The fallacy of carbo-loading

Yeah, this IS a real video game!

Last night for dinner, I had a lovely (portion controlled) piece of fresh vegetarian lasagna (thank you Sunterra!) and HALF A LOAF OF BREAD. And not some mamby-pamby wonderbread, no, it was half of one of those giant fresh baked Tuscan loaves you find at your local bakery or independent grocer. I couldn't stop myself.  Not only was I clever enough to put out softened butter to go with it, but also a plate of olive and walnut oil infused with toasted pumpkin seeds and fresh sage (no, I didn't make that either. I'm not gourmet, I just masquerade as one in real life) and I kept slicing and dipping, slicing and dipping until before I knew it, the whole loaf had vanished, leaving only a thick dusting of crumbs all over my patio table.  After a 17 minute nap (yeah, 17 minutes I said, and it was awesome! I rule the mininap!) , I headed out to soccer practice for 90 minutes of waddling around, clutching my bread belly like it was an overstuffed money belt around my midriff and gasping like a fish out of water.  I do NOT recommend consuming roughly 800 calories in entirely bread before a medium to high intensity workout.  Like, this bread was bigger than most cats.

Instead of feeling all fueled up and glycemic-ready, I actually felt like bread was leaking into my lungs and trying to kill me.  Lesson learned, I guess. Even now, the next day, my belly looks like one of those fetish websites. Maybe I can try to make a few bucks on the side while I "train"?

C'mon get Physical!

So, we've been at this for almost a month without any sort of concrete plan...sure, we've registered for the race and started running, but other than that...have just been avoiding falcons and eating pasta, both great ideas to be sure, but maybe not getting us towards our goal of running 21K in roughly 6 months.

Well, today that all changes. Behold, our training schedule!

Now, I know you're thinking "WTF? That's a 10K schedule, those big liars aren't running a half marathon at all!"  Well, after careful consideration, we decided that since we have lots of time to get ready for this, we would start with a 10K for practice...this way we start a bit smaller without being overwhelmed and work our way up to 10K first, have a practice race under our belts and get some race experience before the big shebang in February...oh, and go to Phoenix for a weekend to do it!  Yes, we've decided on the Phoenix 10K race on November 7 because it's in 10 weeks, will be good weather, AND is in a city with a Target and a Jack in the Box. We'll have time to sneak in a hockey game too, yehaw!

Got right on track this morning with 30 minutes of cross training.  Hopped on the elliptical machine at the gym and watched sports highlights. One day down, 68 to go! I've added this schedule below as well so it stays on this page.

Comfort Zone?

It's been said that the more you train for something the easier it gets.. That's what THEY say…

Overall, our runs are getting easier, we’re not stopping as much AND we are getting faster, the training seems to really be working! That being said it seems that we keep finding ourselves stepping outside our comfort zone (mostly by accident – forest fire smoke, construction, etc) and adding ‘new and exciting’ challenges.

This morning was no exception and no accident. Our new challenge was getting up extra early and running before our workout for the first time. In a perfect world, this would mean meeting at the WestJet gym at 5:45, running for just over a half an hour then working out.
The way it actually played out was Felicity showed up at 5:50, almost in tears.. so tired that if she could have curled up in a ball on the floor of the changeroom and dreamed about the blizzard she had last night she would have, Crystal seconds behind her, who had worked the night before and would normally have passed on the workout all together was not her cheerful morning self either and I having forgotten my passes at home (which made me so very happy), showed up at 5:55 and had to wait for a morning WestJetter to let me into the building while the girls awaited my arrival... a really good start to our new training program.
So off we went with our eyes barely open and having already decided on the best path (aka less traffic) decided to run to the airport and back on the paved city trail. Now when we started the sun hadn't quite come out yet, but thanks to Felic's bright neon green running shirt ... traffic could see us from miles away. The run itself turned out to be the best one yet. Besides the occasional ghost passing, the temperature was perfect, the mosquitoes hadn't quite woken up yet (actually did later in the run and feasted on our poor Felicity), our friendly neighborhood falcon we're sure was still sleeping and thankfully not dive bombing our heads (**We'll have to tell you all about the Falcon on a blog of it's own to be published at a later time**).
Overall, we all really enjoyed the morning run and will definitely do it again as a group even though according to Felic we are currently losing 4min per day of sunlight. Being in the morning, our energy levels were at a perfect place and we ended up beating our current time by over two minutes! Score one for the Princesses, looks like one more challenge down!

RE: Salad Schmalad

I think this picture says it all and I never need to go on a rant about hating salad ever again.

But what do Scissors and Paper eat?

What's awesome is that I see this sign ever single morning when I drive to work. Well, every single morning since Christi told me to look for it! It's oddly on the opposite side of the road for a bill board. I had to pull a highly risky, covert move to snap this picture, but the near death experience was well worth it!! And I know this is a running blog, yet all I do is write about food, so I'll tell you about my training and the ever persistant muscle spasm I have another time. Right now, I'm going to make some bacon!

Ode to Marky Mark

From Marky with Love

Since I first got my ipod nearly 4 years ago (that's right...jumped right from walkman OVER discman to land in the 21st Century...boo-ya!), Marky Mark’s “Good Vibrations” has been the top song on my playlist. Since I started running 2 years ago, it has easily cemented top spot as it appears on “Awesome Running Playlist” not once, but twice, as well as on all my other playlists (OK, he wasn’t ever on Glee, but the song was actually performed by the New Directions, so I decided to sneak it onto the Glee playlist too!).

His rhymes may make him wealthy, but his musical stylings are indeed keeping me healthy. There’s something about the beat of that song that is right in line with my gait, so sometimes I feel less like I’m running and more like I’m dancing forward (at 5MPH to be sure, but still forward-movin’). And no matter how tired I am, when Marky Mark tells you to “C’mon, c’mon! Feel it, feel it!” I can’t help but muster up the energy for one more hill or one more mile or one more sprint. I heard he has been considering putting out another album, to which I say I’ll be first in line to download it from Itunes…but until then, please enjoy both the music and the muscley man behind it....




UPDATE: My buddy just sent me this, which better sums up what I was trying to say here and even backs it up with science!  http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/phys-ed-does-music-make-you-exercise-harder/ 

I guess that's why I blog instead of writing for the NY Times! HAHAHA!