Racing all Weekend

I woke up early Saturday morning feeling a bit overwhelmed and stressed knowing everything that will be going on this weekend. I headed to gym to blew off some steam for about an hour even though I wasn’t really in the mood to workout. I’m glad I did because I felt much better after, I always do when working out to deal with stress, I just need to remind myself of it sometimes.

Friday for lunch, I created another monster salad using leftovers from the night before, adding carrots, hemp seeds, sprouts, red cabbage, avocado, nutritional yeast and toasted sesame oil.

It made a filling, well rounded lunch. As you can tell, I enjoy re-mixing and getting creative with salad leftovers.

We had dinner at a nice French restaurant with my mom Friday night, I offered to take her out after she had a stressful week. I tried the baby artichoke carpaccio which was good, heavily spiced with rosemary and a toasted almond vinaigrette.

My sweet hubby ordered me this book after I signed up for a half marathon in October.

Half-Marathon: You can do it and so far it seems like a great book, lots of information on training, calorie burning, injury prevention, etc. Though I have not had much time to read it yet.

We had a lot of stops to make before ending up at my sister’s Saturday to complete her big move and figuring there would only be fast food to eat, I created a quick-WTF salad for lunch before leaving the house.

Chopped jicama, red cabbage, tomatoes, mango salsa and pumpkin seeds – a crazy combo of what I could use out of our fridge quickly that ended up being very good. I was glad I had it because when we arrived at my sisters, there was only meat-loaded pizza, beef tacos and kids meals of chicken fingers and fries for lunch that everyone helping was picking from. I gave my sister crap for that, but she was stressed out getting everything set up in the new house and there was no fresh produce in sight. Later we made a trip back to her old house to grab stuff and I scrounged some fresh fruit to snack on and take back for healthy kid snacks.

When we got home last night, I was fried after working out then moving and reassembling furniture for hours – not a great way to feel the night before I’m running another 5K. I barely had enough energy to run a load of laundry, take a long, hot bath and crash.

I woke up this morning just before my alarm went off at 6AM and started preparing for the Fleet Feet Women’s Fitness Festival 5K with two cups of this.

In a chipped, Christmas coffee mug of course. :-) Then I stepped into the garden to grab plenty of kale for a pre-race smoothie.

My hubby is currently reading Born to Run and mentioned that one of the favorite foods of a remote Mexican tribe, the Tarahumara, that can run 100+ miles are chia seeds. So I included them in my smoothie also. :-)

Chia seeds are something that I have not gotten into the habit of eating regularly yet, I keep forgetting about them in my pantry. But I think they will be regulars in my smoothies now as well as enjoying chia seed pudding more.

The finished smoothie was … interesting looking.

Kale, hemp protein powder, chia seeds, frozen blueberries and bananas, carrots and NuNaturals Stevia. It tasted much better than it looked.

One of my sisters and I ran the 5K and we were both tired from a busy Saturday helping my other sister move. My sister is a much more experienced runner than me having been into it for years, part of a running group, completed 3 half-marathons and countless 5Ks – I wasn’t expecting to keep up with her. I met her at the start line in front of the capitol in beautiful weather.

It was probably a mistake knowing she’s faster than me, but we started in the same place and even though I told myself many times she’d be way ahead of me, I found myself working harder to keep up with her. As with most 5ks, the race start was crowded and chaotic. One women near me swerved closer to me with her MP3 player mounted on her arm and the long headphone cord loosely flapping everywhere, it caught on my arm and ripped the phone from her ears. Not bad, they weren’t damaged, but she shrieked with surprise and seemed annoyed at me. That’s why I run with my earphone cables under my shirt and through the back strap of my sports bra! Anyway, the first 2 miles were pretty easy, but I was struggling through the last fighting urges to walk and giving myself pep talks while pumping high-energy dance tunes on my iPod. This course was more tricky because it circled the capitol park twice at the end of the race. The first circle was fine, but seeing that track again at the end of the race when I getting tired seemed to make it extra challenging to push through. On the last 0.5 mile, I was really fighting the urge to walk and struggling to keep pace, I even drifted to the slow side of the track in case I needed it. But when I turned the last corner and saw this:

I found the energy to sprint to the finish and hopefully not looking like a zombie for the finish line photographers. When the results came through, I realized why I was so tired on the last loop, I averaged a pace of 9:06 minute miles, a huge improvement from 9:24 on the last 5K and 9:36 on the one before! I came in about 30 seconds behind my sister, working to stay close to her paid off for a new PR! Even though I’m sure I’ll feel it over the next few days.

After loading up on water, we got inline for post-race breakfast # 2 catered by Whole Foods. I grabbed fresh watermelon, strawberries, half banana, raw buckwheat cereal and almond milk. Definitely more raw vegan friendly post-race food! I also made out like a bandit in the free goodies department.

Now I’m wiped, all the physical activity of the weekend is catching up and I’m thinking of parking it in front of the TV for a bit … after a few loads of laundry, a little kitchen cleaning and figuring out what to do for dinner. :-P After all the random samplings at the festival, I’m craving a huge veggie loaded salad tonight and maybe a steamed artichoke.

Besides the half marathon in October, I have no other races scheduled at the moment. We’re thinking a 4th of July 5K and maybe a 10k before the marathon, we’ll see.