La Vida Fresca

It’s Monday! Not that you needed any reminding.

Unfortunately the old headache got worse before it got better but the good news is I’m almost all better now. I actually stayed home from work today which I rarely do but sometimes it’s necessary. Today wasn’t the best of days but by about 4:00 this afternoon I felt good enough to hit the gym for a seriously slow, easy first day of my new training plan.

I was feeling okay by then and (surprisingly) just wanted to do a hard run and very nearly ditched the plan to do just what I wanted, but I held back and did the 10-minute walk, five-minute run, five-minute walk, and five-minute run. Only 10 minutes of running total. That was hard. I do not enjoy just walking on the treadmill because it’s so boring to me.  For some reason, running isn’t and I usually can just zone out and have fun.

Well, after that 25 minutes was over I thought I’d do 15 minutes to a half hour of walking on a steep incline, just so I would feel like I actually did something today. But alas, a lady who must’ve been marinating in her perfume all afternoon hopped on the treadmill next to me and I thought for sure I was going to get a killer headache just from that. I only made it five minutes on the incline walk and had to bail. Seriously, why do people think they need to bathe in this stuff? I wasn’t planning on doing anything else in the gym today, but on my way to the locker room I hopped on the pull-up bar and did 10 negative pull-ups (five with palms facing in, five out) just because I felt like it.

Now for today’s eats. Salad with Greek olive hummus and carrots and then a bowl of puffins with milk and strawberries.

Dinner was a fish “fry”- catfish dipped in egg, coated with breadcrumbs, and baked. Eating catfish any other way than fried in large amounts of oil is, well, sacrilege in these parts. We ate this in secret with the shades down and the lights dimmed. Hopefully no one finds out and schedules us for a public stoning.

Served with corn on the cob, salad with feta, walnuts, craisins and raspberry vinaigrette, and a big hunk of watermelon.

Not shown were our last remaining semi-sweet chocolate chips, a banana with rather generous amounts of peanut butter and almond butter, and some granola.

Well, that’s enough excitement for one day. Auf Wiedersehen!

I finally got my crawl run on this morning at the gym. I did a whopping 20-minute run, er, slow jog on the treadmill that followed a 10-minute walk including heel walks which make me look ridiculous but who cares. Then I did a five-minute walk to cool down (never used to do this) and did some really quick upper body lifting and raced to get ready for work. I didn’t wake up until 5:30 this a.m. so that put me a little bit behind schedule but I didn’t mind because at least I got to run.

The only messed up thing that happened to me at the gym this morning was an elderly woman decided to go completely topless in my line of vision at the exact moment I lifted my eyes while drying my hair in the locker room. All I’ll say is that was not a pretty sight.

Unfortunately, I have tenderness in my left shin today and I think it’s residual from last week’s run. It never hurts while I’m running — it just feels like a bruise on my shin bone and it appears a day or two after a run. Grrr. I did use my Zensah compression leg sleeves and I’m going to ice tonight so hopefully that’ll help.

I also got my bake on this evening and created a batch of honey-sweetened oatmeal chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies. It has been way too long since I’ve baked anything.

Needless to say, I had a few of these.

The rest of today’s eats were a breakfast of Green Monster with Green SuperFood and a second breakfast of oatmeal and blueberries with a packet of sugar,

a late lunch of leftover tuna salad with Italian dressing over spinach with a very ripe pear,

and dinner at El Toreo was a salad of lettuce, guacamole, and tomatoes (which I scraped off) with rice and beans. I put all the rice and half the beans into the salad and mixed it up. Mmm. Oh, and a few chips and salsa.

Snacks were dates and grapes. Pre-cookie dessert was a palmful of chocolate chips. Slight sugar overload today I’m afraid.

Now I’m just so thirsty. Time to chug some water and get to bed. ‘Til next time!