Happy Sunday, hope everyone is having a great weekend. We needed to play a little catch up today with chores and yard work and I’m feeling a little wiped and sore after a challenging half marathon yesterday. Miko has just been a cute and cuddly sweetheart all week to remind us we should never go out of town and leave him again. Stalking me during meals.
And snoozing in the home gym during my workouts. I owe him more long walks today.
After so much rich eating in LA last week, I’ve been trying to clean things up this week with simple oil free tofu and veggie stir fries.
Salads with beans and hummus dressing.
And tasty toasted quinoa and veggie dish turned into fried rice style sauteed with Follow Your Heart’s VeganEgg.
More toasted quinoa loaded with chopped zucchini, peppers, kale, and celery.
Toasting quinoa has been my go to this week I guess, it’s fast, simple, and I’m into the nutty flavor and texture it adds.
I had one splurge with my mom this week for lunch, salad with Daiya Alfredo Deluxe Style Cheezy Mac for lunch.
It was delicious! Cheesy, creamy, and tough not to eat the whole box!
Yesterday my sister and I did the Parkway Half Marathon as part of the 100 miles of races goal this year. I was reluctant to sign up for this because I did it back in 2012 for our corporate running team and didn’t love it. It was hot, scenery was repetitive, and the narrow trails were too crowded.
The route was better this year with prettier trails along the river in a different direction. But the other challenges remained, the start corral was packed and did not have enough room to accommodate all the runners, we overflowed around the barriers making it tough to get to pace markers. The first few miles were way too packed, we went over a narrow pedestrian bridge over the river where is was too cramped to get around slower runners. No big for warm up miles I guess, but there were a lot of narrow trail stretches along the route that made passing and intervals tricky. I did appreciate the vegan veggie wraps at the finish and glad I did it. The medals are crazy big this year and customized with names and bib numbers on the inner spinner. It was about 4 times the size of the medal I got in 2012 which is getting a little crazy.
My nose ran like crazy during the race! Maybe a combination of allergies and so much stuff in the air from everything being in full “super” bloom after our extreme rainy season. I should have brought a lot more tissue and had to use my hands, shirt, and even running pants – ewww! While my quads did better for this half, the rest didn’t. I faced a lot of the same challenges from my last two races of just feeling tired and my legs losing steam earlier than usual. And a lot of breathing challenges, so this was not a PR either which bummed me out after having great training runs during the week.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about and troubleshooting my race challenges lately and I’m wondering if my current shoes are part of the problem. That seems odd because they are the exact same model and size of my last primary pair, Brooks Glycerin 14s. Since the pair I bought for the California International Marathon started getting up there in miles, I demoted them to shorter training runs and bought another pair for long runs and races. All the races I’ve run in the new ones, and a lot of the training runs now that I think of it, have been rough. No specific pains or problems to make it easily identifiable, but my legs seem to fatigue earlier and I just start dragging. Compared to the recent races I ran in the first pair of Glycerins, things have been very different in the current pair. Could the same model of running shoes be (slightly) defective and/or have something happen to them before I received them even though they seemed new? Sounds crazy, right? It does to me which is why I didn’t suspect the shoes initially, but I plan to experiment for a 5-mile race next weekend wearing my older pair to see what happens. It could be a coincidence and maybe I’m reaching here. Or maybe it’s time to switch up my shoes all together.
After the race, I showered and we did my favorite post-race tradition of getting some sort of noodle dish from Pho Vegan Asian Cuisine.
And today it’s been nice to just hang around the house catching up on tasks and relaxing after a crazy day yesterday and a packed crazy trip last weekend. So to the list!
Pints of Guinness are now vegan, progress I guess.
A 92-year-old dairy plant went vegan thanks to demand.
Running turned this mom’s life around.
Running mistakes to avoid – something I need to pay more attention to.
How to make easy plant based protein.
His plant-based health story is very inspiring.
The dog is so cute, it also likes to run, right?!! :) I think a new pair of shoes will bring a better experience in the next run. good luck