The last few days at work have been an insane blur, 12-hours of doing way too much at once scrambling to meet project deadlines. It’s been interesting packing breakfast, lunch, and dinner which have been smoothies, salads, Trader Joe’s frozen vegan meals, and vegan snack bars.
Not terribly exciting, but functional, healthy, and way better and cheaper than running out for fast food. Thankfully the worst of the workload seems to be over for now … I hope. Next week could still be nuts, keeping my fingers crossed it’s not!
Tomorrow is my half marathon and, while I’m looking forward to it, I’m not sure how well I’ll do. The last few months have been stressful and exhausting with so much going on at work and with my grandma, maintaining my training schedule has been tough. This week I’ve added a serious lack of sleep and training to the mix thanks to work, so I’m not expecting to break any records, but to just get through it. I picked up another tub of Vega Complete Whole Health Optimizer in berry flavor for my last month of training because I had such good luck with it training for my last half.
But hubby also discovered he liked the berry too and it disappeared much quicker than I expected. So I picked up a couple of Vega Vanilla Flavored Sports Protein pouches from Whole Foods for a few dollars for the race weekend instead of buying another $60 tub.
The green powder looks a lot like the berry flavor, hard to imagine there’s 20 grams of plant-based protein, loads of vitamins, and 110 calories in such a small pouch.
It’s supposed to mix well just being shaken with water or juice, not requiring a blender. But I turned one of the pouches into a heartier, pre-workout smoothie with frozen banana chunks, frozen mango chunks, red cabbage, chopped carrot, NuNatutals liquid stevia drops, and Vitamineral Green powder.
The color wasn’t exactly appealing, but it tasted like a smooth vanilla dessert. With all the other ingredients in the smoothie, the vanilla flavor was surprisingly strong and wonderful tasting. By itself, Vega Sport seems to be the perfect traveling breakfast or emergency meal. This smoothie perked me up nicely for a light morning workout after a few days of lacking sleep.
For lunch, I threw together a quick salad of carrot ribbons, tomatoes, red peppers, cultured veggies, sprouted lentils, avocado, and hemp seeds and dressed it with a thrown together dressing of tahini, apple cider vinegar, and nutritional yeast.
Followed by a big bowl of popcorn with truffle oil and Braggs Liquid Aminos – gotta carb up for tomorrow, right? :-)
After playing catchup on banking and other errands I couldn’t get to over the week, hubby and I headed into Sacramento to pick up my race packet with bib number and shirt. I like this year’s shirt and that there’s actually a fitted woman’s version. I have a collection of race shirts I rarely wear because they’re unflattering baggy, unisex t-shirts – wonder if I should get a quilt made out of them.
And I got a beer glass this year which will probably be used more as a smoothie glass. :-)
Finally for a pre-race dinner, I was craving something hot and heartier to help fuel myself out of bed at 5AM tomorrow and made a version of this lentil stew. But I added quinoa, textured vegetable protein, and chopped sweet potatoes to the simmering pot making it super filling.
Great combo and the pot probably made about 8 servings that won’t go to waste, perfect to freeze for more busy days at work. Wait, did I say 5 AM tomorrow morning?!? Yikes, better think about getting to bed!
Best of luck on your half! You’re going into it the way I went or go into most of my races: winging it. Not that I didnt train, and not that you didnt, but we werent exactly timing on splits and analyzing them to the enth degree. You just cant when life duties call. So you show up on race day and just do your best :)
popcorn with truffle oil and Braggs Liquid Aminos = yes!
Lentils are so great for a pre-race carbo load! Wishing you the best for your race. Hope you enjoy every single mile!