Green Lemonade

Desiring juice today, so I thought I'd try the Green Lemonade.  I was a bit skeptical about it, as the ingredients were similar to the Mean Green juice, which I did not like (I will be making it again soon to confirm.  It's Joe's favorite so I'm sure I just need to give it another shot).  A friend of mine made lemonade this morning and that sounded good, so I was hoping the lemon part would save the day.

It did!  It's not sweet but I like it :o).  It has a nice clear consistency and the greens are prevalent but not overpowering; just enough to still taste the lemon.  I looked back at the Mean Green juice.  This recipe only adds spinach and subtracts ginger, half a cucumber, and an apple, so not quite sure how I'm enjoying it more.  I'll admit my apple was ginormous so maybe that's the difference.  Anyway this was "good."  Nice and clean.  Will have this one again.

Spiced Peach Pear Juice

I saw this recipe on facebook the other day and just thought it looked heavenly!  I picked up the ingredients on my grocery run yesterday.  Unfortunately I couldn't find peaches so I substituted nectarines.  And I opted to skip the clove powder as it was almost $5 a jar!  Good thing because as I started typing this I realized I forgot to add all the spices lol.  Anyway this one is pretty good.  It tastes a lot like my favorite carrot juice recipe, but sweeter.  I'm sure the spices add a nice touch so I'll have to remember to throw those in next time.

You are what you eat. I eat what I love. Thus I am what I love :o)

My friend and I successfully completed a full week of clean eating (the week ends at 2:00 pm Friday).  The most significant difference I noticed was my energy level.  Even with daylight savings time, I found myself waking up alert and ready to start the day.  This energy seemed to last the entire day.  Normally I'm beat by the end of the day and barely have the motivation to eat dinner.  I was still tired in the evenings, but not so tired that I couldn't talk myself into doing my night time tasks.  I could definitely feel a positive change.  I think it's important to note the positive changes you feel by healthy diet and exercise habits, not just what you see.  It's easy to focus on pounds lost and waist sizes, but if you focus on healthy choices and the instant benefits that come along, it's easier to stick to it while maintaining your sanity.  I think it creates a healthier outlook too.  Remember it's a journey, not a destination.  Thinking about it this way helps us create healthy, lasting lifestyle changes.

One way to make health changes permanent is to make sure the changes are sustainable.  Before starting a new routine we should ask ourselves, is this something I can do long term?  If the answer is no, we should probably think about finding another way to accomplish our goals.  It's great to have the motivation to work out twice a day, and of course we'll get the results we want more quickly.  But if we can't sustain that level of activity and revert back to old habits, we'll soon find ourselves back at our beginning body fat percentage, if not higher.  A better plan is to do things in moderation.  Aim to work out twice a day twice a week, or everyday for a week every two months.  This is much easier (mentally) to maintain :o).  This is the reason my clean eating goals do not include weekends lol. (In addition there is lots of research about spiking your metabolism with so-called "cheat meals."  Again the important thing is moderation.  We want to spike it, not send it off the page lol).

So several times last week my friend and I pondered over (fantasized about) what we would eat at the end of the week.  I love cheese so I knew my meal would be something cheesy lol.  The other weekend another friend of mine invited me to go to Mondola's.  It was my first time there, but I settled on ordering margherita pizza and IT. WAS. DE. LICIOUS!!  I decided that in breaking my "fast", I would have it again.  But then I had a better idea.  I decided to make it.  I once heard someone say that a good rule of thumb is to only eat junk food as often as your willing to make it :o).  Most of us would be fitness models if we stuck to that.

A perfectly peeled tomato.  Trickier than it looks!

I was a little nervous about trying to reproduce something so divine, but my recipe was simple enough (read: < $$$).  It called for crust, crushed tomatoes, olive oil, basil, and cheese.  I did not have the ambition to make the crust (as I child I baked a lot so I have enough experience to know that it can be difficult and that I'm out of practice lol), but I did want to "make" my own crushed tomatoes rather than buying canned.  This is more complicated than you might think.  You can't just mash up tomatoes, but instead you have to first peel them and then cook them til they are soft enough to be mashed.  I also seasoned them with garlic and herbs since this would essentially be the pizza sauce.

Fresh pizza sauce (Check out my running band on the counter! You might be a runner if... lol)

The most expensive part of the recipe was the cheese.  In addition to Mozzarella, it called for Parmigiano-Reggiano, and the cheapest wedge I could find was still over $6!  Total ingredients came to about $13.  This is about what I would have paid if I had just gone to Mondola's, but of course I have ingredients left over and things are always healthier when you (well, when I) make them at home.

Anyway the pizza turned out great!  I was completely satisfied, though I will get the mozzarella sliced a little thinner next time since it didn't spread as much as I thought it would.  It's been seven days since I ate in a restaurant.  Can I go seven more??

Two stomachs are better than one

What's harder than maintaining a workout routine?  Regularly eating healthy!  My eating has slowly fallen off (as is typical with marathon training), and I've recently found myself craving sweet treats, potato chips, and a gazillion other things that do not keep my body healthy.

You are what you eat and eating good makes me feel great.  Eating junk makes me feel terrible (physically).  This is usually enough to keep me eating a mostly balanced diet.  However, every now and then I eat junk, and then eat more, and then more, until I become so used to feeling crappy that I forget what "great" feels like.  I start craving the junk.  When this happens I make an effort to hit the restart button.  Eat clean until eating bad feels bad again.

I possess the self discipline to make a choice to eat well (though sometimes encouraged by upcoming beach vacations lol), but those first few days are always tough.  When I start craving my junk on day 1, it's easy to give into temptation with the decision to "start tomorrow."  And its easy to put "tomorrow" off for weeks.  But this week I've found a secret weapon: an eating buddy!

I decided I would start my clean eating this Monday (did you know you are more likely to stick to a routine if you start on a Monday?) after a very long week and a weekend that was too short.  I picked up some groceries on Sunday and set myself up for a good day.  Then I realized how beneficial it would be to have a friend eat clean with me.  I suggested this to one of my buddies, who surprisingly was enthusiastic and agreed to do it with me.  Three days in, and we have both been successful in sticking to it.  Significant, because the first three days are always hardest for me.  The reset button has been pushed.

Most people understand the benefits of a work out buddy, but I'm discovering the benefits of an eating buddy:

1. you have someone to hold you accountable; you have to start today because you and your buddy said you'd start today
2. you automatically have someone to exchange recipes with
3. you have a friend to keep you motivated; each partner can use the other's momentum
4. you can do it without being in the same place; with technology it's easy to share what you're trying and what's working for you
5. you have someone to share your successes (and temptations) with

Never say diet diet alone. :o)

Reestablishing habits

One negative of marathon training is that it takes me out of my normal routine.  I am a creature of habit.  I like discipline.  I enjoy starting my day the same way Monday-Friday: in the gym.  For me, marathon training is too taxing on the body to maintain this level of activity.  I have experimented a bit with the workouts I can include, but I usually reduce my weight training to 2-3 times a week.  The nice thing about my gym is that we workout in group classes, which facilitates keeping a schedule/routine.  There is no sleeping in 15 more minutes unless you want to be 15 minutes late.  Running gives me some undesirable flexibility.  Regarding diet, marathoning requires a significant increase in carb intake.  Not only do I need carbs to fuel all of the running, I develop what is at times an insatiable hunger and eat just about everything in sight.  Needless to say I am completely out of routine right now.

So today, I begin the journey back to my old habits.  A friend of mine had a really good week last week with his diet and exercise and this week I hope to join him in his success.  Last week I got an email with some guidelines for healthy eating.  It was good timing for a reminder of simple health "rules" to live by.  The two that are most important for me are staying hydrated and eliminating white sugar (and white salt and white flour).  To me the transition is the hardest part so I'm starting small working one these two things alone.

I actually have decided that my marathon season is not over :o) so I hope to incorporate a healthier diet into my training for the next couple of months.

Marathon week

I think this is the first time I have felt this excited about a full marathon.  This will be my fourth and I am really looking forward to it.  All of the marathons (fulls and halves) that I have run have been in other cities.  I have shied away from the Austin marathon because it is notoriously hilly and 26.2 miles is hard enough without obstacles.  This season I decided I would first train for the Dallas marathon so that my endurance would already be built up and the hills would be less painful.  This kind of worked lol.  I didn't train the best going into Dallas and during that race I "only" made it to mile 15 before I needed a walk break (the first time I did Dallas I was able to make it to mile 19).  Nonetheless, a 26.2 mile "training run" is under my belt.

What has really helped me mentally is the run my group did a few weeks back.  It was a 20 mile run but most of it was on the course route.  We ran from north Austin through downtown and back so the hills were on the back end of the run.  They were tough (and abundant) but actually not too bad.  The good thing is that during the actual race they are on the front end of the race so they should be even  "easier."  The last 6.2 miles of the race (bka the "second half") is downhill.  This is perfect :o).

What's also really cool is that since I live here, I truly get a perception of how far we're going.  When I ran Dallas my friend told me she couldn't believe I ran "all the way out there."  I'm familiar with the Dallas area, but I really understood what she meant after that training run.  I normally drive from North Austin to the lake here to do my long runs.  That day I ran there.  It was a phenomenal feeling.

I've been keeping an eye on the weather.  So far I'm seeing low of 55ish, high of 65ish.  This is a bit warm for a runner.  In Austin, the lows occur around 6 am so the lower the low, the better.  It's amazing what a difference a few degrees makes.  My marathon PR is 4:33 and I had on a hat, jacket, gloves, and hand warmers that day.  But I am grateful none of the predicted race day temps start with 7 :o).

Can't wait for Sunday!

We do it because it's hard :o)

We don't do it because it's easy, we do it because it's hard.  I thought this just came to me in a dream but apparently JFK just speaks to me in my delirium of long runs, lol:

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." ~JFK

Today I ran with my run group for the first time in a long time.  Over the past few weeks, my travel schedule has been a bit hectic so I've been out of town on the weekends, I've been sick, and I've been out late Saturday nights (read: still drunk Sunday morning).  The Houston half rejuvenated me a bit, so I was determined to run with the group today.  I'm so glad I did.  I ran over 19.5 miles and as always it was so much easier because of them.

My run group bright and early!

For my first marathon I was so excited about accomplishing my marathon goal that the increasing mileage itself was enough to stay motivated.  How exciting to go longer than I'd ever gone before every weekend.  I had to take walk breaks sometimes, which was new for me, but I was able to complete 16 miles without stopping and that was enough to get through the race with a good time.  The second marathon, I realized I was lacking in the motivation department.  I needed some help.  I talked to my runner friend about how to find a running partner (she doesn't run the same pace that I do) and she directed me to two FREE running groups in Austin.  I started running with one of them last year (Hill Country Running Co).

I've found that run groups have some advantages and disadvantages.  When I first joined my group my biggest worry was the amount of stopping we did.  On my solo long runs, I carry a water pack of some sort because I have to in order to have water.  The run group sets up water along the course, so you don't run on the go, you stop at the water stations and refuel.  People tend to stop and chat and catch their breath for a minute, which I wasn't used to doing.  In the races I run through the water stations, drinking as I go, for as long as I can, so mentally it's nice to do the training runs without stopping too.  Not going to happen on a group run.  The good thing is you don't have to carry water :o).

Another disadvantage is pace.  On a solo run you run however fast or slow you feel like running.  If I want to slow down, I slow down.  If I want to push my pace, I do.  I walk when I want to walk, and I stop when I want to stop.  When you run with a group (or a partner), you have to think about other people.  I will usually break off and just finish at the end, but those tough middle miles, you have to wait for (or try not to slow down) other runners.  It's a courtesy thing.  There are days where you will feel like you can't go any faster and your partners will help you through.  So on the days you're feeling strong it just feels right to return the favor.  Fortunately the long runs are more about distance than pace, so often I'm more happy to get the miles in comfortably (relatively speaking) than I am worried about pace.  I'd rather slow down or speed up a little and run 20 miles with a group than trudge through them alone.

The distance covered can be an issue too.  I usually follow training plans I find online even though the group has it's own training plan.  This is largely because the group training is slightly aggressive in my opinion and I am generally not ready to run the distances they run initially.  They also build up their distance faster than I like to (I prefer smaller jumps in the long run mileage from week to week).  So sometimes the group is running 20 miles but I'm only ready to run 14.  I've been able to work around this by running with the half marathoners in the early runs when my mileage is closer to theirs.  In the later runs, I usually start with them and then add on a few miles to cover the additional distance I need to.  I may have to run by myself for 5-10 miles but it's better than running alone for the entire thing.

Start time is a good thing and a bad thing.  The group starts between 6:30 and 7:00 am.  I like to go out so in previous years I wouldn't drink on Saturday nights (or I'd stop drinking by 7:00 pm or so).  This was kind of a drag, especially when my partner was in town.  Last night I went to a friend's birthday party.  I had one drink and came home early.  So the group does impact your Saturday night if you tend to drink or stay out late.  The good thing is, because we start out so early, we finish early.  During the week, I sometimes put off running for so long that I don't finish my running (and start my day) til mid morning.  As the long run mileage increases it's really nice to be forced to get up and get it going.  We're usually done by noon.  In the warmer months this is especially nice since we mostly avoid the direct sun and the hottest part of the day.

Overall run groups are great.  They make 20 miles a little easier less hard :o).