self restraint

Sometimes when my legs feel super good at the beginning of a run my brain thinks that I can just go hard from the start and maintain it through the entire run. Unfortunately my brain can be very short sighted and will not see the long term.

Take for example this morning, when I went a bit faster from the start and ate it @ mile 2. Fortunately by mile 3.75/4 my legs came back to life.

And I guess that its for early morning dark runs? Daylight savings time ends this weekend. Good thing, because my runs are going to start getting longer in a couple of weeks.

Today's route:

involuntary sleep

So say you go for a 6 mile run @ lunch in some awesome weather. You get back, shower, eat, then you have a meeting @ 3 in a dark room with a bright projection screen in front of you.

What do you think is gonna happen! haha!

I was looking at one character, closed my eyes, opened em back up and suddenly there was a different character up there. Oops! Good thing they weren't mine :)

pitch black run

I have only ran once in the dark before. I thought I was going to trip on every step. Fortunately I didn't.

Yesterday morning I headed out for a run @ 6:30 in the dark, but I came prepared with an LED headlight. Aaaaah, I can see! Did an easy 4 miles. Upon finishing the run, the natural light started to arrive and the atmosphere was pink! It was totally surreal!

Then this morning I hopped onto the trainer @ 7AM and spun for an hour. It was easier this time than Saturday.

Finally I went to the pool @ lunch today. We did:

400 WU
10 x 150 on 3:00
4 x 50

The 10 x 150 was harder than it looks since I haven't been putting up much yardage lately. I will probably end up with a whopping 10K yards this entire month. Still, I am in MUCH better swimming shape now than I was this time last year.

just going going going

So on Friday I did 3 miles in 27:00 flat. Just took it easy and felt REALLY good after my hilly-ish 5 miler the day before.

Yesterday it poured all day long, so I spun my legs out for an hour on the trainer. I think that did the trick, because....

this morning I just got back from a 6 miler in some perfect perfect PERFECT fall running weather. I ran up this short but really steep hill around mile 5 and my breathing was perfectly under control. That is one of those hills that totally takes you above and beyond threshold. So in other words, it was a good run. I did it in 54:28 for a 9:05 pace. Perfect.

I have really been trying to go slower on my runs. I realized the other week that running sub 9 min miles right now day after day on short distances makes me feel so much more tired than running a 9:00 min pace and doing more volume. Its all about load.

Load = volume * intensity.

5 mile lunch time run and yummy sandwich

Another gorgeous day in fall paradise. Fall is really making up for lost time. I did 5 miles @ lunch today (my longest run since Timberman, I believe) and finished up that gigantic .5 mile hill. Been awhile since I have gone up that thing in running shoes. A good run. I hurt @ the beginning but the legs opened up around mile 3.

But I made a yummy sandwich for lunch today:
Grilled chicken and roasted red pepper on a kaiser roll with balsamic vinegar and mixed spring greens, with provolone cheese

So you grill the chicken with salt and pepper. I have stove top grill pan that makes those nice grill marks.

Roast the red pepper in the oven under the broiler. Once out of the oven, toss the pepper into a container where it can steam. This allows the skin to come right off. Slice into thin strips.

Sprinkle an appropriate amount of balsamic vinegar on one side of the roll, or mix it in with the mixed spring greens.

Assemble and enjoy! If you are making it for immediate eating, you can melt the cheese on the chicken.

Homemade Uncrustables

So my Pampered Chef Cut N Seal finally arrived today. I didn't waste any time and bought bread on the way home from work.

After some experimentation I figured out a workable recipe that also matched EXACTLY the caloric amount of the store bought brand: 210 calories. It came out to be:

2 slices of white Wonder Bread (28 grams per slice, but you end up with 13 grams per slice after its cut)
1 Tbsp smooth peanut butter
1 Tbsp Jelly

I found that the unmixed PB & J makes it hard to assemble (i.e. the peanut butter slides off of the jelly, etc)

So I mixed it into a paste, which makes it a much more "workable" material.

Plopped the resulting 2 Tbsp's of material into the very center of the bread

Sandwiched it (don't spread the material out when you sandwich it)

Press down REALLY hard, and turn the lever

When you pull off the Cut N Seal, it should look like this:

And voila!

The first time I had a successful sandwich (below on the right), the top wasn't packed down and it was "loose" which I fear would break apart easily on a ride. It should look like on the left:

So I cut out a piece of carboard to go inside the Cut N Seal to add as some extra "packing".

Empy interior of Cut N Seal

Carboard inside Cut N Seal

4 sucessfull attempts, one mishap. The added cardboard worked perfectly!

Leftovers!

Thinking about making bread pudding with the leftover crusts. I used some Pepperidge Farms white bread as well....it worked, but I wish the bread was a bit bigger. Otherwise, as long as the slice of bread is larger than 3.5" squared, you can use a whole wheat or whatever you want. Im going with white bread cuz it digests easier for me while out riding, which is the purpose of these things.

I plopped each into its own ziplock bag and stuck em in the freezer. I'll find out tomorrow how well they froze.

We taste tested one, and honestly its the same taste and texture as the store bought brand.

Mission accomplished!!!

not complaining

Got out @ lunch today in partly cloudy, 67 degree weather for a 16.5 miler on the bike. Man oh man these are the kinds of rides that make you enjoy riding. Fall, you have arrived?

Also hopped into the pool this morning for 1100 yards before I ran outa gas. I guess I can't swim on an empty stomach?