8:00 mile?  Scary.  I don’t know if I can do that.  I think my asthma is a factor here—I’m afraid that if I push hard, something bad will happen (although, realistically, I know my limits and would stop before that happened.)

I think the fact that I’m punching in a specific speed on a treadmill is holding me back.  Unfortunately, treadmill running is my best option for running most of the time.  I wonder how fast I’d be if I just found a flat surface and ran, you know?  So, from here on out…I’m going to run faster.  As Kath once wrote, “To run faster, you have to RUN FASTER.”  (Or something like that.) 

Even though I ran fast, and for less time than yesterday, my feet still blistered.  I’m beginning to accept that blistering just might be my normal (though I’m still going to try a wider shoe and see what happens).  Eff. 

In other news, we had our first kitchen fire today.

Tim put it out quickly.  (He set a paper towel on a hot burner.) But our house is smelling a little smoky.  Oops.

Milhouse ran and hid.

Buckley didn’t move.

It’s comforting to know our animals would save us in a disaster.

Two more work days until the honeymoon!  And two questions:

1. How do you conquer your fears?

2.  Runners: how do you figure out your comfortable pace and stick with it?

Hummus on the brain

Happy Monday!  These are iPhone photos—I forgot my camera, sorry.  But, I have to say, the quality has VASTLY improved over my old phone.

Lunch.  Unpictured spinach, canteloupe/pineapple, yogurt:

 

And some homemade wheat bread with a little homemade PB:

Since the wedding…I confess, I’ve been lacking in the exercise motivation department.  I truly have been busy trying to get our lives back in order, but I decided today I needed to make a triumphant return to the gym.  I KNOW I like working out once I’m there, but getting there is half the battle—especially after work.

So I employed a little external motivation.  I wore two pieces of meaningful workout gear.

Silly, maybe, but sometimes you literally need the reason you’re hauling your butt to the gym plastered across your forehead (and boobs).

In other news, I am pretty sure Bondi Bands are the best thing ever.  Mine held my new short hair back perfectly for my entire workout, and it wasn’t ugly!

The new ‘do doesn’t cover my neck at all, so no need for any kind of pony/pigtail.  Reason #43253 why I love this haircut.

Anyway.  I went to the gym and decided I wanted to do three miles of run/walk intervals.  (Yes, I can still run three miles.  I wanted to walk in an attempt to break my custom orthotics in gently.)  I did a 5 minutes-5 minutes walk-run split and finished in about 35 minutes.

BUT GUESS WHAT.  My feet are blistering again.  In the arches.  Yup.  Custom orthotics?  Not impressed.  I am going to go to the running store and get a new pair of WIDE running shoes and hope for the best—the only shoes I didn’t blister in were wides (unfortunately they also gave me horrible shin splints because they were a stability shoe).  I am going to buy WIDE, NEUTRAL shoes, preferably New Balances because of the big toe box, and cross my fingers.

The good news is that I had no ankle, shin, hip, or knee pain, so at least the orthotics are keeping things properly aligned.

In other news, I have had hummus on the brain.  I had to make a special trip to Target after work today.

Holy delicious.   I now want to bathe in hummus.  And black beans. 

Another rave?  The Lucy shorts I bought this weekend are fabulous.  Comfy, don’t ride, a big-thighed-girl’s dream.   Well worth the price thus far!

Anyway, I’m off.  Have a fabulous night!