Monday, Monday

Thanksgiving countdown: 2 days

Tonight we're having a Thanksgiving potluck with our church group, which should be a good time. We are bringing salad, drinks, and pumpkin bread, and there will be ham and all kinds of other goodness.

I was afraid this week was going to drag by, but it looks like I have quite a bit of work to do at work, so it makes the time go by quickly even though there aren't many people in the office. Still, I'm super excited about the holiday and our trip to Minneapolis.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on my slow long run post from Saturday. I feel like I need to clarify a few things, though.

1. I didn't feel fatigued on my run. I just ran really slow. If I had felt bad and ran slow I wouldn't have been too concerned, but because I felt good and ran really slow, I was wondering what was going on.

2. I think I overstated how difficult my workouts were. I do a FIRST-type workout schedule where I do 3 days of "hard" running, plus one easy run, plus two days of cross training. It's just that my cross training is spinning, which is a code word for intervals, but it's not really the same as running intervals, ya know? Also, I don't do as many intervals as most of you do. I might only do 2x 1mi or 4x800, so my workouts aren't really though from that standpoint, and my daily runs are usually around 5 or 6 miles with a long run of less than 10 miles- so again, not that tough. I want to work on building up endurance again, but I want to focus on speed first because I'm SO SLOW it takes me FOREVER to do a long run.

And maybe it was just a flukey thing. Again, thanks for the input. This is actually an easy week until my last race of the season on Thursday. I did spinning today, but it was with the easy instructor :).

Saturday in the park

I think it was the 21st of November??? Just doesn't quite have that ring to it. Anyway, no parks for me. I did drag myself out of bed at 5am (normal weekday time) to run so I could get to our high school service event at 9am.

The run was not so great. Actually my pacing was great. It was a progressive run where I did 4x15 minutes, each set progressively faster. And I did that part right. The only problem was that my pacing was an entire minute/mile slower than I would have liked it to be. When I reviewed my run at the end I was totally shocked how... well... bad it was. I didn't feel bad, but I'm afraid these cruddy Saturday runs are becoming a regular thing.

I'm not sure what the best thing to do is. Maybe I need to take Fridays completely off. My Monday-Thursday workouts are all interval-type workouts (MW on the spin bike) so maybe my body just has too much built up fatigue at that point. I do a super easy short run on Friday, but maybe even that is too much. I guess it couldn't hurt to try it for awhile. But you guys know how it is... it feels so good to get up and run in the morning. I'm open to other suggestions if anyone has any.

My other workout for today was coring apples for 3 straight hours. Well, not a complete 3 straight hours. I took a 20 minute break in there to chop apples before I went back to coring. This was for our service project today. A local neighborhood center has a huge pie sale every year at Thanksgiving to raise money for their programming, and the need slave labor to assemble and bake 1000 pies. Well, that was us today. Also, somehow coring apples seems to have aggravated my IT band. Explain that one to me...

Anyway, hope all of you are having a restful and/or productive Saturday. I admit to having done very little useful since I got home from apple time, but we are due for grocery shopping tonight. Tomorrow will be chore and errand time.

Fun Friday

Sorry I was lame about posting the last two days. It wasn't that I was even super busy or had absolutely nothing to say... I just didn't get my act together to post.

I did spinning Wednesday, 4mi easy today, and 5.5 mi with 2x1 mile hard yesterday. I don't know what the deal is with my pacing/where I'm running. I really felt like I was giving even effort- maybe even a harder effort on the first mile- but I finished the first on in 7:59 min and the second in 7:41 min. Don't get me wrong, I was super happy with the second mile, but what's up with the first one??? I warmed up, did drills, focused, and pushed myself hard all the way through to the end. I just don't know. I usually run pretty even splits when I race. Meh. Someday I need to suck it up and do an interval workout on the indoor track to see if the problem is with a) me or b) the ground. I'd like it if it were the ground, but if it's me, I need to figure something out so I don't "waste" my first interval running slow. A longer warm-up? Hmmmmm.....

Otherwise my only excitement was lucking into what I hope is a really cool Christmas gift for my parents. I actually put it in the mail yesterday because I was too excited to wait, and I wanted them to have it before the holidays. Can't say what it is because I know they occasionally read this.

This will be another somewhat busy weekend. We're having dinner with some friends this evening, and I have to go help bake pies at a neighborhood center with some of our church high school kids tomorrow morning. I doubt the FIU game will be televised out here so I don't have to worry about missing football.

I'm getting excited about Thanksgiving weekend. Hope you all have a great Friday.

They're baaaaaaack

The lady bug invasion has begun again. Actually it's been going on for the last few weeks, but fortunately it's not as bad as it was last year (so far). Last year they completely covered our windows and door, and you couldn't get inside without carrying 10 or so with you. This year they've mainly been sneaking in, and last night one decided to join us for dinner.



We tried to feed it some meatloaf, which it seemed interested in for a few minutes. I don't know if it was actually trying to eat it, or trying to lick the katsup off, or trying to live in it, or it has a 3 second memory and kept thinking it was discovering it for the first time.

Special note to say that yes, we do clean our apartment. It is not filthy and infested with insects. However, we live in a fairly old building, and we know that trying to prevent every insect from coming in is a losing battle. Plus, we wanted to see if it would eat meatloaf.

Running-wise, I did 5mi with 4 x 1/2 mile. My paces were all over the place- ranging from 8:30 min/mile to 7:23 min/mile. It's a little annoying because I can't really tell if the problem is uneven terrain or uneven effort or wind coming off the lake. I mean, during my fastest interval I had to make a u-turn and I almost got hit by a guy riding his bike on the pedestrian path. Makes no sense. I wish I had access to a track, but alas, the only one near me is inside, and I'm reserving that particular boredom for when it's below 0.

Surviving Spinning

Whew. We had another tough spinning workout this morning. Actually it was a repeat of the killer workout we had a few weeks ago. We got to pick if we wanted to do something new from the regular Monday instructor or an old workout from the regular Wednesday instructor who was covering today. We chose old. Big mistake. I recognized the first song and knew we were in for a world of tough. At least there was no race pace, but I think 45 seconds on, 15 seconds off is my new least favorite phrase to hear.

Yesterday wasn't super exciting. I feel like I spent the whole day at church between the actual service, a training I had to attend in the afternoon, and high school youth. At least I had a chance to start playing around with my Christmas ornaments this year. It's not my favorite ever, but I think they will be pretty easy to knock out. I can't tell you what they are because some people who read this are getting one (whether they like it or not), and I want it to be a surprise.

Mmmmmm, brownies

Quick post from my while brownies bake in the oven (mmmmmm). We're going to have pizza and play games at some friends' house this evening, and I felt like baking so we could bring something along. The Gator game is on in the background, but I don't get the impression it's going so well.

I did have a good run this morning. I did 9mi with 4x15 min at tempo pace. The tempo parts weren't as fast as I'd have liked them to be, but I felt strong the whole time, and the 9 miles went by really fast. I guess I'd rather have a strong but slow run than a fast but cruddy run (although strong and fast would be the best, obviously).

Good luck to Jess, who is running the San Antonio Rock N Roll Marathon tomorrow!

Fun Friday

I don't know about fun so far, but it is Friday. I did an easy 4mi + a mad dash for the bus this morning. It's starting to get chilly out there- I broke out my tights and heavier gloves for the first time today- but the weather is kind of freakishly mild. We're lows in the 30s, highs in the 40s and 50s through the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I'm not complaining, but my understanding is that is HIGHLY unusual. We definitely had some serious snow before last Thanksgiving.

Dinner last night was my fourth dish for my "Cook 4 things from each Cooking Light before I get the next issue" goal.

We made stewed pork and squash:



The only difference is that we cooked it in the crock pot rather than on the stove. It turned out pretty good and we have enough left over for another meal. Plus, I didn't use the entire squash for this dish so I'm going to try roasting the rest for dinner on Saturday.