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Moving moving moving

Thanks to the every so lovely Heidi I was able to finally get all my blog stuff together and we are MOVING!

Update your readers, etc please and find me now over at:

happyhealthyrunner.com

Please bear with me because we're still under construction, but I'm working on getting that all worked out soon :)

And Heidi, THANK YOU!

Progressive Miles

I did 6 progressive miles outside today.

It's the first time in weeks that I've run outside for longer than 2-3 miles per the doctors orders... He told me to stick to the treadmill... but I just couldn't do it today.

He was just too cute not to add in again

I tried, I really did.

But when I walked into my living room the thought of running another run on the treadmill made me a little bit sad inside. And I just couldn't bring myself to walk into the back room and hop on the stupid thing.

So I grabbed my mace, knife, and Garmin and left the house. It's hot and humid outside. But I ran pretty good considering.

These were my splits:

All I wanted to do this run was make it progressive. I wanted to finish strong and I did. So that's a win. I can't wait til it's a little bit cooler and I don't feel like I'm running through a sauna.

For whatever bizarre reason, I'm also breaking out a like a 15 year old boy right now. I think it's from lack of sleep, but I can't be certain.

Gross.

In other news, I think I have hooked LB on running! One down, one to go. Sean, you're next.

If he's reading this, I'm fairly positive he's going "yeahhhh right" right now. But I am stubborn.

Do you try and get family members to run too?? I have been after Sean for a while but it hasn't worked yet. Just recently LB has become interested, which makes me very happy.

3 Things Thursdayyy

It's that time again! And you know what that means - tomorrow is FRIDAY!

1. I guest posted over at Gourmet Runner today. Vanessa is fantastic and you should all be reading her if you aren't already. Plus she loves peanut butter as much as I do, which is a definite win in my book! :)

Seriously, she is so cute!

2. Things are happenin' around here (hopefully) and I (hopefully) will be able to share some good news soon. Secrets secrets are no funnn... I know, I know.

3. When I got home last night I wanted to run. This never happens (I am one of those weird morning workout people, Tara) so I popped in Mamma Mia and jumped on the treadmill to knock out a progressive 5 mile run. This movie makes me so stupidly happy. I was singing along while running. If you ever need a treadmill mood-booster, this is the way to go!

Your turn! Tell me something that's going on with you!!


Do you like guest posting? I love it. And if you love it, I may need you next week.... :)

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 ;)

Weekly Workout Recap, Week 8

I have no pictures right now because my camera is being weird... so, sorry about that. But we'll make this recap short and sweet and I'll try to find interesting pictures to throw in from my phone :)

I bought this shirt for $2.88 at Academy. $2.88!!

What I was supposed to be doing:

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 2 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 6 mile tempo run; 4 miles @ 8:26 min/pace

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 18 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

What really happened:

Monday: rest rest and more rest

Tuesday: 2 miles @ about 9:00 min/pace with the brother; 30 min Pilates

Wednesday: Jackie Warner's arms & abs circuits; 30 minutes on the bike at the gym

Thursday: 6 mile tempo run; 3 miles @ 8:27 min/pace, 1 mile @ 8:20 min/pace with 1 mile warm up & 1 mile cool down

Friday: Jackie Warner's arms & abs circuits; I don't remember if I did anything else, but I think I might have walked and I don't have my workout log with me so I'll update this later ;)

Saturday: 5k race

Sunday: 18 miles; the first 9 were at a solid 9:50 min/pace, the last 9 varied between speeding up and slowing down; 10 min total body Pilates, 10 min long & limber Pilates

Overall planned miles: 26

Overall actual miles: 29.1

Louie decided to get in a quick run before I went out to conquer 18 miles.


Despite the fact that I really had a hard time getting motivated to work out for most of the week, I feel like my week went pretty well. My 18 mile run went much better than last week's 16 miler, and it left me pretty satisfied with my whole week of workouts.

I'm taking this week really easy because I'm tired and my body just needs a break. That being said, hitting 18 miles was a really big deal for me because it showed me that my body is capable of carrying me through a full marathon. I don't know what it was about making it to 18 but it made it very real and exciting :)


Tell me something exciting about your weekend! We went out for Mexican food on Saturday night and I had the most ginormous margarita of my life! Because I am a lightweight these days, I was also tipsy after that 1 margarita. We also went to see Horrible Bosses. Eh...

Lunar Rendezvous 5k Race Recap

This past Saturday I ran the 33rd Annual Lunar Rendezvous 5k race out at Space Center Houston.

Let me just preface this by saying this was not a good race for me. 

Let me also get all of my complaints out of the way and blame this on Sean. It was hot. It was humid. It was about to rain (seriously, it started raining about 10 minutes after I finished running). I got no sleep because Sean was out with the guys and I waited up to make sure he got home in one piece which means I went to sleep at 2am and got up at 5:30am. (Ok, it isn't Sean's fault, but I was really tired.)

See how gross that weather looks?!

Complaining over, this just was not a good race for me.

For one, I started out way too fast. 

I ran the first mile in 7:13 (who am I?!).

The first 1.5 miles were OK. I felt ok, but not great. By about mile 1.75 my head left the race. I wasn't into it, I didn't feel great, and I was running way too fast for me. I couldn't slow down. And I mentally gave up. And I walked for about 30 seconds. My pride died right then, I've never walked during a race before. How I can run 18 miles and be OK but walk during a 5k race is beyond me. 

Needless to say, even with my 30 second walk, I ran the second mile in 7:15 (yeahhhh.... I was running wayyyy too fast)

And then I mentally shut down. I've never even come remotely close to walking in a race before. Everyone talks about how running is a mental sport - it is.

I walked twice more after that. I didn't want to be there anymore. I didn't want to run. I just wanted to go home and cry. Was I being overly dramatic? Yes. Did I care? No.

When I slowed down for the third time (I was less than 4/10's of a mile away from the finish) a guy ran up to me and said "NO". And he paced me in the rest of the way. What a miracle worker. I could have hugged him I was so happy that he showed up when he did. Here's a tragic picture of me finishing:

The irony?

I PR'd.

Go figure.

I also came in fourth in my age group, which I don't want to talk about because if I hadn't stopped three separate times I would have placed somewhere in the top 3. 

All I wanted out of the race was to beat my PR. My PR was currently held at 23:18 BUT the course was only 3 miles, not a full 5k. I finished this 5k (and it was the full 5k) in 23:14. 

And then I ran 18 glorious miles on Sunday. GO FIGURE.