Twin Cities 10 Mile Training Week 1

Week of July 10-16

Monday Planned: General Aerobic + Speed 6 miles 8x100 strides
Monday Actual: 6 miles with 8x100 strides.
When my alarm went off in the morning, I silenced it, rolling back over to sleep. I hoped that I wouldn't regret this decision after work. Luckily for me, we had the heat after work, but the humidity had dropped significantly. It was 84 degrees with only 50% humidity, so it felt amazing out. We had a snafu at work that caused me to stay later, so I started running at 6:15pm, so I was STARVING throughout the run and thought I was going to die during the final mile and a half. Uff. Mental note: time to start stashing snacks at work for pre-run fuel again. 6 miles done!

Tuesday Planned: General Aerobic 5 miles 
Tuesday Actual: 3 miles.

I met up with Sarah for our group run from Revolution. We got in 3 miles followed by 30 minutes of yoga. I had planned to go out for two more after but didn't. Oops. The humidity was just shy of 100%, so despite it being at a nice easy comfortable pace, we kept describing the humidity as "gaspy."

Wednesday Planned: General Aerobic 3 miles
Wednesday Actual: 3 miles.

I got in my 3 miles with Bob during the group run at 605. It was so incredibly hot and humid.

Thursday Planned: LT 7 miles, 2x12 min with 4 min jogs in between 
Thursday Actual: LT 7 miles.
My BRF is back! And it's our one year friendivarsary! We met up for our first workout of the training cycle. We ran a mile to meet up, then another warm up mile together, followed by our LT miles, a cool down mile together and a solo cool down mile by ourselves. The LT miles were HARD. It was so humid out. But it felt pretty badass going on with the rest of my workday after accomplishing a challenging run! And BRF miles are always great. 

Friday Planned: Sanford POWER
Friday Actual: Rest. As I was logging my miles in my training log, I realized that I hadn't taken a rest day since a week ago Wednesday. Uff. I knew if I did POWER I'd need to do a couple of miles shake out so I could do my long run Saturday, and I knew I couldn't move my long run, so I skipped POWER, and slept in instead.

Saturday Planned: Endurance 10 miles
Saturday Actual: 10 miles!
The real feel temp for Saturday was projected at 103 degrees, so I was up at 5:30am to get ready for our long run. We got started at 6:40am and it was so incredibly humid. I was sweaty just getting my stuff gathered before we took off! My first mile was really heavy tired legs, but then things shook out and before we knew it we were at the 5 mile turn around! Mile 6 was rough, but after we got water refills at mile 7 I felt like a whole new woman, and we were able to pick up the pace the last few miles without picking up the effort level.

We managed to run a slightly faster pace this week than last week, running 2 miles further, in much hotter and humid conditions. WIN!

Sunday Planned: Rest
Sunday Actual: I had two miles remaining for the week, so I opted to do a super easy shake out run before it heated up too much. I kept it super easy.

Total Mileage Planned: 31 miles

Total Mileage Actual:  31 miles. This is one of the highest mileage weeks I've had in forever! I went back through my log and I hit 31 miles and 36 miles during my training cycle for Brookings, so I think this training cycle is off to a good start!

28 Day TransFORMation Check-In Week One

The Prep

To start the challenge, I went to a 90 minute talk to get all the why and how's of the process. Being the book nerd that I am, I also picked up the book It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change  Your Life in Unexpected Ways to do some further reading. Throughout the week leading up to the challenge, I picked up a few of the staples that were mentioned in the talk: ghee, macadamia nuts, and coconut oil. The day before the reset started, I worked until noon, so I knew I had a full day of prep ahead of me. I scoured the book and internet for recipes, made an extensive grocery list and also set out to pick up an egg cooker and a blender. I may have killed my blender a week or two ago (RIP old friend) and an egg cooker. If you're like me, you hadn't heard of an egg cooker prior to two weeks ago. Well it's a genius contraption that cooks perfect hard or soft boiled eggs, omelets, and poached eggs. $40 well spent if you ask me!

Day One

For breakfast I had a 3 egg omelette with red onion, spinach, and mushrooms. I also made a green smoothie for more greens with spinach, coconut milk, a frozen banana and a couple of frozen strawberries. Oh, and the omelette was covered in half an avocado. Mmmmm.

For lunch I struggled a bit, because I went for a run at 11am, so by the time I got home at noon I was starving and needed to shower and eat ASAP. I wanted to make something creative since I'd prefer to save the boring salads for work lunches when I don't have the luxury of cooking something up in the staff break room. I threw together some spinach and mixed greens, half an avocado, some lemon juice, red onion, half an apple, cucumber, and two hard boiled eggs. Ollie approves... I think.

It was also during this time that I realized I had bought a Skor bar and Rolos earlier in the week, intending to eat them prior to the challenge starting, NOT to find them midway through day one. God I love sugar. I hid them and hopefully I can remember where in 27 days.

Dinner was okay. Some walleye baked with ghee, garlic and red onion. I attempted to make some cauliflower roasted with garlic. It almost looks like popcorn. Mmmm popcorn.

Day Two

Breakfast looks essentially the same, but a much more rushed presentation as I was heading off to work. Can I already be sick of eggs? I'm already sick of eggs.

I get to work and someone has brought cotton candy to share! And homemade bread and jam! Jerks, the whole lot. ;)

Lunch was a monsterous salad similar to day one, but with approved turkey lunch meat (nitrate/nitrite free). 

Dinner was awesome. I made some mushrooms sauteed with garlic and red onions and threw in some turkey breast that Kyle had grilled the night before. He neglected to season the chicken IN ANY WAY so some extra flavor was necessary. I made some guacamole and had some lettuce wraps. I will say that the best part was making a salad with the same ingredients but assembled IN the bowl with the remainder of the guac. Heaven.

Day Three

The third day was a little bit of a struggle, as we've been warned. I had some poached eggs for breakfast along with a green smoothie. I didn't blend the smoothie enough so it was chunky and gross.

I had a yoga class in the morning, so after I had some macadamian nuts and coconut flakes to refuel.

For lunch i had another huge salad, and for dinner I cut up some of Kyle's grilled chicken and covered it in my homemade salsa thinking I could have a delicious repeat of the night before with a new protein. Blech. The chicken tasted gross. But the guacamole was still good.

Day Four

I worked late so I had time to prep a good breakfast. Thank goodness, because the last 24 hours have been one big queso/sugar/beer craving after another. I found a recipe that didn't involve eggs that I had all the ingredients for and made a sweet potato, apple, and bacon hash. And because of the sweet and salty goodness, I knew I could handle an egg for extra protein.

Best meal yet!

Lunch and dinner were carbon copy salads. Giant ones. 

Day Five

Happy Cinco de Mayo. :( Yes I thought about queso and margaritas all day, thank you for asking.

As predicted, this was a hard day. I woke up with a headache, and a back ache, and all over aches thanks to fun womanly events. I'm sure all of these were made worse by the dreaded day five of this program. My meals were pretty boring, and I almost caved and had a chocolate covered blueberry while I was making dinner, but I didn't.  I repeated my stellar breakfast for dinner. Yum.

Today I made the comment that I miss sugar, cheese, and carbs. BUT it is so nice to not be starving all of the time. I swear that outside of the previous five days, I am hungry all day every day. There are many times a day that I feel like I'm STARVING, despite eating a lot, dear god I love food. But based on what we're told to do, I'm really not hungry until my next meal rolls around. It's such a nice change.

Day Six

I woke up feeling like a new woman. I slept well and hard, and felt well rested. I had some hard boiled eggs and turkey for breakfast along with a green smoothie. I had my regular lunch salad and for dinner I treated myself to two of the things on the sushi menu that are okay--a salad and special cucumber rolls. Yum.

I texted Kyle this morning. It read: one more morning without coffee in my life. Followed by a trillion emojis. 

Day Seven

I had my delicious sweet potato hash breakfast before work, and had to send a picture of my perfect eggs to Kyle (confession, I'm not the best at making eggs).

I made up some tuna salad with apples and onions and avocado to curb my boredom with lunch meat on my salads since I had to pack two lunches. It was tasty.

And then a book club member announced she was moving away and brought chocolates to ease the pain. So I had to deal with the pain of the book club member leaving AND not having the chocolate. So I had tea with Ollie later.

One week down! Three to go!