Where's the Beach?

Crazy Weather & Running Plan Well at least today was a bright and sunny day. We've got snow in our forecast (again) tonight and all day tomorrow. They are predicting anywhere from 6-8 inches here. Seriously? I swear I live in the south. The average temps right now are supposed to be in the low 50's (I think that's around 10 ° C). Today was in the 30's (below 0 C) and tomorrow low 20's. Alison , the Celsius is for you ;-) If it hadn't been so windy out, I might have tried to take my training run outdoors. It was another long one...I swear the person who put together this half marathon training plan was on crack. Today called for 3 miles, 2x2:00 AI*, 2x2:30 AI, 1x3:00 AI, 6 pickups, 2 miles. I'm tired just typing that out. My legs muscles even twitched. Thank goodness I updated my playlist! After the intervals were done, I was right at 6.25 miles. So I just did another 1.75 miles for an even 8. This was a puke-worthy workout, and I was pooped! Wha...

Weights on Wednesday I came pretty close to making today a rest day. But I really wanted to get in some weights and abs today and rest completely on Friday. I figured I could do trisets for biceps, shoulders, triceps and top it off with some ab work and it really wouldn't take too long to complete (and it'd give me some energy that I seem to be lacking). I did each as 3 sets of 8 reps. TS#1 Dumbbell curls Dumbbell shoulder press Overhead triceps extension TS#2 Hammer curls Upright rows Lying triceps extensions TS#3 Cross-body curls Lateral raises Double-arm kickbacks I did abs from Cathe's High Reps DVD , stretched for a few minutes, then called it done. I won't say this turned into a super awesome workout. My mind was wandering a bit. But I did feel fairly strong though and actually increased weights on the third triset. This also gave me a bit of an energy boost, always a plus. Tomorrow I have a longish run scheduled that I hope to get up the gumpt...

First Stew of 2011 As promised, here are the recipes from our New Year's Dinner. Like I said yesterday, we don't normally make it a point to get in all the "lucky" dishes like black-eyed peas and cabbage. However, it was the perfect opportunity for me to use my new crockpot (correctly). I also made a Vegan Chiptole Cornbread to go along with this hearty Lucky New Year's Stew . Lucky New Year's Stew Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups black-eyed peas soaked overnight 1 yellow onion, diced 1 green bell pepper, diced 1-2 sweet potatoes, diced 32 oz no-salt vegetable broth 2 cups water 1 not-beef bouilon cube To taste: salt, pepper, chili powder, liquid smoke, red pepper, garlic, parsley, basil 1 bunch kale, roughly chopped Directions: Put all ingredients minus the kale in the crockpot and cook on low for approximately 5 hours. Add in the kale and cook an additional 30 minutes on high or hour on low.   Vegan Chipotle Cornbread Ingredients: 1 cup cornm...