Comments (24)

By kilax, March 3, 2013 5:09 pm

Highlight of the Week: Seeing that my body has responded well to increased mileage – no aches or pains!

Monday | February 25, 2013: 6 m run + 5 m run (w/Anne and Sara)
Loc: hood, Temp: 18°/18°, Time: 1:00:40, Pace: 10:07 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: slow and steady
Loc: Vernon Hills, Temp: 36°/34°, Time: 58:52, Pace: 11:46 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: tired-o
Tuesday | February 26, 2013: 15 m run
Loc: hood, Temp: 32°/31°, Time: 2:20:07, Pace: 9:21 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: tired from no sleep
Wednesday | February 27, 2013: strength class + 3.1 m run (w/Ed)
Strength: circuit + plyo, Difficulty: medium, Felt: strong
Loc: Grayslake, Temp: 31°/32°, Time: 27:56, Pace: 9:01 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: great
Thursday | February 28, 2013: 11.15 m run
Loc: hood, Temp: 31°/31°, Time: 1:58:50, Pace: 10:40 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: slow in the snow + slush
Friday | March 1, 2013: 6.75 m run (5.5 w/Abbi!)
Loc: Chicago Lakefront Trail, Temp: 28°, Time: 49:34, Pace: 9:01, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: good
Saturday | March 2, 2013: rest
Sunday | March 3, 2013: 5 m run inlc. 6×3:00 + strength (w/Steven!)
Loc: hood, Temp: 29°/31°, Time: 44:10, Pace: 8:50 avg, Difficulty: easy/medium, Felt: meh
Strength: dumbbells, Difficulty: easy, Felt: schweaty

Notes:

• Ignore the blatant over training that is the first four days of the week. I was just trying to achieve that 200 mile month. 
• My energy bubble finally burst Friday night. The early mornings, long miles and poor diet finally caught up with me, and I was a zombie at 6:00 pm Friday night. I could barely keep my eyes open!
• Logic says to sleep more, but I’m having issues with that. And, I am all out of sorts when I don’t get my morning run in. Like bigtime cranky biotch. So, I’ll pay attention to this and see how it goes. 
• As much as I love those morning runs though, I am still adjusting to figuring out how much I should eat the rest of the day. I tend to get more snacky if I run first thing in the am – anyone else this way?
• I’ll probably write more about this, but feeling good is so much better than eating junk and feeling like crap. I just need to remember that. Eating a few junky things really throws me off for a few days, and that happened to me at the end of this week. 
• I ran in the sun on Sunday and it felt so weird. I think I am so used to the dark and/or gloomy skies that I prefer those. I actually said something to Abbi during our Friday run about how I liked how gloomy it was, and I think she thought I was nutso. I think I just don’t want to accept that spring is on the way. I’m struggling with it. 

Comments (39)

By kilax, March 2, 2013 10:37 am

In January Steven and I both had potlucks to go to on the same day. We decided to make one thing that we could both bring – vegan (soy-based) meatballs.*

Steven was taking his meatballs to a potluck for vegans. I was taking mine to a potluck for a book club, where the members had a myriad of diets – gluten-free, soy-free, vegetarian, vegan, and a bunch of others that I can’t recall. 

The day before the event, I went to the grocery store searching for BBQ sauce and grape jelly* that didn’t have sugar in it or any “natural flavors.” Steven was really concerned about making sure the meatballs were truly vegan – and most sugar isn’t because it is processed on bone char. Anyway, I found acceptable BBQ sauce and grape jelly, and we were able to share the truly vegan “meatballs.”

So what is the point of that story? Well, I want to share what kind of vegan I am. I am vegan for animals rights issues. Not for health, environment, and so on. Yes, those are nice benefits, but I don’t eat animal products because I have a deep love for animals, that honestly, the intensity of sometimes scares me.

But with all that being said. I am a “do the best I can” vegan. I am not going to sweat it if my sugar is not vegan. I try my hardest to eat vegan at home, and when I go out, but I am just going to assume that sometimes I will consume dairy/eggs by accident. Note: I would NOT be happy to find out someone tricked me in to eating animal flesh. Or for that matter, that someone told me something was vegan when they blatantly knew it wasn’t.

When I was in NYC, I went to a restaurant with a few vegan items on the menu. 

The food was so good, I was ordering a lot, and decided to try a vegan dessert the waitress recommended. 

When the chef came out to ask how the meal was I told her I was astonished she was able to make that dessert vegan. She told me it wasn’t vegan. The waitress had switched gluten-free with vegan, in her mind (I think).

Dammit.

But! Oh well. What can I do? No point in getting upset about it. 

Would that have upset you?

It’s not ideal, but what am I going to do? I take a risk of eating non-vegan things when I go out, and I don’t want to be a hermit, so I am going to eat out. 

The thing is, I know vegans have a reputation for being super pushy and for freaking out about things like this. We aren’t all that way (although, I have met many who are, unfortunately). 

*I was ASTONISHED to find out meatball sauce has grape jelly in it!!!

Comments (57)

By kilax, March 1, 2013 5:51 am

Not your typical fluffy FQ!!!

Do you ever feel like you are being judged for how you spend your time? Do you ever catch yourself judging others for how they spend their time?!

Yes and yes.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I hope this post doesn’t come off as offensive, but I’ve gotta say it.

I am young, married, with no children and a somewhat flexible work schedule, and I often find myself feeling that my day is “not my own.” That I don’t get to do what I please, as much as I’d like.

I really think it’s mostly* okay to feel this way sometimes. I’m sure we all have a list of daily “to-dos” that we’re kind of meh about.

But I think that because I fit in a lot of workouts and make time to travel/see my friends/have fun, it appears that I have a ton of free time to do whatever I want. I don’t. I am busy too. Even though I don’t have kids/have to commute every day/only work three jobs/etc., I am a person with a very busy day. And a person who doesn’t know how to relax, and fills up their free time.

Today’s schedule – 5:00 am train to city for run date, study on train ride home, errands, appointments, Fake Meats work, more studying… blah blah blah.

I really liked Jillian’s post earlier this week about making time to workout. Jillian works her arse off at two jobs and still makes the time to exercise. She does seize the day to make it work for her. She doesn’t whine about her lack of free time – she figures it out.

Why am I bringing Jillian’s example up? Well, with how dang busy she is, she is a prime candidate for bemoaning her lack of free time and that of others, and just giving up. But she doesn’t.

And it’s not just about making time for exercise! I’m not that short-sighted, ha ha. It’s about making time for what you need/want. We all have different interests we want to pursue, and thats how it should be.

How it should NOT be is with all the outside judgement of what you do and how much time you spend doing it.** You don’t have to work to be busy. You don’t have to have children. You don’t have to be married. You don’t have to commute. You get the idea!

We’re all in charge of our time, even though we have unwanted obligations in there. Maybe we could focus making our time work for us instead of thinking so much about how others spend theirs?

*I really want to write more about my bad attitude when I’m doing things I don’t want to do, but I’ll have to get in to that another day. This is already too long!
**Unless harmful to your health, making you lose all your money, harmful to others, and so on.