1 Is Better Than None?

Yeah...another not so hot week.  I don't like this theme!

Monday, February 4 - Wednesday, February 6: Between being buried at work and feeling 'not quite right', I was a sofa spud. On a positive note, I did manage to read an entire book in one sitting. On a negative note, I ate the better part of a pound of gummy bears.

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Thursday, February 7: We got a lot of snow today.  My original intention was to go to the gym or the track, but the 2 1/2 mile drive home from work was unnerving and there was no way in hell I was driving again until the plows had a chance go through.

 I spent 45 minutes on the trainer, spinning my little heart out, and while the results were an improvement over my last trip to the 'Babe Cave', I'm still not happy.  I can't get anywhere close to where I was speed-wise on the roads last summer, much less anywhere near where I was on the trainer.  Sigh. I'll keep plugging away at it, but it's getting frustrating to see such small improvements.  I need some dramatic results!

This is NOT the kind of dramatic results I'm looking for!

 Friday, February 8: Mr. Fix-It's birthday was this weekend, so a party was in order!  There was homemade authentic Mexican food (which I was too busy shoving down my throat to bother taking pictures), beer, sledding, and a baby wearing bunny slippers!

If you think the slippers are adorable, you should have seen the baby that was wearing them!

Saturday, February 9: The roads were finally decent enough to make the 45 minute drive to the nearest outlet mall and return a few things, so we did - just under the 90 day return window!

Sunday, February 10: It was pouring rain all day - leading to shitty, icy roads. My house was a train-wreck. I cleaned. I organized. I did laundry. I didn't work out. *slaps own hand*

This not working out thing is getting old. Really old.

It Was The %*#!@%$ Treadmill!

What a strange week it's been weather-wise.  We went from a high temperature of 59 on Tuesday, to a combination rain/snow storm on Wednesday, and then into a deep freeze for the rest of the week!  I don't know about you, but I think Mother Nature may be a little out of whack these days!

Monday, January 28: It was in the low 40's when we got home from work, so Mr. R&R and I decided to take a walk - and stop for dinner at one of our favorite local pubs.  I had the Santa Fe Grilled Chicken Sandwich (looked like the picture below except chicken instead of a burger) and a Stella.  Yum!

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 Tuesday, January 29: When you live in Wisconsin and it's 59 degrees in January, you move heaven and earth to leave work early so you can enjoy it - and that's exactly what I did.  I got home from work and threw on some running clothes.  After a not-so-brief delay while my Garmin had a temper tantrum, I headed out the door for a few miles.  It felt so good to be running outside again that I didn't even care that it was pouring rain and I was getting soaked.  You know what felt even better?  Figuring out: It's not me! It's the %*#!@%$ treadmill!  My pace, while not stellar, was so much better than what I've been putting up on the treadmill.  Seeing my pace on the road made me feel like I'm not quite as out of shape as I thought, so that was encouraging.

Wednesday, January 30: The original plan for today was to hit The Track after work, but a couple inches of snow and some evil traffic changed my plan to a trainer ride instead.  Instead of my usual YouTube video of choice, I popped an old DVD to keep me entertained for about 30 minutes.  By the time I was done with my ride, the movie had reached a critical point, so I tacked on 10 minutes of core work so I could keep watching.  If you've never seen Spirit of the Marathon, I can't say enough good things about it - and I hear they're making a sequel! (#RunningNerd)

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Thursday, January 31: Burned out legs = Rest Day

Friday, February 1: First, I was going to go to the pool, but then it was 6 degrees outside with a windchill of -15. The thought of going outside with wet hair post-swim sounded like a form of torture, so I decided that The Track sounded like a better plan.  Of course this meant stopping home to change since I had swim stuff with me, not run stuff.  Bad idea.  Once I was in the toasty warm house, I didn't want to leave again, so I got a jump on cleaning up the mess that seems to invade my house between Sunday and Friday every week. Yes, I know it's a pathetic excuse. Yes, I will be keeping both swim and run stuff in my bag from now on.

Saturday, February 2: This was my planned rest day since Mr. R&R and I had plans to attack another one of our household deep cleaning/de-cluttering projects. I'm pleased to say that it was a smashing success!  Added bonus: water bottles no longer threaten to fall on my head when I open up a cabinet!

Sunday, February 3: Super Bowl Sunday!  The plan was to go to the gym before heading off to a party, but a minor planning problem found me scurrying off to the grocery store instead, but never fear; we arrived at the party bearing buffalo chicken dip and s'mores bars!

This week wasn't good, but it wasn't a total loss either.  My gym bag is now packed with both swim stuff and run stuff...and I will be working out more next week!

Cookie Craving

Last weekend I had a serious cookie craving - and my Girl Scout cookies weren't due to arrive until later in the week, so I did what any sensible woman fiending for a sugar fix would do: took stock of what was in my cabinets and prowled the depths of the interwebs  until I found a cookie recipe that contained those ingredients.  The results were buttery, chewy, cookie perfection - there were none left by Monday morning!

So without further ado, I give you:

White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies
(adapted from DulceDough.com)
Makes Around 32 Cookies

The Stuff:
3/4 cup butter - microwaved until almost melted
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar - packed
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour (plus up to an additional 1/4 cup if needed)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup white chocolate chips

The Process:
-Preheat oven to 375 degrees
-In a large bowl beat the butter and sugars together. (I used an electric mixer, but you can easily do this by hand.)
-Add egg and vanilla and beat until somewhat fluffy

-In a separate bowl, use a fork to combine flour, baking soda, and salt evenly

-Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Mix thoroughly until you have something that resembles cookie dough.

-Stir in cranberries and white chocolate chips - you will get an arm workout doing this!

-If the dough is too soft (which is more likely if you used an electric mixer), add up to another 1/4 cup of flour until it holds together when scooped into a tablespoon.

-Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto an un-greased cookie sheet; leaving approximately 2 inches between the dough blobs. (I managed to get 9 cookies on a standard sheet)

-Bake for approximately 10 minutes until the cookies are golden brown on top, but still a little doughy-looking in the middle.

-Remove from oven and cool on the pan for about 3 minutes before carefully transferring them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

-Wait until they're "cool enough", pour yourself a glass of milk, and enjoy!

(And if you really care about how many calories are in your cookies, I ran the recipe through the app I use to track my calories in/burned; there's approximately 128 in each one.)

It Is What It Is

This week didn't even hold a candle to last week, but like the post title says: It Is What It Is.


Monday, January 21: I swear that the universe does not want me to ride on the trainer.  I was all psyched up to ride for an hour and the following things happened:

• Every time I tried to watch a video on YouTube, my Adobe flash plug-in crashed.  After multiple attempts to fix the problem, I got annoyed with how much time I was wasting and decided to listen to one of my Spotify playlists.

No YouTube for me...and I love spinning to this video!

• Launched Spotify only to have my internet connection go down  about 2 1/2 minutes into the first song of the playlist.

No Spotify for me!

•  Got irritated and launched iTunes - which doesn't have all the songs I wanted to hear, but it did the job.  

Of course by the time I got all my technical issues sorted out, I only had about 30 minutes left to ride, so I hopped on and busted my tail.  When I was done, I threw in another 10-15 minutes of strength training and stretching.

Tuesday, January 22: Rest day.  I got a flu shot, made dinner, and spent the night communing with the couch - and perusing race websites as I try to figure out what races I want to do this year.

Wednesday, January 23: I was planning to try out one of the longer flows on my new yoga dvd, but then someone set me off and suddenly hard core cardio was much more appealing.  To the 'Babe Cave'!  An hour later I was a gross, sweaty, and far less irritated mess.  My bike speed is nowhere near where it was 2 months ago, but it's getting a little better every time I ride.

Not nearly as cool as the Bat Cave, but it's all mine!

 Thursday, January 24: I looked at my schedule for the upcoming weekend and realized that I had two choices: A) Grocery shop tonight or B) Fight the Saturday crowds at the grocery store.  If you've been hanging around here for any length of time, you know that I loathe the grocery store in general, but find it even more loathsome when it's crowded, so off to the store I went.  By the time I made it home, purged a few lurking science experiments from the refrigerator and got everything put away, it was late and a desire for dinner beat out the desire to sweat.  On a positive note, my refrigerator and freezer are well stocked for a while - and I made cookies (which I promptly ate 4 of...damn)!

Friday, January 25: Mr. R&R and I had dinner plans with Maverick and Goose tonight, so I worked through lunch, planning on a quick change in my office, driving straight to The Track after work and cramming in a few quick miles before making a mad dash home to shower and get to the restaurant on time.  Of course, as soon as I shut down my computer my office phone started ringing - resulting in me being there for another half an hour - and my workout plans going out the window.  Dinner, however, was fabulous!

Saturday, January 26-Sunday, January 27: I found myself needing a weekend where I did nothing more than lay on the couch...so I took it.  I may not have worked out, but I did fine tune the recipe for some yummy cranberry white chocolate chip cookies (I'll try to post about those soon) and a lasagna - so the weekend wasn't a total loss!

Here's hoping next week's workout log looks more like Monday and Wednesday, and less like Thursday through Sunday!

Improvement

Last week was my first Zero Week of 2013.  Obviously this isn't a good thing, but the way I see it, I have two choices: dwell on it or do something about it - and doing something about it is far more productive.

Monday, January 14: I'm convinced that the universe was plotting against me today. Woke up to a freezing cold house and discovered that the furnace had gone on strike sometime during the night.  Scurried into work for about 2 hours to collect stuff to work on from home.  Spent from 10am-3pm working in 45 minute bursts since I couldn't sit still for too long before my hands went numb!  The good news is that the repair guy got the furnace running again. The bad news is that it looks like we'll be buying a new furnace after this winter - to be fair, this isn't really shocking since the thing is 20+ years old.  Once the house warmed up, I headed downstairs to spend some time on the bike trainer and all of the following happened:

• I snapped a nail pumping up my rear tire.
• My computer misbehaved when I tried to stream Netflix.
• My cadence sensor refused to cooperate and actually show my cadence and speed.

45 minutes and several whiny trips upstairs to beg Mr. R&R for technical assistance I was good to go.  I rode for about 30 minutes and spent another 15 minutes or so lifting weights.

Even Walter required a blanket to snuggle under when the furnace was out

Tuesday, January 15: After being thwarted for over a week, I finally made it to the gym!  I ran on the evil dreadmill treadmill for about 30 minutes.  Holy crap, I've gotten slow.  Oh well. At least now I have something to improve upon.

Wednesday, January 16: My knee was feeling a little 'tweaky' after yesterday's treadmill run and rather than ending up hurt before the season even starts I took to my yoga mat.  42 minutes later I was stretched, relaxed, and feeling a little less rusty than I did the last time I practiced.  I'm hoping to try one of the longer flows soon.

Thursday, January 17: Rest Day.  I desperately needed to go grocery shopping and the first part of Oprah's interview with Lance Armstrong was on.  This was a 'must watch' for me. I came away disgusted but not really surprised. My final thoughts are: 1. I won't waste time watching the second part. and 2. I hope he remains banned from competition for life.

Friday, January 18: After two weeks of planning to go and then not going, I finally got my pool membership! My gym doesn't have a pool, but they do have a reciprocal agreement with another facility about 17 miles away so we can use their pool.  After I signed up, I hit the water. I could get used to this. The water was about 81 degrees and I pretty much had the whole thing to myself - which was good since I'm pretty sure I was a splashing, thrashing mess.  I swam about 450 meters (just over a quarter mile) - and by then my arms, shoulders, and back were burning and I was panting like a dog in July.  Added bonus: I can work on swim form and endurance without worrying about encountering any evil fish!  Maybe the whole triathlon thing isn't completely out of the question!

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 I had planned on spending the rest of the evening on the couch, but I got talked into going ice skating instead.  Funny enough, the ice rink is in the same building at the indoor track that I've been avoiding like the plague encircles the ice oval!  I guess fate wanted me there one way or another! 1 hour and 4 miles later, my toes were frozen solid and the ache in my legs matched the one in my arms. Couch time!

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Saturday, January 19: Woke up with aching arms and legs and decided a rest day was in order.  Mr. R&R and I also treated ourselves to an awesome cheese plate, a mix of prosciutto/calabrese salami/cappicola, and a bottle of Bordeaux.

These are a few of my favorite things...

Sunday, January 20: Another dreadmill run since it's about 8 degrees outside and the windchill is well below zero.  It was slightly less awful than Tuesday's run, but still ridiculously slow and my arms still ache from Friday's swim, but I'll take it since it brings my workout count for the week to 6!

Spot wanted to come too!

 This week was a vast improvement over last week and I'm hoping that the coming week will be another good one.  I'm spending the rest of today doing things that will set me up to succeed again next week (read: eliminating my usual excuses): finishing my laundry, pre-making a few meals, etc.

How was your week?

Zero Week

Week 2 of the Great Wiggle War of 2013 (sounds catchier than 'trying to get my act together' - doesn't it?) is done.  Here's how it shook out:

Monday, January 7: Make plans to hit the gym with Mr. R&R after work.  Get news that sends all forms of motivation crashing through the floor.  The only running I did was to the refrigerator and the only lifting I did was moving the beer bottle from the table to my mouth.

Tuesday, January 8: Slept like crap on Monday night. Woke up an hour and a half before my alarm and couldn't get back to sleep.  What I Should Have Done: Haul my butt down the stairs to the bike trainer.  What I Did: Laid on living room floor reading while one of the bunnies used me as a jungle gym.  Felt like falling asleep driving home from work.  Gave up all pretenses of working out and went to bed at the grandmotherly hour of 9:30pm.

Wednesday, January 9: Pure laziness. 'Nuff said.

Thursday, January 10: Dinner with Little Sister and Mason.  I had plans to hop on the trainer after they left, but they were here until almost 10pm.  I'm okay with that because spending time with the people who are important to me will always matter more than a missed workout.

Don't ask why he's in the bathroom sink.  Just revel in the cuteness.

Friday, January 11:  A big old drama llama kicked up this week and by the time I got home, all I wanted was to crash on the couch and hope the stress headache I had developed went away.

Saturday, January 12: My brother was in town and since I rarely get to see him/talk to him/spend time with him, I opted for a long lunch with him followed by running errands and household tasks.

Sunday, January 13: Woke up to another coating of ice on every available surface.  Resigned myself to utter failure in the workout department this week.

There you have it - my first Zero Week of the year.  I'm sure it won't be the last one, but I find myself actually looking forward to Monday (tomorrow) and the fresh start that comes with it.

Muscle Memory

Okay, the formal definition of Muscle Memory, at least according to Google, is: motor memory: your memory for motor skills.  In my case it's more like 'remembering muscles I forgot I had'.

You may have noticed that I haven't posted race recaps for the first three races in the Great Lakes Running Series.  That's because I didn't do them.  After I got back from France, work went from crazy to batshit crazy, the weather went to crap, and the holidays hit.  In short: I didn't train, therefore I didn't race.  I should have known that trying to work around 50 hours a week, train, and keep my assorted family commitments was a recipe for disaster.  It's not like I haven't had this problem before.  So here I am: work has calmed down immensely and I'm working closer to 40 hours a week, the holidays are over, and I haven't done much in the way of exercise in about 2 months. I'm about 4 1/2 pounds over my happy weight and about 7 1/2 pounds over my "fighting weight".  Oh...and the Expo Run  is on January 27th.  Clearly I have my work cut out for me.  This week is all about getting back in the habit of being aware of what I'm eating and why I'm eating it (damn you delicious holiday cookies) and ramping up my level of physical activity - essentially another Wiggle War. I'm really not expecting a PR from the Expo Run, but I'd like to finish without completely embarrassing myself!

So this week I've gone back to tracking calories in vs. calories out (I'll probably post a review of the app I'm using if I decide to stick with it), making a point to drink more water, attempting to get on a decent sleep schedule, and trying to spend less time on the couch and more time moving my butt!

Here's a little breakdown of my week:

Monday, December 31: 40 minute Sun Salutation/Yoga Flow DVD.  Discover exactly how much flexibility has been lost since ceasing in-studio practice several months ago and how much I miss yoga.

Tuesday, January 1: Alternate house-cleaning and couch-laying on last vacation day for a while.  Whine about delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) from above yoga flow.  Vow to practice yoga more often.

Wednesday, January 2: Back to work.  Park self in chair at 8am. Get up only to microwave soup and refill water bottle.  Get home with every intention of working out, but then get one of those phone calls that leaves only one acceptable course of action: drink wine.

Thursday, January 3: Get home from work. Contemplate driving to indoor track since it's a frigid 19 degrees outside.  Opt for bike trainer/strength workout DVD in the basement. Struggle to complete it.  Experience jello-legs immediately.  Feel good about having done it - even if it kicked my ass!

Friday, January 4: I never pay attention to how many times a day I get up to run to the printer/copier/water cooler until I have sore legs. Apparently I am a human Jack-In-A-Box.  Realize at 4:30pm that I'd gotten so caught up in a project that I never ate lunch. Consider gnawing on office furniture.  Arrive home, order pizza, and proceed to spend the rest of the night with Mr. R&R sorting through the guest room closet (aka: miscellaneous catch-all space) and drinking wine.

Saturday, January 5: It's a sunny, reasonably warm (34 degrees), not too windy day. Pile on layers and go for a 3 mile run for the first time in...well...too damned long.  The first 1 1/2 miles feel pretty good.  The last 1 1/2 miles are hellacious: uphill, into a bitter cold wind that has sprung up out of nowhere...and some jerk who didn't think that city shoveling ordinances applied to them, thus leading to running over a large patch of ice.  Crawl through door feeling thoroughly humbled.  I'm pretty sure a septueagenarian with a limited mobility could have out-run me today.  There's only one way to fix it: Quit slacking, suck it up, and RUN!

Sunday, January 6: Wake up to a thin sheet of ice covering every flat surface in sight and quads that feel absolutely shredded.  After a near death experience on the aforementioned ice while walking a bag of trash 15 feet from the back door to the bin, determine that today is a lost cause since I don't want to walk on the ice, much less drive or run on it!  Continue guest room cleaning project, bake egg muffins as a grab and go breakfast for the next week, make lunch for Monday and Tuesday, and generally spend the day getting my metaphorical ducks in a row.

And there you have it...my week in a nutshell.  Was it perfect? No.  Was it better than the 8 weeks before it? Hell, yes!