Free Things Friday

Hi everyone! Happy Friday! Today was definitely the day of free stuff. I stopped by Starbucks after lunch to get my free Refresher

It was alright. Everyone in my office agreed that it had a weird aftertaste. I think I'll stick to coffee for now.

Matt also hit up some freebees today. He dressed like a cow and got a free chick fil a meal out of it.

That is my husband ladies and gentlemen, be jealous haha.

After work I ran to the grocery store and then did a quick workout when I got home before Matt started dinner on the grill.  My workout included the awesome ab workout I did yesterday from Pinterest. 

For dinner Matt grilled himself a double cheeseburger and grilled me a yummy veggie burger

Plopped my veggie burger on a salad and then had some sweet potato wedges that I cooked earlier in the week. We started out eating outside, but the bugs were just too much so we finished our meal at the dining room table.

Skinny Pina Colada: coconut water, pineapple juice and coconut rum. 

After dinner we ran some errands and then went to main st. for our friday treat

Peanut butter and chocolate foyo with strawberries and dark chocolate chips.

We are just sitting down now to watch 21 Jump Street and then we are going to get ourselves ready for tomorrow. We will be traveling to Morristown, NJ (about 2.5 hours) tomorrow with our friends Pat and Beth to compete in a Warrior Dash.  This is basically a mud run on crack.  We will be jumping over fire, climbing up walls, all that good stuff. And then afterwards we get a beer and a turkey leg haha.  I signed up for their facebook updates so hopefully I'll get some good pictures out of the deal!



Hey everyone! Just one more day to go until the end of the week!  Today was definitely a success because I had a great run after work. I was worried about the heat with it being in the 90s, so I decided to go music-less and carry a water bottle with my keys instead.  I actually liked running without my music today which I usually hate.  I did however learn my lesson about keeping my gym bag in my car all day:

Melted deodorant. Gross.  I really need to remember to bring my bag in with me to work. 

My Splits: 

Mile 1: 9.49

Mile 2: 9.46

Mile 3: 9.34

Mile 4: 9.29

Average pace: 9.40

When I got home I made the quickest dinner I could think of.  Shrimp Coconut Curry!!!

Shrimp, lots of veggies and brown rice in a yummy thai coconut curry sauce.

After dinner I was feeling a little antsy, so I randomly decided to do this ab workout that I found on pinterest. You do each move 25 times and by then end you reach 300 reps. My abs were on fire!! But it felt great when I finished!

Just so you all know, starbucks is handing out free samples of their new drink tomorrow, the Starbucks Refresher! I'm intrigued. It's made with green coffee beans, but doesn't taste like coffee.  I'm willing to try anything if it's free!

Think I'm going to go with the verry berry hibiscus.  Thehy are pretty low in calories too. I think I saw on their website that a grande is around 70 calories.  They are caffeinated like coffee, but taste fruity. YUM.

Off to go pour myself a glass of wine. Man am I my father's daughter. 



Avocado's Are So Hot Right Now

The title of my post should obviously be said in the same voice as Zoolander saying "Hansel is so hot right now." Hopefully you guys have a strange sense of humor like myself and love all those pointless movies.  Happy Wednesday by the way. This Wednesday is another What I Ate Wednesday!

I'm warning you all ahead of time, I had a major dinnertime picture fail aka my phone sucks and chooses when it wants to save or delete pictures all on it's own. Just another reason I want an IPhone.

Breakfast:

I was going to make another smoothie today like yesterday, but I needed something to hold me over a bit longer for a long morning so I went with overnight oats instead. The smoothies will definitely be coming back this weekend though! Mid morning I snacked on half a KIND bar to hold me over until lunch.

Lunch was totally random.  I really didn't feel like making anything so I scrounged our fridge for anything I could find that was already cooked. I had some leftover Summer Black Bean and Corn Salad along with sweet potato wedges and almond butter.  After eating this I was still hungry so I had an apple as well.

This took me until about 3pm when I had my pre volleyball snack.

Banana and mini clif bar.

We had volleyball at 5:30, got out around 6:40 and went to Wawa for dinner.  I was STARVING.  I ordered a sandwhich on wheat bread with turkey, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, spinach and AVOCADO!! This is a new addition to Wawa's list of toppings. I personally think they are just trying to take some of Subway's ideas.

Man they are really working it right now.  So why so popular??

"Perhaps the biggest health benefit of avocados is that by adding avocado to certain foods, you can improve your absorption of nutrients. This means that when you combine other fat burning foods with avocado, you can improve your nutrient absorption up to 400%!

Avocados provide many general health benefits, in addition to its fat burning benefits due to its vitamin E and glutathione, which protects you against tons of diseases including several forms of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and cholesterol.

Avocados also help reduce the signs of aging, regulate blood sugar and promote eye health."

source

Unfortunately, this is right when my camera decided to fail. I took the picture. I know I took the picture, but my phone didn't feel like automatically saving it like all the rest of the picture I've taken.  Anywayss....picture my dinner:

1/2 of my sammi (saving the other half for tomorrow)

mixture of blueberries and strawberries

mixture of broccoli, carrots and peas with humus

Dessert:

Scoop of peanut butter and chocolate. YUM

I have 4 miles to run tomorrow after work!!  I'm going to go do some stretches to try and loosen up my hips for tomorrow.



Trying To Find My Stride

I started my morning off right with a big old smoothy!

In the mix:

1/2 frozen banana

1 container vanilla chobani

strawberries

blueberries

coconut milk

YUM.  The rest of my day flew by. Before I knew it I was off to Glasgow Park for my long run of the week. I had 6 miles to do and I was determined to do them well. The first 3 miles went by really fast. Then I got HOT.  I got lucky that the sun wasn't out, but the humidity was there to stay.  I stopped every couple of miles to chug some water from my water belt. 

Splits:

Mile 1: 9.59

Mile 2: 9.44

Mile 3: 9.47

Mile 4: 9.41

Mile 5: 10.00 (having issues with my Garmin)

Mile 6: 9.48

At mile 5 I had some issues with my Garmin. It kept saying lap error. So I ended up having to stop and reset my watch for a new run for my last mile.

When I finished I was kind of feeling like crap. My hips were really tight.  I'm did some major stretching when I got home. And took a long shower to get rid of my sweat.

Leg Sweat. Yum

When I got home, dinner was already ready to go thanks to our crockpot.

Pot roast with carrots and fingerling potatoes.

salad on the side

I'm hoping that next week's long run goes a little better than this weeks.  But at least I finished!



Home Grown Dinner

Today was a very busy day at work.  The highlight of my day was dropping by Starbucks to try one of their iced green teas.

I'm not usually an iced tea person, but I've really been loving green tea lately.  This tea I got unsweetened and it had a good mix of green and mint tea flavors. So refreshing!

After work I booked it home, let the crazy man out of his cage and went for a half hour walk around the neighborhood.  We covered 1.5 miles and Champ was pooped by the time we finished.  Since today is the day before my long run, I just wanted to do something low impact and stretch!  A walk outside was perfect.  When we got home it was time to start cooking dinner! I had chicken fajitas on the menu for tonight.  And a yummy side salad with fresh ingredients picked right from our vegetable garden:

Summer Black Bean and Corn Salad (no measuring needed)

Frozen Corn, Thawed

Black Beans

Chopped Cucumber

Chopped Red Onion

Chopped Cherry Tomatoes

1 Tbsp Lime Juice

1 1/2 Tbsp Olive Oil

Salt

Pepper

Mix all ingredients and let marinate in the fridge for 30 minutes before serving!

The cherry tomatoes and cucumbers came from our gaden....well I should say Matt's garden. I have no green thumb.  I water, that's pretty much it haha. This salad was the perfect side to our chicken fajitas.

Tomorrow I have 6 miles on my schedule!! Starting to get into some higher mileage. I'm hoping the heat doesn't get to me too much tomorrow

A New Wedding Toy

Today I woke up at 6:30am for no reason, and I was pissed. Why can't I sleep in anymore even if I go to bed late??  Well I decided to stop being pissed and take advantage of getting up early by going on my 3 mile run before the heat kicked in.  Well, I beat the heat, but not the humidity.

I was dripping in sweat by the time I finished my little 3 mile run. I stopped at our house and stripped off my shirt before walking around the street to cool down.

9.35 average pace!

When I got inside I was ready for breakfast. I've been wanting a smoothing....forever. I see them all the time on other people's blogs and think to myself, wow that looks amazing. But to this point I have been to lazy to make one for myself. Enter The Magic Bullet (wedding gift):

I mixed 1/2 frozen banana, coconut milk, spoonful of almond butter, spoonfull of cottage cheese, scoop of vanilla protein powder, shake each of cinnamon and nutmeg.

Probably my new favorite thing!

After letting the smoothy digest a big I went downstairs with Matt to do a short strength workout.

I went through this workout from Fitnessista 3 times!  My arms were burning so bad by the end. 

After showering and making a quick lunch Matt and I ended our weekend at our favorite vineyard with two new friends!

This is my happy place.  On our way home we stopped at a produce stand and I picked up a bunch of berries for more smoothies! Can't wait to make another!! So sad the weekend is done, but I'm looking forward to our Warrior Dash next Saturday!

Half Marathon Training Week 3

Monday: Yoga/Pilates

Tuesday: 6 miles

Wednesday: Volleyball

Thursday: 4 miles

Friday: Rest

Saturday: 3 miles and stregth (warrior dash)

Sunday: 3 miles