Saturday Recap and Exercise Question

Trying to keep up on my goal of more frequent posting, so here’s a Saturday recap of running, eating, and other stuff!

Back on Thursday, I realized that for the first time in many weeks, I didn’t have to be anywhere super early on Saturday. That meant that I didn’t have to get my run in before the sun rose. I decided to see if Katie wanted to do a long run with me, since I know she is not as fond of the early-morning running as I am. Unfortunately, she had something going on, so I went back to my tried-and-true running ladies group. Although one of my friends was out of town, the other two we’re game for a long run, although Toddra had to be back home by 7 AM. That meant that we had to get start at 6am to get in a 60-minute run. I agreed, because, well, I’m no stranger to early-morning runs.  Ironically, right after I made those arrangements, Katie responded to my last text, ending with, “Enjoy sleeping in on Saturday!” Ha ha ha, so much for sleeping in! 😛
We met in Trenton, a town about halfway between Toddra and me, at a little before 6 AM. We met near a park, but we all decided that it was way too dark for even three of us to be running together in a park, so we just turned and went through the downtown twice, which was very well lit. I was actually astonished at how many people were out walking before 7 AM! We ran into so many people, usually in groups, a couple of them with dogs, and one lady with the coolest shoe lights! 🙂

Toddra likes to joke with us that she is the slowest runner we know, and in fact, while we were waiting for Jen, she showed me a pair of running capris that she wanted to get that said “If you plan to run with me, plan to walk.” 😉 Although I’ve been trying to quicken up the pace of my “easy runs” this fall, I don’t mind the slower pace on my Saturday runs, because I feel like those are more for me to just get out and put in some miles, and not necessarily worry about how fast I’m going.

We ran around downtown twice, for a total of 60 minutes and exactly 5 miles. It was really cold, around 43°, and the winds were coming from the north at about 5 to 10 mph, which was a little challenging when we were going in that direction. The run was great, though, as it always is when I run with them. We have so much fun talking and just catching up on life, time just goes by so fast. In fact, the only time we really had any real challenges was when we took a loop that went by the old hospital, and there ended up being a fairly steep incline. (OK, “fairly steep” is all relative. If you’re from a mountainous region, it was barely a bump. 😛 )

By the time we were done, our overall pace was a respectable 11:55, including walk breaks. When we finished, I took a quick drive into the park to get a picture of the sunrise coming over the Detroit River. The only problem was, the sunrise was still half an hour away!

Ha, that’s all you get!

After that, I went back home, and although I had planned on getting ready to go grocery shopping, when I walked in the door, I found myself absolutely freezing. My fingers were numb, like they usually are, but my whole body was cold, as well. So, I did something I rarely do: I went upstairs and went back to bed! I crawled in next to my husband, who was still sound asleep of course, and then I pretty much just sucked all the warmth out of him. 😉

I slept for two hours, which is really surprising for me, but I guess I needed it. I woke up about 10:30, did some cleaning and laundry, and then I headed out for grocery shopping, my least favorite biweekly event. :/ But, you know, those darn kids expect to eat. 😉

After grocery shopping, I came home and unloaded everything, then I went back out. You might remember the picture I posted last time of some fall foliage. Unfortunately, it had been a pretty cloudy afternoon, so the pictures weren’t as good as what I expected. Saturday was very sunny, if chilly, so I thought I would head out and try again at the same spot. Unfortunately, I don’t feel the pictures turned out nearly as well as they could have. They certainly don’t look as beautiful as the location was in real life. This is a park a few miles from my house, on a river. I took what I still consider to be my best ever picture at this park five years ago, when I first got my DSLR. This was the first time I had ever actually gone deep into the park to look around, and it was absolutely amazing to walk through.

Again, those pictures just don’t do it justice. It was quite an experience.

After that, it was my favorite fall/winter activity: hockey! I’m still trying to figure out how to best use my new lens for the challenge of hockey photography, but I did have a good time trying, and I enjoyed watching my little number 8, as always.

They played a tough team and lost, but they definitely try their best. Plenty more games this season!

The end of the day brought a visit from my sister, who scooped up my children and took them to the local corn maze for the evening. That left my husband and I with a date night. What’s that again??

We had debated since Friday, when my sister first suggested it, what we would do for our “free night.” My husband was willing to do whatever I wanted, and of course my first thought was dinner and a movie. However, I didn’t see any movies that I liked. Then, I thought we could just do dinner, and I had the idea to go to one of my favorite restaurants, a local one a few miles down the road that has a variety of the dishes. Unfortunately, the other thing they have that’s very good is bread. I say “unfortunately” because that is definitely achilles heel. I love bread so much, and I was really worried about how I would restrict myself to just one piece. I thought that I could get a salad and then maybe have more bread, but I thought, why am I going out to dinner to just have a salad and then fret about the bread?

So instead of going out, we stayed in and had steak and chicken fajitas, made by my husband, with his homemade guacamole and Spanish rice, along with some refried beans. We even used corn tortillas, because I’ve discovered that corn is a lot lower in calories, and they actually taste really good. Since I had run 5 miles, and earned almost 500 calories, I decided I would splurge, so while I was grocery shopping, I bought this:

No, I did not buy the handsome guy, I bought the chocolate truffle dessert. Jason and I split it, and it was just the little bit of sweetness I needed to end my day. When all was said and done, I actually had plenty of calories left over at the end of the day, which was a much better result than if I had gone out to dinner and spent a bunch of money to eat too much bread.

This morning, I woke up a little later than I expected, but I still rushed to get in my weight lifting work out, because I really hate waiting until the end of the day to do my exercise. And yet, I know so many people who do their runs and other exercise at the end of the day. My neighbor, who waves at me on his way to work every morning as I run down the road, is a regular 6 PM runner. Several of my other friends are similar. I wonder how on earth they find the motivation at the end of the day to exercise?

So that leads me to wonder: if you exercise regularly, what do you prefer? Are you a get-out-of-bed-and-get-it-done exerciser, a do-it-sometime-before-noon exerciser, or do you prefer the afternoon or even evening? And regardless of your choice, I would love to hear your reasons why!

That’s enough for today. Thank you so much for reading!