La Parmigiana Italian Oven - YES PLEASE. Oh and Weekly Workout #9

Bet you thought I was going to start with La Parmigiana Italian Oven huh? Too bad :)

This week is an 'easy' week for me. My body is tired, my motivation is lacking, and I just want to take a break.

If you keep up with my training, you know I normally take Monday's off from working out. But since I'm going on a girl's trip this weekend, I decided I'd take two rest days this week instead of one and make them Saturday and Sunday instead of Monday. 

I almost took Monday off too, but I forced myself to get it done Monday evening. It's a rough life, I tell ya. 

THIS WEEK:

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 6 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 5 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 6 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

Easy enough, right? We'll see.

Onto bigger, better things now...

Because I am going out of town this weekend and we are going to Vegas next week, I have been trying to get rid of all the fresh food in the house. This is not as easy as it seems... I'm tired of leftovers!

Last night when I got home I told Sean we could either have leftovers or go somewhere. He opted to go somewhere (and I secretly rejoiced). Since we had Mexican food on Saturday he was brainstorming other types of food we could have (we really get stuck on Mexican or sushi 99% of the time). We've been trying to branch out past our "safe" go-to restaurants, so we drove around for a bit before stumbling on La Parmigiana.

It is conveniently in the same strip center as Orange Leaf. Frozen yogurt afterward? Done and done.

Now, usually I'm pretty good at avoiding bread at restaurants. And by avoiding bread, I mean that I'm pretty good at limiting myself to one piece. And by one I usually mean two.

But they had the cutest little pizza slice shaped pieces of bread that were fresh-baked and came with a pesto-olive oil-parmesan mix to dip in... It was little bites of heave and rainbows I tell you!

But I was good. I only had 1 1/3 pieces... (yes, I stole part of a piece that Sean ate...)

And then we ordered an appetizer that is one of my all-time favorites - steamed mussels in white wine garlic sauce. This one came with shrimp too.

Let me tell you - white wine garlic sauce is the best thing that has ever been invented and the white wine garlic sauce at La Parmigiana was made by fairies and unicorns. I'm not even lying when I say that I could have drank the stuff off the plate. Because I have a *little* more class than that, I really just inhaled two more pieces of bread soaked in the stuff.

Our waitress came over as I was stuffing my face (Sean had stopped at this point, rude) and said she was going to ask if we wanted her to remove the plate but by the looks of it I did not... oops. I let her take it to save myself from eating anymore bread.

Then our pizza came. This is what pizzas should always be made like. The same bread that we had been tearing through seconds before was the crust of our pizza. I die. Everything was so fresh and flavorful and delicious.

We each ate one slice before we both agreed we couldn't eat anymore (yayyyy leftovers!!).

If you are around my part of the world, go here. Seriously. So good. We will be returning very soon.

Then we had Orange Leaf where I drowned myself in cookies 'n' cream and coffee frozen yogurt topped with butterfingers and waffle cone pieces. I'm not sure I think it's as good as my beloved Yogurt Cup, but I also signed up to be part of their preferred members so I get a discount every time I spend $30... which will be every third time I go. I didn't take a picture because someone is embarrassed when I take pictures of my food in public places. Something about not being discreet. Maybe because the flash went off when we were in the dimly lit Italian restaurant. My bad.

Needless to say I skipped the scale this morning.


Oh and sorry for the crappy picture quality but all I had was my phone and like I mentioned - someone gets all in a tiff when I take pictures of food ;)

Weekend Getaway - Destination: Galveston

Every year Sean's company hosts a golf tournament in Galveston and Sean's branch of the company cooks for all of the golfers. This means that Sean gets a free hotel room and we get to hang out in Galveston for the weekend. It's a win-win, because this means that not only do we get a free hotel room, but I get to take the weekend off from all my normal grown-up responsibilities like grocery shopping and house cleaning (and I avidly ignore that it means that these things will now have to happen after work and such).

I got down there about 5:30 Friday afternoon and Sean and I hung out, went by the silent auction, and schmoozed with coworkers/clients like you're supposed to during these things. We went to Landry's with his coworker and his wife and - in the spirit of being healthy - had a chopped salad with blackened shrimp... it was SO good. I don't eat at Landry's very often, so I never really know what to order. This definitely hit the spot though!

Saturday morning I woke up and debated for a LONG time what to run - treadmill intervals or a tempo run on the Seawall.

The tempo run won, which was a COLOSSAL mistake. Seriously. The only good thing that came out of that run was this:

And this:

I set out to do a 4 mile tempo run with an easy warm up and cool down and harder in between miles (around a 7:30 pace). The first mile was a breeze and I cruised along at about an 8:38 pace. The second mile I was flying down the Seawall, maintaining about a 7:15 pace. This is where I realized I made a GINORMOUS mistake. See, I had to do an out and back 4 miles so that I could get back to the hotel (I suppose Sean could've picked me up, but hindsight is 20-20, right?). I couldn't understand why I was cruising so easily at 7:15 until I turned around. And then it hit me like a brick, literally. Dang that wind was hard. I struggled to maintain an 8:45 pace that 3rd mile, the wind was blowing so ridiculously hard into me. I even had to stop to walk at one point and frequently was taking a step back before pushing forward. By the time I hit mile 3.1 I started walking/sprinting in 1/10th mile intervals.

I think it's the tiredest (is that a word??) I've ever been from 4 miles.

Sean had to leave earlier than expected to go out to the tournament that day, so after he left I did this:

Dedication at it's finest? No, that's more like knowing how many extra calories you'll be consuming and trying to prevent it.

Later on I met Sean and his coworkers out at the golf course and hung around chatting with the boys/their wives until the end of it. Afterwards we went to the company crawfish boil and then to the hotel bar to have drinks with the coworkers/clients/wives/etc.

Sean and I giggled our way through YouTube videos after everyone left the bar (sometimes, we are 5, don't judge).

We went to the cutest place for breakfast - The Mosquito Cafe:

via

I got the vegetable omelet, which came with a side of honey-wheat toast and an apple salad that had sliced apples, pecans, celery and some sort of sauce. Apple salad = win. Vegetable omelet = pretty good. The vegetables were cooked in butter, which was a huge disappointment for me. I don't use butter ever (unless I'm baking) so I was bummed when I tasted it through all the other flavors. Next time we go, I am definitely branching out of my norm of veggie omelette's and trying something else - they had a fab selection of unique breakfasts and I am just hugely boring and hate to break out of my norm.

In other news, Sean and I are FINALLY renovating our guest bathroom. The bathroom makes me sick every time I walk into it. It's puke green and boring and has all sorts of issues with it. But that is a post for tomorrow :)