Saturday...

I got up to meet Anne and Carrie at the Y for a nice Saturday run. My quads had been sore all week from our two morning runs and some weights, but I figured it might be a shortened long run bit it would still be a run. 

Boy was I wrong. 

We got through the first at a 10+ pace and it was shortly after that I decided irritation in my quad was not shared equally in both legs and could only mean one thing. 

I'm not 100 percent yet. 

So after a little over a mile I ended up walking about three miles. I was glad to not be responsible for ruining anyone else's run. Anne and Carrie went on without me and got in six miles. 

I finished up with some arms and then headed home. Not the morning I thought it would be but I am resigned to the fact that I want to run, but I don't want to run if it feels like crap. It seems like an eternity since my last really good run and it feels like it will be as long until I have another one. 

So I'm going to bike, spin, swim, get in some strength training and even try out deep water running. Am I bummed?  Sure. But crappy running is way worse than being sidelined for a little bit. 

We will be at the beach in a couple of weeks and I am hoping to be able to get a few miles there. I love running at the beach. 

Lunch today was awesome. 

Breakfast burrito with egg whites, potato, broccoli, spinach, cheddar cheese and avocado. Yum. 

Now Carson and I are hanging out watching the last two episodes of Revolution. 

Penny has been hanging out with us. 

Have a great Saturday!

These Dogs Cannot Camp...

I was at work Friday morning and Rochelle texted me to see if I wanted to go camping. It is widely known that I am not much of a camper, but sometimes you have friends that make anything sound like a good time. After some talk we decided that we would go, and I met Josh at Academy after work and we bought a new tent and some other camping supplies and came home and packed up and headed down to the Wichita Mountains.

We got to the campsite a little before 8, and got our tent set up.

I do love a good campfire. Austin was manning the fire, and managed to not burn himself or anyone else.

Camy was almost smiling for this picture.

We bought a six person tent this time, and once we put it up we realized that our queen air mattress and two twin mattresses would not all fit comfortably. So that was our first mistake. We did have a second mistake.

This is Rocky.

This is Penny.

Penny was trying to attack my iPad when I was trying to take this picture. She is crazy.

For some crazy reason, we thought it would be okay to take these two crazy dogs camping with us. I don't know what we were thinking. Rocky was terrified from the moment we got there. When the girls andI decided to go to bed, we took the dogs with us. Rocky just paced around and around in the tent and didn't settle down until we put him in his kennel. Unfortunately, his kennel was on some uneven ground and the kennel shook everytime he moved around, all night.

Penny, on the other hand, is convinced she is a watch dog. All 20 odd pounds of her. When Josh walked up to the tent a little later she was barking and growling, I guess it was good that no one was asleep yet. After that, she kept me up all night. She moved around the tent the entire night. A while later, she was getting after something that was near my bag which was right by my air mattress. After she spazed out for a little bit, I finally turned on a light to make sure there wasn't anything dangerous inside the tent. There was a big black bug on top of my bag, I ended up brushing it off my stuff thinking that Penny would let it go.

I didn't know where the bug was, and that kinda freaked me out too. Instead of Penny settling down, she went hunting for the bug. Then she went back to crawling all over the tent, from one person to the next, she did actually suggle up with me for about 20 minutes or so and I thought I was going to get some sleep. No such luck. Sometime later Penny peed in the tent, on my running shoes. She is a fabulously stubborn, crazy wanna be watch dog.

After no sleep, I was up at 5:45 so Rochelle and I could go for a run. More on that later.

It's hard to tell but this was a frog in the bathroom on Saturday night. The girls thought it was really funny.

We camped in the wildlife refuge, so we got to see buffalo and longhorns right on the side of the road.

We packed up pretty early on Saturday, with Josh in his boot because of his injured ankle, and we didn't really plan far enough ahead to go for a hike or anything. Plus the dogs had had enough.

We did drive to the top of Mount Scott before we left. Josh didn't want to get out of the car, not sure if it was his ankle or his fear of heights.

Camy spotted this huge caterpillar when we got out of the car. It was moving pretty fast so I didn't get a very good picture of it.

Such a beautiful view. I did a fantastic job of getting my finger in the shot.

The girls didn't complain and even smiled for me here.

It definitely was an adventure. I would definitely go back to the Wichita Mountains. Next time we will take two queen air mattresses, and leave the dogs at home. So, who wants to dog sit?

 

Posted with Blogsy

Spreading a little Nuun Love...

One Nuuncake at a time.

I love Nuun. I am constantly throwing these little tabs in my water bottle, I always have tubes in my purse, my car and a supply in my kitchen. I was excited to put together an application video to be a part of their Hood to Coast team this summer.

I decided that I needed to come up with something good for my video so I decided to combine my love of Nuun with my love of baking. (After all, I am always combining it with my running.) Lots of people use Nuun in their adult beverages, so why not use it in some cupcakes?

Here's how it came together.

As with most good recipes you start with butter and sugar.

Then a couple of egg whites. If you look closely there is a little bit of yellow in my egg whites. Separating eggs is not always an exact science.

Then the flour mixture goes in. Helpful hint: beat slowly when you add the flour or you will end up with a nice cloud of flour in your kitchen. Is White Lung something that bakers suffer from? Instead of coal dust, a combination of flour/baking soda/bakig powder/salt.

Then the buttermilk. Did you know you can make your own buttermilk by adding a little bit of lemon juice to regular milk? I never use regular milk when I bake, so I just add a little bit of lemon juice to almond milk instead. So in goes my fake buttermilk.

Finally I mixed in some Lemonade Nuun. I love, love, love this flavor. So good! The perfect addition to this recipe.

I baked these mini cupcakes for 15 minutes and then topped them with vanilla buttercream. This is my go to frosting. Butter, powdered sugar and vanilla these three simple ingredients make a frosting that is just heavenly.

I am sure you are asking yourself, how did they taste? Seriously, the cake ws so light and fluffy. The combination of the lemonade flavor with the vanilla buttercream really worked well. I took some of these for after our long run on Saturday and got good reviews. My girls loved them, and the one I dropped on the floor was gobbled up by Penny the pig dog.

Does she look like a dog that would eat cupcakes that didn't taste good?

So there you have it, what I am calling Nuuncakes. Cupcakes made with Nuun. Fuel and hydration all in one. I have plans to make some cherry limeade cupcakes this week alog with another batch of these. Spreadig the Nuun love one cupcake at a time.

 

Posted with Blogsy

No Exercise Saturday...

I can't remember the last Saturday that involved zero exercise. Even the Saturday before Cowtown I got up and faced the sub freezing temps for a two mile shake out run. I much prefer to start my weekend out with a good sweat session. Technically, had I not sprained my ankle my weekend would have started yesterday, but it's my blog and I can be as technical or non-technical as I want.

I did have a reason to get up this morning, one of my favorite six-year-olds had a big gymnastics meet this morning. I was sad that I didn't get to see him do his recently mastered round-off back handspring, but I did get to see him get his first ever 10.

Austin, he is quite the little gymnast. And look, he started off his floor routine with a nice Warrior III pose. There was even a plank and an upward facing dog. Everything I know about gymnastics apparently I learned at my yoga class.

He did so good, and his team won the team competition! That was a very happy group of 6 to 9 year olds.

Austin with his very proud parents.

I came home to thre 12-year-old who spent the afternoon with Minecraft and My Little Pony. I spent the afternoon like this:

I really am trying to be good and stay off my ankle as much as possible, but it is not easy. It was so nice out this morning. When I was driving to the gymnastics meet I saw a runner out on the streets in shorts and a short sleeve shirt. Yes, I was jealous. We have such a limited number of really nice spring days here in Oklahoma. The weather tends to go from really cold to really hot in the blink of an eye and I hate to miss it.

I do know I am irrational, it's a sprained ankle and I should only be out for a week or so, but again it's my blog and I can be as irrational as I like here.

On the bright side, my swelling is not near as bad as it was on Thursday, I really think my night time use of my CEP compression socks has helped tremendously.

It has become a little less painful to actually put the compression sock on.

The chocolate cookies I made yesterday have gone over very well. I am going to have to bake some more cookies sooner than I thought.

Penny says good night.

 

Posted with Blogsy

This Is Yesterday's Post...

One of my goals for 2013 was to have a post a day. I did start working on this post last night, but I was very tired and couldn't think straight and had to call it a night. So, here's what it was all about.

When I was making dinner this happened. I could have taken a picture of the cut on my finger from the silverware drawer, but I had to put a band-aid on it so I wouldn't get blood in my leftover chili casserole.

I was mostly disappointed because I chipped my nail polish. Bummer.

I have been spending the last few days analyzing Sunday's race. You might remember when I ran the Route 66 half marathon before Thanksgiving, my main problem was inadequte fueling. Both prior to the race and during the race.

I really focused on fueling for this race, I was determined to not run out of gas during this race. I really think I did a much better job this time. We did a little carb loadig on Friday night with spaghetti, and before we headed out of town Saturday I made sure to have a good breakfast that included protein. I went with a breakfast burrito with a little salsa. I had wanted to have pasta Saturday night too, but we ended up ordering pizza and had it delivered to the hotel. I was again reminded why I we don't order Papa John's pizza anymore.

Before I left to catch the shuttle Sunday morning I had a banana, and then I ate most of a peanut butter and honey sandwich on the way to the race start. Just to make sure I had food in my stomach I had part of a Luna bar as we headed to our corral.

I knew it was going to warm up during the race, so I made sure to take water or Powerade at almost every water stop on the cource. During my training I discovered that for anything longer than a half marathon my stomach cannot handle GU. After about 16 miles my stomach becomes very unhappy if that is my choice for fueling. Because o this I had two pack of GU Chomps and I made sure to eat them throughout the race. I ate the first pack before the halfway point, and I had one chomp about every mile for the rest of the race. I even picked up some gummy lifesavers from some little kids along the route, and had a few pieces of banana and orange slices as they were available.

In all my fuel and hydration prior to and throughout the race went very well.

Even with that I feel like I need to work on being able to finish a race. I do know that I finished the race, but just like in Tulsa I didn't finish this race even close to how I wanted to finish it. The last four miles of the race were very hard, and I would have liked to have been a little stronger mentally at that point. How do you finish strong, not feel like you left anything out there and not have to crawl across the finish line? It's a fine line and I am not there yet.

The great thing about marathons and half marathons is that there is always another race. Always another chance to improve and learn a little more. If it ws easy everyone would do it, but I believe if you want to anyoe can do it.

So how is recovery going?

• My left ankle has been swollen and the arch of that foot has been sore.
• I went to yoga last night, and while it wasn't pretty I really think it has helped my legs feel less sore.
• I wore my compression socks all day today. I would like all my socks to be compression I think.
• I might be getting too used to sleeping in in the morning.
• I will be going to yoga again tomorrow night.

And with that I will say goodnight.

Penny says see you tomorrow.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Tuesday Thoughts...

• Penny was snuggling with me last night while we watched The Walking Dead. I managed to take a picture of her. She kinda looks weird.

• We are watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory. The girls get very excited when it's an episode that has Soft Kitty in it.
• I think I am getting close to getting rid of my hacking cough and being able to breathe through my nose on a regular basis.
• We got snow in Oklahoma City today, and the whole city did not shut down. We will see what happens tomorrow.

The scene fom Josh's work. His building is a bit taller than mine.

The scene from my work. You can't tell but my car is in that parking lot covered in snow.

• I won something on one of my favorite blogs a couple of weeks ago and my prize came in the mail yesterday. Shut Up and Run had a giveaway of Injinji socks, and imagine my surprise when I saw that I had won. I LOVE my Injinji socks, and three free pair was like Christmas in February.

• I had hoped for a pair of their compression socks, I ended up going to Zappos.com this morning and ordered a pair. They will be here tomorrow and I will try them out and probably be wearing them in the Cowtown marathon. I post a review in a few days.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Sick Day, But Not For Me...

My Thursday started off with hill repeats; brutal, horrible, I can't breathe hill repeats. We only did 3.79 miles by my Garmin and I was so glad when we were done. It was weird to be home by 6:00.

Camy was't feeling well ls night a she was already awake after I got home and was still not feeling well. We decided that I would get her into the doctor and let her get some sleep today.

I had breakfast before I took Carson to school.

Chocolate Frosted Mini Wheats with a banana and almond milk.

While Camy took a nap, I snuck out to a hot yoga class. I love when I can take a class at a time that I normally can't. I don't think I have ever sweat so much in my life. After how horrible the hill repeats were it was nice to feel amazing after yoga.

I went and got Camy some chicken noodle soup and 7-Up, because that's what you need if you aren't feeling well. Unless it's the stomach flu, then you need 7-Up and jello.

We had a little time to kill before we went to the doctor, so we watched a movie.

I had not seen the remake of Footloose, and Camy had not seen the original, so we decided to watch it. I can't decide if I liked it more than the original, but Camy did like it. There were some differences, but overall I thought they did a very good job.

Then we headed to the doctor's office.

She doesn't look that sick.

She was smiling before they came in and did the strep test. No flu, no strep, looks like it is just a cold. We went to Target to get a humidifier and some Mucinex. We picked up some ice cream, and these...

Not too bad.

Rochelle texted me a beautiful picture last night, and I just had to go see for myself.

The new Brooks Ravenna 4, they weren't supposed to be out until February. They are so cute! I haven't bought them yet, I had to get them put in the budget. I am excited to have two pairs of shoes to rotate in my training. I am totally a Brooks girl, but I have been happy with the New Balance shoes I have been running in for the last month or so.

I could probably tell you what model of New Balance these are, but I just don't know. I do like these shoes though. I had one small issue with a blister on the inside of my right foot but my favorite shoe expert made me an insert that has helped eliminate that problem. I am still very excited to get my new pair of kicks.

I almost forgot something funny that happened yesterday morning. We told Penny to get in the kennel, but then we couldn't find Rocky anywhere. Then we realized what had happened.

Penny got in the same kennel with Rocky. Good thing we were paying attention because Rocky isn't one to complain much. Oh yeah, and there was this...

I love my girls.

 

Posted with Blogsy

New Shoes, a Long Run, Softball and a Snake...

For the last few weeks my knees have been bothering me when I've been running. For me that means its time for some new shoes.

I have run through four pairs of the Brooks Adrenalines, but after consulting with an expert at OK Runner, I went with a new pair of the Brooks Ravenna 3's.

They are super cute too.

I laced them up yesterday morning and headed out for a long run. It was brutal. It was about 78 degrees out, which wasn't bad by itself, the 89% humidity was a killer though. There was multiple times during the run that I considered heading back early, but my need to not miss out on the fun forced me to stick with it. We got 9.5 miles total (Ro got 10, but that's because she is super awesome) and I haven't been that happy to be done wi a run in a long time.

Maybe the fact that I spent four hours at the ballpark watching Camy play softball Friday night had something to do with it. Pb&j with chips probably isn't the best pre long run meal. But Carson and I had fun spectating.

The weather was wonderful all evening, and we got to see Camy play centerfield for the first time.

After my long run I headed home and got ready to head back to the ballpark for a day full of games. In the second game Camy got to bat.

She was walked but ended up on third base, they called the game for time before she had a chance to run home. In the third game she got to bat again and after getting hit in the head by the catcher, I guess it's hard to throw when you have a left handed batter, she got a real hit and even had a RBI and got all the way to third again. The inning was over before she got to run home.

It was a very long day, but Camy had lots of fun.

This morning we had a little excitement here. Penny was up barking pretty early for some unknown reason. Turns out we think she was barking at a snake, we found it in our bedroom a little while later.

Now I'm off to continue my nice lazy Sunday.

Posted with Blogsy