Bad Blogger

Today was such a fun day! However, I was a very bad blogger and didn't take pictures of half of it.  Well it started out bright and early.  Matt and I got up around 7:30 today and grabbed a small bite to eat before heading to campus for a run.  I ate a banana with peanut butter and craisins on top, my version of ants on a log.  When Matt and I got to campus, I felt like...nature was calling, if you know what I mean.  I had planned to stop at one of the student centers along the way, but they were both locked! WTF.  So I ended up holding it the whole way which was not so much fun.  Today I finished 5.5 miles.

It was an ok run.  I tried out my new water belt since the last long run I did I almost died from the heat.

Pretty much the coolest person ever I know.  It has two water bottles on it and a little area that fits my keys.  I wasn't a big fan of running with it at first because it sloshes, but by the end of the run I kind of got used to it. It's going to be necessary for this summer though. Matt also ran 5.5 miles, about 10 minutes faster than me because he's awesome like that

hahah

After our run we were both starving. I ate a greek yogurt with some granolla and some protein bar when we got home.  Then at noon we were off to lums pond for a bbq with some friends....and no pictures. Sorry!

We got home from the bbq at 5pm and did some cleaning until we got hungry. I just made a quick salad for dinner and had half a KIND bar with it because I wasn't too hungry.

Spinach, carrots, green beans, celery, tuna, black beans, sliced cherries

I got an email that our grocery store had fresh cherries and I was so excited I went out and got a big bag of them.  I love them, but I hate their pits.  I told Matt that I'm going to engineer a pitless  cherry so that we can be rich and  travel the world!! 

After dinner, Matt and I really couldn't decide what we wanted to do.  We both knew that if we just stayed in the house all night we would both go stir crazy.  We took Champ for a walk and then decided to set up our fire pit that we got for our wedding.

photobomb by champ

Matt enjoying some wine and dorritos. Classy!!

Tomorrow I'm hoping to go to the gym for a strength workout and then we are taking my mom and dad to a local vineyard for father's day!



Signed Up!

I'm starting to get back into my usual routine again.  I went for a run today after work and man was it a tough one.  My legs were still pretty sore from my workouts earlier in the week so it wasn't my fastest run ever.

I've also been attempting to eat a bit better this week. I've been loading up with veggies and trying to eat more fruit for my snacks at night so I can avoid the other sweets in the house.

I made this chicken and cheese bake earlier in the week for dinner and just cooked up some extra veggies to add to it for my lunch.

For dinner Matt and I decided to have fish....but it was such a big let down compared to the fish we were eating last week.

What's that yellow sauce you ask?

Something we brought home from St. Lucia.  Very yummy on potatoes if you like bananas.

In other news...Matt and I signed up for a Warrior Dash in July!  We are running it with 2 other friends and I can't wait!  I'm a little nervous that I'm going to hurt myself somehow. I was looking at all the obstacles and started psyching myself out a bit.  The whole jumping over fire thing kind of freaked me out, but I think I can do it!

Another big decision, Matt and I will begin training for our first half marathon the week of June 25th! We will be running the Philadelphia Rock N' Roll Half Marathon on September 16th! Holy cow.  I guess now that I've announced it we really have to do it!  Matt admitted to me yesterday that he really has no need to do this half marathon, but he's doing it because he knows it's on my bucket list and he also knows that I wouldn't want to do it alone. So I thank him for that. He will definitely push me to keep to the training schedule.  The one I'm looking at right now has 3 shorter runs during the week and one long run on the weekend.  There will be one to two rest days per week with some cross training and strength training mixed in.  It's a 12 week program that will hopefully make us ready for 13.1!!



St. Lucia Part 2

This will be my last post about our awesome trip to St. Lucia.  Then I'll go back to blogging about the normal things....maybe.  I do have a few announcements to make tomorrow about some events in the future though! 

Our next adventure in St. Lucia was a guided tour of Soufriere!  At first we thought about taking a boat tour or driving ourselves. When we met with the manager of our villa he told us that the boat tour would pretty much be a boose cruise and that we wouldn't see many things inland that most people go down there to see.  He also told us that the roads to Soufriere are pretty hilly and scary for people just learning to drive on the other side of the road.  He suggested we do a private tour, hiring a driver for the entire day to show us the town.  We are so glad that we went with this option.  Our tour guide was so nice and showed us so many things along the way. 

We stopped a bunch of times along the way at different cities/fishing villiages to take pictures. This is St. Lucia's biggest city Castries.

Maragot Bay

Canaries

Then we came within view of the Pitons

We were getting close!

We stopped at the botanical gardens/diamond waterfall/mineral baths.

Then we went to a cocoa plantation (no pictures) and then to the best lunch of my life:

because this was our view.  Our hotel manager hooked us up with the best seats in the house!

After lunch we moved on to the sulfur springs and mud baths.

And finally we went snorkeling in between the two Pitons.

We were at the resort that Oprah stays at when she is on the island.  Oh only $1000/night.  We got to pretend like we were rich and famous for the day.  All the beaches are open to the public in St. Lucia which let us sneak in to all these expensive resorts and enjoy their views. 

The next day we actually went on a snorkel trips (in which no pictures were taken).  For the remainder of our trip, we relaxed and revisited some of our favorite spots from the trip.  On our last night, we went for a sunset cruise on a pirate ship (with an open bar...yes please).

with a steal drum band!

We had such a great time, met a lot of great people and may have gotten a little tipsy.

mini cannon

It was a fun way to spend our last night, and made us remember the night we got engaged...on another sunset cruise in Key West.

Man did I look like a hot mess when we got engaged hahaha. Don't mind our matching sweatshirts, the weather was not so great that day and these were the only warm things we had with us.  One of my biggest pet peeves is when we match, so this was not ok hahah.

All in all we loved our trip.  Whenever we get back from a trip like this, we talk about our next trip.  We both want to go to Europe before we start the next phase in our life (bambinos).  We are going to try and save up some money/vacation time from work and go within the next 2 or 3 years. I need to go to Italy, not want, NEED!  I am 50% Italian afterall....



St. Lucia First Half

Today was my first day back to work and boy was it depressing.  I just kept daydreaming about our trip....

We arrived on Saturday night to our villa!

We stayed in the one all the way on the right on the top floor. There were only 30 villas all together, and we loved that it wasn't overcrowded and cramped like a lot of the all inclusive resorts nearby.

This was the view from our villa. Gorgeous!

The first day we got there we were so tired because we were up at 2:45 that morning to catch our flight. We went to bed at 8pm and slept until 6am.  Since we were up so early, we decided to take advantage and explore the island.  We had a jeep rental included in our package, so the only thing left to do was let Matt try and drive on the wrong side of the road.  He actually did a great job though.

We headed up to Smuggler's Cove for some early morning snorkeling.

Since it was so early, there was nobody there with us, which was really nice. We went in the water for a bit, but there wasn't as much to explore as we thought there would be, so we headed to our next desination, Pigeon Island.

Pigeon Island from afar. They have WW2 ruins on the island, and pretty good hike to the top and gorgeous beaches at the bottom.

view from the top

Once we finished our hike, we moved to the beach.

 

My favorite part of the day was when this guy came up to us:

This little boat was "the fruit boat."  Basically a man that boats around to all the different beaches and sells fresh fruit. Yes please.  We got 2 mangos, 2 bananas and 2 cocunt water drinks.

BTW I wear a hat all the time on the beach b/c I'm pale as all get out and don't want to get skin cancer on my face.  Gotta love being Irish.

The next day we scheduled our zip lining tour that came with our "adventure package."  I've been so excited for this since we booked our trip!  And it did not dissapoint.

looking pretty sexy haha

ready to go!

We both had so much fun and would do it again if we had the chance. 

On our way home from zip lining we stopped at a few lookout points with our tour guide to take pictures. 

More trip to come tomorrow....



Vacation Food/Workouts

Now that I'm back from vacation, I'm trying to get back into better eating habits and working out.  Matt and I struggled through a 5 mile run today in the heat, and we both discussed the inevitability of us having to run on the treadmill/run after the sun goes down while training for our upcoming half marathon.  Right now I'm looking at a 12 week training program that I will start on the week of June 25th to be ready for the half on September 16th. 

Anyways, I figured since this is a food/fitness blog I would show you some of the amazing food we had in St. Lucia.

Breakfast: Not too much different than the US

I got a container of quick oats and would cook some of them up and mix with some yoplait greek yogurt that I came across. I also took packets of peanut butter with me, because I can't live without it.  And thank goodness I could have my coffee each morning out on our balcony

Lunches were pretty random. Some of the tours we went on included lunch, and other days we just ate what we could find around our villa which was usually an egg sandwich and some fruits and veggies. My all time favorite lunch was at Ladera:

Mahi Mahi salad. Not only was the food good, but the view was even better.

somehow we ended up with the best seat in the house.

another lunch out, a roasted veggie wrap with grilled pineapple

Dinner was really where we went all out exploring the local cuisine. We ate A LOT of fish which I loved. I didn't have meat at all for dinner while we were there. The fish was just too good.

Tuna at La Terrace. 

Matt got the pork ribs

Crab back appatizer at The Coal Pot

My favorite meal at The Coal Pot.  Tuna in a coconut curry sauce.  The sauce made the meal.

And one night we cooked for ourselves. We got some red snapper from the fish market and cooked it on the grill.

My favorite "local meal" was the Roti.  A roti is meat or vegetables with potato cooked in a yellow curry sauce wrapped up in a savory crepe. I had the veggie roti filled with mixed veggies, tofu and potatoes.

Really good but super filling. I could only eat half, so this is actually the other half that we had on the side when we cooked our snapper and some of matt's fries.

Snacks:

plantain chips

Cassava Cakes.  Our cab driver introduced us to these at a little shack on the side of the road. Casava is similar to sweet potato.  They make cakes out of them and eat them for breakfast.  The shop had a lot of different flavors. This one is apple cinnamon.  They taste exactly like baked oatmeal.

Drinks:

margarita

Bermuda triangle. Didn't know they were two for one until the woman gave me two drinks. Matt finished the second one for me.

Our favorite local beer similar to Corona.

we tried a ginger wine (in my hand) but it was disgusting, so we went down to the market and got some white wine instead.

coconut water (Matt's angry face is his attempt at taking an arm out picture haha)

Workouts:

Matt and I tried our best to workout every other day.  Even though we were staying active throughout the trip, it made us both feel a lot better to sweat it out in the mornings. However, we really had to get creative. We would bring the pads from the lounge chairs and put them on the deck for ab work. I would cycle through some abs work, lunges, squats, push ups, dips....and then I would go down on the beach and run down to the next hotel and back, about .4 miles.  Our beach didn't have too much room to run, but we managed.  I would go through this cycle 3 times and then would jump in the pool b/c it was so hot I was drenched in sweat.

Love this picture!

I also wrote down some workouts that I found on pinterest that were quick, but got your heart rate up for about 20 minutes. We figured, something is better than nothing.  The first day we got back from vacation, Matt and I went in the basement and did a good 40 minute strength workout. We both missed this the most while we were there, and we are both paying for it today with our sore muscles.

Some people think we are crazy for working out on vacation, but we love it.  There are worse things to be addicted to right?? lol