Two Weeks

(Disclaimer: This post was written up on Tuesday (1/3/17), but I then developed a terrible migraine that lasted three days and even caused me to miss work. I’m still catching up on my life, so for now, I’m posting this as if it were actually published on Tuesday. Thanks for your patience!)

Actually, it was a little over two weeks that I was off work, living the life of luxury. Ha ha, yeah right. Although I did have a nice break from work, there was no break from hockey. Or family gatherings for the holidays, of course.

Or running! Yep, even though I was on a two week break, I still kept up with my 5-days-a-week running schedule. My first week off, the kids were still in school for the first half of the week, so even though I didn’t necessarily have to, I got up early every morning, and had my run completed by 6:30 AM or even earlier. After Christmas, though, the kids and I had the week off, so I got a little lazier. In fact, I slept in almost every day until eight or even 9 AM! I really don’t like sleeping in, because then I feel like an unproductive sloth when I do wake up, but after all the early-morning runs for my 10K training, and the half marathon training before that, coupled with hockey and the full-time job, I decided to give my body a little break. Most days I would wake up around six or seven, but my bed was nice and warm, so I just rolled over and went back to sleep for a while.

I have to admit, it was nice being able to run in daylight, without my reflective vest or my pepper spray. Even though I prefer to run early so that I get it out-of-the-way and have an entire day ahead of me, I did enjoy seeing the sights, including the sunrise.

I ran almost 21 miles last week, including a 7 mile run on Saturday. That one was crazy hard, because it was headlong into winds gusting to nearly 30 miles an hour for the first half. But the second half, with the tail wind, wasn’t too shabby. 😉

My eating last week was OK. I was over my calories Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, including a couple of new things I tried. The first was a pesto sauce:

I’ve never made it before, but I was asking around to some friends for suggestions on a sauce for pasta, and someone suggested pesto. Since I had a basil plant that was thriving after taking Rachel Ray’s suggestion on Thanksgiving to cover it with a Ziploc bag (“It acts as a greenhouse,” she said, and boy was she right!), I decided to give it a try. It was delicious! I can’t believe I’ve never made it before! However, since olive oil is a key ingredient, it was a bit heavy on the calories.

The other new dish I had was buttermilk fried chicken. After buying buttermilk for pancakes on Christmas Day, I had a ton left over, so I decided to try a buttermilk fried chicken recipe I found. Again, heavy on the oil, but oh so good!

On New Year’s Eve, since Jason wasn’t working, we had our traditional New Year’s dinner of roast, mashed potatoes, and one of my favorite things of all time: Yorkshire pudding, or as I like to call it, grease bread. 😉

(It’s the thing in the upper right.)  Honestly, that’s really all it is: bread made with the drippings of the roast. Horrible for you, yes, but oh my God delicious! Especially for a bread-lover like me. I knew we were having it for dinner, so that’s one of the reasons why I decided to run a full 7 miles Saturday morning. And I actually did stay within my calories that day!

Sunday was a little more challenging, because I still had that leftover butter milk, so why not make more pancakes? 😛 And if you’re going to have pancakes, you might as well have a Mimosa.

Thank God the holidays are over and I’m back to work. Staying at home was just wreaking havoc on my diet! 😉

After all that, I weighed in Monday morning.

I was really hoping to be down below 125, or even in the 125 range, but it was not meant to be. On the other hand, at least it was a loss, however small, and that’s a move in the right direction.

I haven’t really talked about any plans for 2017, because I really don’t have any long-term goals, other than to lose this damn 6 pounds! Short term, though, I’m training for a half marathon in March. My three running friends and I are doing the Rock CF half, which will hopefully allow us to get in plenty of group runs on the weekends between now and the end of March. And maybe it will help me get back into shape!

I’m following Katie’s “finish strong” half marathon plan, although I ran into a roadblock this morning. It seems that all the extra sleep finally caught up with me, and last night, when I went to bed, I couldn’t go to sleep. Although I used to have pretty bad insomnia, I haven’t had to deal with it since I started running. It turns out that running is a great cure for insomnia, because getting up at 4:30 or 5 AM and then go-go-going all day really helps you sleep! However, last night I was wide awake, lying in bed for over an hour, and then waking up several times. I decided to postpone the speed workout until tomorrow (Wednesday) and just do a regular 30-minute easy run instead.

I’m planning to try for a 2:08-2:10 finish, which would get me at or near a personal best, but when I had Jamie sit down and figure out the times I needed for the various training paces (Katie’s plan has a 2:00 and 2:15 finish goal, so we had to split the difference), I was a little worried about the sprint pace. It came out to a 6:15- 7:37! I know it’s only for one minute at a time, but that’s really fast. This morning, I decided to try one sprint, to see if I actually could do it, but unfortunately, even though I tried my very hardest, I ended up with a 7:55. :/ And that was just one time; I have to do it eight times tomorrow! Wish me luck. :/

Happy new year to everyone! Thank you for reading, and I wish you much joy and success and the year ahead!