Oktoberfest in the Smokies

Hi! I’m happy to report that day 2 and 3 of our vacation have gone much more smoothly than the first day.

Yesterday we road the Sky Tram to Ober Gatlinburg where they were having the last day of their Oktoberfest celebration. Although I’m terrified of heights (and pretty much everything else) it was a beautiful view.

We spent the day playing miniature golf, running through a huge maze, riding rides and eating funnel cakes and fudge.

The fudge, o.m.g, the fudge.

How do you make a decision like that?

The food was also amazing! I’m a sucker for German food, but I decided to stay strong on my veggie kick and order a roasted veggie sandwich instead of some of the more traditional German fare.

As you can see I temporarily forgot that German potato salad has bacon in it. Duh.

I traded it to Tim for his German Red Cabbage.
His plate incase you are interested …

A good time was had by all.

Tonight we are taking Ironman Trick or Treating downtown.

I’m actually hoping I can convince him to trade his candy in at either Earth Fare where they are giving out healthy options for trading in candy or at the dentist’s office where they are giving cash for each pound traded. We’ll see how that goes over.

Happy Halloween!

Fall Vacation 2011 – Day 1

I woke up in Fort Oglethorp, Georgia this morning. Our vacation wasn’t technically suppose to start until today, but because I had a 14 mile long run on the training schedule for this weekend we left a day early. The plan was to run at Chickamauga Battlefield and then to head to Gatlinburg for the real vacation. I was actually super stoked about running in the battlefield, everyone raves about it!

Things didn’t turn out as planned. As I reported on DailyMile …

Started off at the beginning of the Chickamauga Half Marathon course, but I could never get my Garmin to follow the route so I realized very quickly that I didn’t even know which direction to go. Called Tim to bring me the map, thought I figured it out and started again. It started raining on me hard almost immediately. There was lots of traffic on the windy road and I was afraid I was going to get hit by a car so I ended up running in the grass and getting my feet soaking wet. Then I was afraid I was going to trip and fall into traffic … a few minutes later after getting chased by a dog and caught in a rainstorm I also ended up on the interstate somehow. Finally decided to give up and call it quits. Called Tim to come pick me up, in the meantime a creepy looking guy stopped on the interstate and told me that the “lord instructed him to bring me an umbrella”. I tried to explain to him that I was already soaking wet and the rain was the least of my worries, but he insisted. All of this happened within 1.75 miles. It ended in lots of tears.

Got back to the hotel and something in me just wouldn’t let me quit. I ended up running the last 12.25 miles on the treadmill in the hotel gym. It was an absolute struggle. I had to think every positive and reassuring thought about myself that I could muster. At one point I even repeated “hardwork – dedication – hardwork – dedication” outloud for atleast 10 minutes. This was probably my toughest day so far as a runner, but it showed me what I’m made of and I’m grateful for that.

I tried my best to put the run behind me and enjoy the start of the real vacation. Before heading out of town we stopped at a great little Greek/Italian restaurant for lunch. They had an awesome salad and pizza bar.

I also discovered pickled okra. O … M .. G

I spent most of my day staring out the window of the car. Dreary, rainy and miserable … all day.

Once we finally made it to Gatlinburg we decided to pick up some things to make dinner at our cabin since we had already eaten lunch out. The cabin has a big nice gas grill on the porch by the hot tub. I envisioned an evening of grilling, hot tubbin’ and beer drinking. So far I’m 2 for 3. Still gotta make it to the hot tub.

We made grilled portobello burgers, grilled asparagus and homemade guacamole. Soooo good!

Atleast as good as any real burger I’ve ever eaten and probably better.

Before we made it to the cabin I had something happen that hasn’t happened to me in several years. I had a STRAIGHT UP panic attack. I had a flashback of driving here 2 years ago and sliding all over the road when it was raining and we were trying to go up the mountain. Of course it was raining again today. I started crying as soon as I thought about it. I honestly felt like I was going to vomit I was so scared. I considered getting out of the car and walking up the moutain carrying my 3.5 year old son, in the rain. Tim can figure out his way up himself. Ha!

Anyway … obviously I lived. And I didn’t have to walk. I just closed my eyes and held on for dear life. Good job husband for not getting me kilt today.

Now I think I hear that hot tub calling my name. Here’s hoping day 2 goes more smoothly.

Runners VS Joggers

That is all.

 

 

Longest Long Run Yet, 17 Miles

In the past 24 hours, I’ve done two things that scare me. Can you guess the first one?

I did yoga in the park! My good friend Marsha’s yoga studio held a free sunset session in the Shakespeare park in Montgomery yesterday afternoon. I’ve been trying out some yoga at home on DVDs and really enjoy it so Marsha talked me in to stepping it up a little bit and going to a live session. Loved it!

This morning I woke up to face my longest attempt at a long run ever. My training scheduled called for 16.5 miles, but I’ve always been a stickler about whole numbers so I called it 17.

I met some running buddies at the Shakespeare park this morning at 0:dark:30 to get started.

Notice the darkness surrounding us.

I would have never dreamed that I would be out running before the sun came up.

Each of us had our own distances and paces to run today, so we didn’t stay together long but we followed the same general route. Barbara (the one in the pink) and I set out slower than the rest to pace ourselves for our distance. We followed the faster runners through an amazing route where we saw beautiful scenery, sheep in the field with shepherd dogs, fog hanging over a pond with a canoe overturned nearby … just beautiful quiet peaceful roads. We then crossed over into a business area and did a big loop around our outdoor mall.

Barbara and I stopped at McDonalds around the 7.5 mile mark to take a Gu, Salt tab and use the restroom before we got going again.

At mile 11 Barbara had a sudden sharp pain in her hamstring that would not allow her to continue. She insisted I go ahead and let her walk the rest of the way back. I reluctantly agreed after I had made several phone calls to find her some help and couldn’t get anyone on the phone. I figured I could run back as fast as I could and come get her with my car. Luckily one of our runner buddies (Duane) that we started the run with had a sixth sense to check on us and drove by shortly after Barbara’s injury occurred.

I ran 3 more miles alone. Then I got lost. Really lost.

I stopped and stood on the street corner trying to navigate my way back to the park with my phone when Drew appeared out of nowhere. These men sure saved the day today. I ran the final 3 miles back to the park with Drew … at more his pace than mine, to finish out the 17 total.

Splits were:

9:36 – 9:02 – 9:08 – 9:11 – 9:05 – 9:05 – 9:14 – 9:26 – 9:25 – 9:31 – 9:21 – 9:38 – 9:00 – 8:46 – 8:12 – 8:19 – 8:16

The whole experience other than Barb’s injury was fantastic! I’ve never felt stronger or more accomplished than I did today. I’m going to kick that marathon’s ass!

The whole group met back up at the park and then Barb, Duane and I headed off to Starbucks.

When I got back home I was so hungry I could have gnawed my arm off. I created some strange concoction that actually turned out quite well. I call it Quinoa Crusted Veggie Quiche.

I had about a cup of cooked quinoa left in the fridge which I layered in the bottom of a baking dish:

Topped it with some sautéed veggies (onions, mushrooms and zucchini)  and then poured 6 beaten eggs over the top …

Baked it in the oven at 350 for about 20-25 minutes and topped with cheese.

I was surprised at how well the quinoa stayed together as a crust. I tried to get a good pic of the crust …

Time for some more yoga stretches before heading off for work tonight.

Reassess the Situation

Thank goodness my child has learned to play Wii Resort (the $75 reward for pooping in the potty at the movie theater if you’ll recall) by himself so that I can have about an hour of uninterrupted time to be productive update my blog.

I really don’t like talking about being on a diet anymore on my blog, which is odd considering that’s the way it started originally. When I look back at my first posts I’m actually kind of disgusted with it. I ate way too much processed, unnatural food and called it healthy for the whole world to see. (So please kindly ignore all posts pre-2010). By educating myself through books and films such as Food Inc., Forks Over Knives, and Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, I now know that my way of looking at food was wrong. I don’t mean just in a vegetarian vs. non-vegetarian sense, but more in a “what foods provide the most healthy nutrition for my body and will fuel it best?” kind of way.

I used to truly believe that I was eating healthy when I ate fat free hotdogs with 100 calorie bun, baked potato chips and pudding pack for lunch everyday. Now I know better.

Aaaaaanywho … I bring this up because I’m about 10 pounds over the weight I’d like to be right now. I’m training for a marathon and I feel like I’ll feel better and lighter if I lose 10-15 pounds. Up until this point I would say that my main focus has been to maintain my current weight. Now that I’m starting to try to lose again I need to reassess the situation. I want to focus on maximizing the nutrition in my calories instead of eating the most amount of food for the lowest amount of calories like I did before.

This morning I spent some time thinking about my eating and realized what my two pitfalls are:
1. Alcohol
2. Peanut Butter.

I just have no willpower or moderation when it comes to these 2 things.

For this reason I have decided that I’m going to limit myself to only eating peanut butter if its measured out and within my calorie goal for the day. No more after dinner peanut butter spoons for me!

Also I’m cutting out the alcohol for a week until we go on vacation and then after vacation I’ll reassess again, but I’m thinking I’ll try to go until my birthday which is 11/21.

I don’t want to be totally unrealistic so I set short attainable goals and specifics. Once I reach those goals, I’ll reassess again.

Today’s eats have included:

Green Monster for breakfast which includes 1 cup Almond Milk, 1 banana, 2 big handfuls of spinach and a scoop of Amazing Grass Green Superfood.

I picked up this snack mix at TJ Maxx today. It includes soy beans, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.

I could write a whole blog about my love for TJ Maxx, but I’ll spare you. But the picture speaks for itself.

Lunch was super simple:

1 cup of cooked quinoa topped with Hoppin’ John (tomatoes, blackeye peas, onions and jalapenos) and a side of veggies.

Now I’m off to try something new that kind of scares me. You’ll hear about it soon.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

I have a love/hate relationship with Costco.

They have the most awesome … well awesome everything really. But I might as well hand over $200 as soon as I walk through the doors.

Sometimes its a necessary evil when you have basically no food in the house and get to the point that you are sniffing leftovers that you don’t even remember making to see if they are still edible.

I stocked up on basically everything today.

Fish sticks (for Lincoln)	Veggie Straws	String cheese
Lots of bananas	Almond milk	Hoagie rolls
Greek yogurt	Peanut Butter	Brown Rice
Asparagus	Spinach	Okra

Portobello mushrooms	Naked Smoothies	Spinach Nuggets
Stirfry Sauce	Tofu	Coconut Milk
Avocado	Apples	2 Bottles of Wine

Whew!

Sounds like a lot of really random things that don’t really go together. I made a list on my handy dandy refrigerator board to remind myself what these ingredients are intended for.

You get a bonus fat pic of me too. Ugh, look … I have no neck.

The original plan was to make Portobello Po’boys for dinner tonight. After cleaning the house for 3 hours, 45 minutes on the elliptical, and more time than I’m willing to admit working on making a meal plan for the week, cleaning out the fridge and grocery shopping … it just wasn’t happening.

I’m ashamed to say I resorted to this …

Oh well, you win some you lose some.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need another glass of wine.

Midweek Runs & New New Shoes

I always think its crazy how I can look forward to a 12, 15, 16 mile run on the weekend and absolutely dread a 5 mile run during the week. I can feel completely awesome while running for over 2 hours, but running for 40 minutes can do me in. I’ve always thought it was strange how our mental state seems to affect our physical ability.

Yesterday I literally DREADED my 5 mile run although its the shortest run I’ll be doing for quite some time now. But I realized the reason is because I had to do it on a treadmill due to childcare issues and I wasn’t happy with the new shoes I bought that I was going to have to wear.

 
I really wanted to like these new Newton’s, and I did at first. They rubbed a pretty bad blister on my foot during my 15 mile run last Saturday, but I chalked it up to being new shoes and a long run. I wore them a few more times and finally realized that the left shoe fit perfectly while the right shoe was too small. And yes, they were both the same size, which I guess can only mean that my right foot is better than my left.

I tried on a bigger size and it was too big. So smaller size too small, bigger size too big.

Bye bye sexy Newton’s. It was nice while it lasted.

Back to the tried and true.

 
Despite my shoe issues, I still knocked out a solid 8 mile run this morning. I had to run it in my old Brooks, which I now know where 1/2 a size too small for me and causing some foot, leg and knee issues.

It was pretty chilly and windy this morning in central Alabama, I nearly froze the first mile. After about 10 minutes I warmed up and it felt really great. There was a nice breeze that was just right, but every now and then I’d get a gust that made me feel like I wasn’t even moving forward. All in all, not a bad run aside from the shitty shoes.

Lunch was hearty and warming. I baked a potato and then topped it with …

  
Homemade eggplant and tomato sauce (its under there, I promise) and lentils.

Sautéed onions and mushrooms.

I tried to stop there and make it a vegan meal, but I just couldn’t control myself.

And …

Cheese.

Now I’m going to try fit in a few yoga stretches before heading off to work tonight.

A Day Full of Fail

Bleh.

Normally I cook some really good things, but today has just been a big fat fail all the way around. I love to try new things and I’ve been really doing good eating clean vegetarian foods lately. I’ve been looking forward to making this recipe for several days …

(Source)

Eggplant “Meat”balls.

Backing up though …

Since the meatballs were going to be a fairly time consuming dinner to cook I wanted to keep lunch simple. I had a can of Amy’s black bean soup in the pantry that I’ve been needing to eat. I thought pumpkin muffins would go well with them. I had a great pumpkin and black bean soup once, I guess that’s where the connection came from.

I’ll spare you the recipe because they turned out like this …

Caved in and dense. Bleck.

So then I spent 2 hours baking eggplant and making “meatball”.

It took so much bread to make the eggplant stick together they just taste like bread balls.

I guess I’ll be eating noodles and sauce.

The good news is that I convinced the kid that the balls were hush puppies and he’s all about it! Atleast I don’t have to feed them to my dogs now.

Chickpea Curry Recipe

I found this recipe on   Pinterest and thought it would make a great, quick recipe for a busy (or lazy) night. Aside from the 45 minutes it takes to make brown rice which is of course almost completely hands-off, its really quick and simple.

I made the recipe even more simple to make by buying a Red Curry Paste packet at the grocery store, made by A Taste of Thai and it is uses natural ingredients. Nothing funky in the ingredients list that I didn’t recognize.

I guess you could say the recipe was just inspiration because I also used coconut milk instead of yogurt as a base for the curry sauce.

1. Chop bell pepper and carrot.
2. Toss chopped veggies, drained chickpeas and a cup of soy yogurt in a post.
3. Mix in a spoonful of curry powder and a sprinkle of garlic powder.
4. Cook until soft.
5. Serve on top of rice.
6. Munch

Delish and vegan.

Not bad at all for my first time cooking curry. It actually reminded me of my most favorite dish at my most favorite restaurant …

Massaman Curry at Surin West in Birmingham.

Next time I’ll slice some avocado on top of the Chickpea Curry. That would have made it even more awesome.

I spent most of the afternoon cleaning my house, which I propose should count as crosstraining, but I couldn’t completely convince myself so I headed to the gym for a quick elliptical session to fulfill my crosstraining obligation for my marathon training schedule.

Now its time to curl up on the couch with my new UK version of Runner’s World and watch Spirit of the Marathon. As you can tell, I’m addicted.

Marathon Training

I did something crazy this morning. I registered for a freaking marathon. That is 8 freaking weeks away! Freak, freak, freak.

Aaaaaaaaaaah.

I semi-decided last Saturday that I would do the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, Alabama on December 10th. Actually the idea didn’t sound good to me at all when it was first presented, but I succumbed (succame? LOL) to peer pressure.

I am going to base my training off of Hal Higdon’s Novice 2 Marathon training plan. Since the race is only 8 weeks away I’m picking up the training there. Today called for a 15 mile run.

Got it done without incident, unless you count the little blister on my right foot and the fact that I almost got creamed by a couple buses.

Barbara and I after 15 miles

We had a quick breakfast at our favorite post-run spot, The Deli at Alley Station. I really should have taken a pic of that, I ordered hashbrowns and got what seemed to be about a quarter size amount. I could have eaten atleast 4 times that much. It was pretty humorous at the time.

Since I left the restaurant still hungry I definitely needed a filling lunch.

Mmmm, sushi!

I’ve been doing pretty good on my veg kick lately and wanted to stick to it so I got a mixed vegetable roll. I’m pretty sure it contained cucumber, something pickled (maybe asparagus) and egg. It was super good, but what isn’t with the right amount of soy/wasabi?

The hubby and I also split some Tofu Pad Thai and Cashew Vegetables.

Two birthday parties later and I’m pretty much pooped. As a matter of fact I can’t seem to remove myself from this chair. Maybe my house will clean itself and my dinner will cook itself … one can dream.