One Garden Myth Busted

I didn't think I was going to have time for an update today, but I'm going to try for a quick one.

Fitness
Running has been going pretty well lately. I've been pretty happy with my 5x per week: 4miles x 4 days and 6 miles x 1 day, but I'm hoping to maybe increase things a little bit. My butt, and hip issues have been practically nonexistent lately, which makes me very happy. I'm also starting a new strength training plan that will carry me through the next month. Hurray for variety!

Food

Check this out!!!!



It's a salad with the romaine lettuce I grew in my garden! It was tasty, but honestly, I thought it tasted just like lettuce from the store. I know you're supposed to say how much more delicious food tastes when you grow it yourself, but it was just regular. But it was cool to have the satisfaction of eating something I'd grown myself. My love-hate with the garden swung a little more toward the love side after that.

I also ate some of our green onions on top of my stir fry.



Fun
And while I was on a green-things jag, I cut some of these guys from a planter in our apartment complex. Yep. I'm that classy.



Hope everyone had a lovely back to work Monday.

Happy Birthday Day

First off, I want to wish a Happy Birthday to two of my favorite people in the world: my husband, D, and my dad. I hope you both have a wonderful day.

D started off his morning with some serious sugar.



I got up early and went to the donut shop to get a special surprise birthday breakfast for us. I bought two sprinkle donuts, a cherry one and a blueberry one. In typical Midwestern style, the woman working threw in an extra one with sprinkles "just because". We'd heard this place was great, and it certainly lived up to its reputation. Mmmmmm donuts.

I got in a recovery 4 miles before I went to the store. I'm pretty tired so I think I'm going to take an easy evening tonight rather than making up for my missed upper body workout yesterday. It's just so hot in the gym with no AC. Tomorrow is a no run day, and I think I'm just going to go to the gym and lift in the morning rather than do elliptical in the morning and weights in the afternoon.

First Garden Harvest

Hi everyone,

It's hot here. It "feels like" 96, which, even by the standards of places that are actually hot is hot. Which means the gym is going to be a real treat this afternoon because it's not air conditioned. There are fans and they keep the windows open, but it still gets pretty warm and muggy. I call it Bikram weight lifting. And the floor... well... try not to slip.

Fitness
I had a great run today after my day off yesterday. It wasn't super speedy; it just felt really good. And my piriformis pain seems to slowly be going away.

Food
We have our first harvest from the garden!!! Green onions.



I spent a long, hot, sweaty time weeding yesterday so these bad boys better be worth it. There's way more than we'll ever use so I'm going to try to get some of our church group members to take some. The rest will go to work with me tomorrow.

Fun
I won a contest on a blog. I enter a lot of contests on blogs because, really, what the heck, right? Some of the stuff I'm not even remotely interested in. But I won a copy of a book on Cranky Fitness that I'd probably actually pick up at the bookstore and read. I don't really believe in buying books unless you know you'll want to use them for reference, but I have no problems with being gifted with a free one. Thanks, Cranky Fitness.

All Around the Garden

Woohoo it's Friday! No definite plans so far, but working on the garden and a birthday dinner for D are both on the agenda.

I also wanted to give a public congratulations to my brother who just found out he passed his Florida Engineer exam yesterday. This is a big, long, scary exam, and passing it means 1) He never has to take it again and 2) He gets bumped up a pay-grade. So congratulations, J, you are well on your way to endless drudgery... I mean the wonderful world of work.

Fitness
I've had some good runs this week, and- knock on wood- all my aches and pains have felt better. I took a bit of advice from Jess yesterday and slowed down today to make my easy run truly easy. Is there any runner out there who doesn't run too fast on easy days? It's so tempting.

Food
I have a great idea for something to make for D's birthday Wednesday, but until then it will remain a secret. Muahahaha.

Fun
Let's see if I can find some good pictures... How about some pictures from the garden area? There are people with all sorts of gardening styles. We have


Procrastinators


People who are concerned about Mongol invaders


People who obviously know what's going on


People who are unclear on the concept

and....





Our garden!!!!

Hopefully the plans are much bigger now. Or at least not bug infested and/or carted off by raccoons. I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Vacation!

Hi everyone,

I finally have a minute to share some details of my vacation to Florida.

We flew in to Orlando a week ago Sunday and spent Monday afternoon with my grandparents.

Tuesday my parents treated D and I to a trip to Sea World. Here's a picture of Shamu telling you to believe in yourself.



Highlights included riding the Manta roller coaster, feeding a Manta ray (they suck the food out of your hand!), seeing the manatees (ie. salad monsters), and watching a little girl get attacked by a zombie crane (there's a reason they tell you not to feed the birds).

The next day we took a drive up to see "real Florida". This included pancakes for lunch at DeLeon Springs. Evidently it's not the water that is the fountain of youth- it's the syrup.



After a few days with my parents, we drove up to Gainesville for my brother-in-law's wedding. We had a great time seeing seeing family and being part of this big event. I took lots of pictures, but I'm not sure how the people in them would feel about them being all up on the internet, so I give you: cake.



Hopefully the bride and groom are having a wonderful time on their honeymoon. Actually, given what time it is where they are, they should probably be asleep.

As far as working out goes, I was proud of myself for getting out and running or walking every day. It was much warmer and more humid than I'm used to. I started out with good intentions of doing pushups, but it didn't really happen. I'm back on the bandwagon now.

I'm catching up on housework/work/blogs etc but hopefully I'll be back to regular posting again!

Back!

Hi everyone,

I was gone last week to Florida visiting family and watching my brother-in-law get married. I'm back and will have plenty to share with you, but I need a little time to catch up. Stay tuned for pictures, etc...

Crazy Food Combo

Fitness

I had another enjoyable run this morning: 4 miles out and back on the Lakeshore path. It was only about 48 degrees at 6am. I don't know what I'm going to do in FL next week when it's 85! This afternoon I'm headed to the gym to lift weights. I'd love to run again tomorrow morning, but I know I need to take a rest day. Three days in a row is enough for right now. I'm finally getting over my piriformis problems. I don't want to invite another injury along for the ride.

Food

Behold, my creation:



It's creatively titled "Stuff that needs to be eaten before we leave on Sunday." The ingredients are salad greens, broccoli slaw, a veggie burger, salsa, and scrambled egg whites with cheese melted on top. Eat your heart out foodies. I'm even going to tag this baby because my weird food combos happen more often than you'd think.

Fun

Not a ton going on. I'm looking forward to meeting with my conversation partner tonight and catching up with her. I'm trying to think of things for us to do together so she can experience more of American culture. Maybe I should take her out for ice cream, haha. Mmmmm... ice cream.

Sore Butt Tuesday

I feel kind of funny calling these things daily updates because realistically they are never going to be daily. Anyway, this is what's been going on.

Fitness:
Whew, my behind is sore today from lifting weights. I did a couple of different moves yesterday- lunges in particular- that left me pretty tight and tired.

Luckily that didn't negatively affect my run this morning. I did 4 miles with 3x800m intervals at 7:54 min/mile, 7:28 min/mile, and 8:35 min/mile. While this is an easy pace for many of you out there, I was quite happy with my speed. I decided to look back in my training long, and about this time last summer I was running 800m at slower than 8min/mile pace on the track. The ones today were done on my regular running route.

It gave me a nice boost because sometimes I feel like I neeeever improve. The truth is I have gotten faster in the last two years, but I haven't made a lot of progress because I haven't been consistent. I go through periods when I do a lot of speed work and periods when I do none, and that doesn't get you results- at least not very quickly. So hopefully this discovery will motivate me to keep up with the interval and tempo work even when I'm not really feeling it.

Food:
Not much exciting here. I have a great (scary) picture for you of my lunch from Friday. It involves salad... and scrambled egg... mixed together. It was truly something out of a Lovecraft novel.

Fun:
Nothing super exciting right now. I really bombed Bible Trivia last night, so I think I'm going to try to find a Bible Fact of the Day site so I can brush up on "Old Farts of the Old Testament."