Archive | September 2009

Let us throw off everything that hinders…

It’ll be Wednesday morning hopefully when I publish this post. Right now it’s Tuesday — 9:11 PM. I’m in bed wearing a hoodie and shorts. It’s COLD outside. I should have worn socks to work today.

I guess I didn’t post Monday’s pictures so here we go.

Oats with too much cinnamon and microwaved too long. Yuck. But I still ate them…

Lunch was about 4 cups of spinach, broccoli slaw, carrots and peanut sauce microwaved down to nothing to keep my stomach happy.

The weather was beautiful at lunch yesterday so I took a walk over to the North Shore. Tight weather has officially begun!

Check it:

Take a close look at my left ankle. See that weird bump? Those appear after I run. Is that weird? Unhealthy??

Who knows.

Sooo I got home from work and had a package waiting for me. Loaves of bread courtesy of the FoodBuzz Taste Makers program. Review to follow soon.

Yesterday evening I went to Michael’s (craft store) and got some baking supplies because I’m going to be doing some baking tomorrow night! It’s going to be experimental so it should be interesting.

Tuesday.

BAD DAY AT WORK. Cry.

Oh well.

Oats again…. with Kashi Heart 2 Heard Warm Cinnamon. It’s pretty delicious.

I have a coworker who is currently doing Weight Watchers so she’s doing the whole counting points thing. She had these in her desk and gave me one. I had it for a snack with lunch. THEY ARE AMAZING. AH. So so so good. You definitely need the little individually sized portion control packages with these. Trust me. Unless you have willpower. Which I do not.

Nutrition facts for you:

Lunch was another HUGE portion of spinach microwaved to nothin plus an Arnold’s Thin:

After work, I went for a run. It was only about 53 degrees outside… I wore shorts and a long-sleeve shirt and ended up still being kind of cold. My hands were cold. Now I understand why I see runners wearing shorts and tshirts with gloves. Finally makes sense to me! So the plan was 6 miles. That did not happen. It started to rain again. Light rain but still. I was cold and wet AGAIN. Enough of this weather Pittsburgh. It’s LAME. Here’s the Garmin. 5 miles. Alright. Kind of fast.

And here is some more proof that I eat weird things. Roasted butternut squash, Brussels sprouts and onion with microwaved egg whites on top…. I feel like I wouldn’t eat like this if someone else was around. I really have no reason to eat normal meals when it’s just me. I’m going to have to give up these weird eating habits if I ever live with someone. I’m okay with that. I’d like to start planning and eating more actual meals rather than just the same ingredients over and over again in slightly varying forms. Roasted vegetables, salads, eggs, oatmeal, tofu, beans. I need to change it up.

That’s about it for you tonight.

Oh by the way, I AM THE SRIRACHA QUEEN. Bottle #2 bites the dust.

Good day!

Great Race 10K Recap

Sep29

Hello! Let’s talk about Sunday even though it’s Tuesday already. Whoa…I thought it was Monday. I seriously had to think about it.

Sunday was race day. I woke up at 6:45, perused the internet forever while drinking coffee and then finally made some oats for breakfast.

1/2 cup rolled oats
1 mashed banana
lots of cinnamon
1/2 a peanut butter cookie Luna bar on top

I ate my breakfast, got dressed and headed over to Andy’s. (He blogged about it too so click that and check it out).

Getting dressed and taking pictures of myself. Good thing I live alone.

I got to Andy’s around 8:15 and we took some more pictures since I wouldn’t be able to have my camera with me during the actual race. The weather wasn’t looking so great. It was sprinkling and kind of cold. Andy decided to wear a hat. We ended up taking his broken umbrella with us to walk to the starting line and then just throwing it away.

Me:

Soooo we got over to the starting line around 8:45ish, waited in line for the porta-potty for quite a while and then stood around for a lonnng time. The race was supposed to start at 9:30 (which is kind of late to begin with) but it ended up not starting until like 9:45!! They were making all sorts of announcements that we couldn’t hear and I’m pretty sure they played the National Anthem twice. I was SO ready to just start at this point. I was also starting to get hungry again….not good. Looking back, I should have added some peanut butter to my oats or something. I have no problem running with a semi-full stomach. I prefer that to running on an empty stomach. Weird? My body has an understanding with oatmeal it seems. We coexist.

Moving on to the race…

It started to rain a bit just about the time the race started…. (my ipod was wrapped in a ziploc bag).

So we started running and it ended up taking us about three minutes just to cross the starting line. Andy and I agreed beforehand to abandon each other if we felt like it. I wasn’t really sure how fast I would be going and kind of assumed he would be faster. We started out running together for about the first mile and then I started to fall behind a bit. I felt like we were going pretty fast but it turned out to be only about 9 minute miles. My comfortable pace is more like 9:30. So he pulled ahead of me around mile 2 and stayed there until about mile 5. I was trailing him the whole way about 10 feet or so behind except for when I slowed to get water at mile 3. Andy didn’t get any so he was a bit more ahead of me after that.

Around mile 4 (complete guesses here), it started to RAIN and Andy started to slow down… I caught up and said hello. We ran together until maybe mile 5.5 and then I pulled ahead a little wee bit and we ended up crossing the finish line together! Well actually, HE BEAT ME BY 2 SECONDS. How did this happen??? lol. Ah well.

We got some water and a banana and then decided to get to the bus stop right away because we were completely SOAKED. Oh yes, it was STILL raining. We walked to the bus stop and unfortunately had to wait for about half an hour. I was FREEZING. My arm hair was standing on end.

Finally around noon, we made it back to Andy’s apartment, freezing and soaked but happy.

Thumbs Up:

Me too:

You can result stalk someone here if you’d like: results

Here are my results (sorry if it gets jumbled):

Bib FName LName City State Div Age Sex

1382 Pamela Pittsburgh PA 25 to 29 FEMALE

ChipTime ClockTime Overall SexPl DivPl AgeGrade Pace Half

00:56:45 01:00:06 3861 1215 297 53.4% 9:08.3 0:28:32

My 60 year old coworker finished in like 46 minutes and placed 7th in his division!! I hope I’m doing that at 60!

So there you have my very first 10K! It was great fun! Next up…half marathon madness. That one will be slower my friends. Goal = finish without dying.

Birthdays & Lebanese & Race Stuff

Sep28

I’ve got many things to blog about!

First off, it’s Monday evening — 8:51 PM as I begin this post.

Back to Saturday. Saturday morning I was laaaazy. I drank way too much coffee while reading blogs and watching Chris Fennimore cooking shows on PBS. I haven’t gotten to do that since I started doing my long runs on Saturday mornings months ago. It was pretty great. I eventually got up and out the door and to Target. I needed to get my nephew, Parker, a gift for his 1st birthday which is today.

Happy Birthday Parker!!!

Look how cute he is!

So I got my Target goods and got back to the house in time for Andy to pick me up to go get our race packets. We were in and out of the race expo in no time and sitting in the car digging through our bags. Carnation Instant Breakfast in there. Not a fan. There is all kinds of grossness in those things.

I was REALLY excited because the t-shirt was long sleeve! Worst picture of me imaginable.

It rained pretty much all day Saturday… After getting our race stuff, we went to Kassab’s in the Southside for Andy’s birthday.

Hummus and pita for an appetizer:

For my meal, I got Vegetarian Moussaka. There was eggplant and zucchini on the bottom and then a cous cous and veggie layer and then some kind of mashed potatoes on top. I wasn’t really a fan… I would have liked more vegetables and less cous cous and potato. I ate about half of that and brought the rest home because I didn’t want to waste food. Unfortunately, it’s still sitting in my refrigerator.

Andy got a portobella mushroom sandwich on a pita. In retrospect, I should have gotten this. That would have been A LOT of pita in one sitting though. Carbo-loading, yes?

Andy likes when I take pictures of him in restaurants.

Happy 26th Birthday Andy!!!

After dinner, we went to church together. Hm. It was enjoyable.

I got home and got my outfit together for the Great Race Sunday! Blue, green, pink. mmhmm. Shoes ON MY BED! Oh my.

I ended up getting to bed really early Saturday night which was good because I had my alarm set for 6:47 the next morning.

Okay that brings us to the race which I’m going to recap in a separate post because I’m not a fan of reading really long posts so I imagine some of you aren’t either.

More very soon!

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