Where's the Beach?

As I mentioned the other day , Sunday I will be running the Little Rock Half Marathon . This means this week has been all about tapering, planning what to wear for race day, planning out my race strategy. Many of you are runners, so I thought it would be fun to do a race week list for Fun for Friday . You know it's race week when: You obsess about which days you can and should run as well as the intensity for each run. I might build plans for others, but I'm terrible about following one myself. I got in my last speed work on Wednesday and planned easy yesterday, but Jason and I still went too fast. Sometimes it's hard to scale back. You have memorized every single pace average to get you any range of race times depending on whether or not you're going to race hard, play it by feel, or need to know the slowest possible time you can go without going over your secret race time goal. You watch the weather like it's your paying job. Really? That's the fore...

This coming Sunday I will be running in the Little Rock Half Marathon for the 4th time. I ran this race as my very first half marathon in 2010 . I was nervous beyond words. I had trained hard though, and that training paid off. I finished my first half strong at 1:54. I was beaming with pride. I had done something I never thought possible. It was an accomplishment greater than finishing my MA to be honest. I went on to run my second half marathon that October - Soaring Wings . I was starting to experience piriformis issues. I even had to walk once during the race. And, I was ill-prepared for the hills. My time was slower than I had wanted and expected. But I was still proud. I was still doing something I never thought I was capable of accomplishing. If you haven't followed my blog for long, a quick back story is that I grew up with very severe asthma. There were times when I was a child when I was carried down the hall because I couldn't catch my breath to even walk to ...

Do you have a comfort dish that takes you bake to your childhood? For me, a creamy potato soup reminds me of my mom. She would always make it for me when I was sick. And I was sick often with asthma, well, the medications tended to almost make me more sick than the actual asthma. Mom's was very thick, almost like extra creamy, super thin mashed potatoes. I remember pretending that it was Malt O-Meal. I was a little obsessed with the commercials, but we never had Malt O-Meal. It was often one of the very few things I could keep on my stomach. The asthma medication always made me very nauseated. So for me, it was a true comfort dish. Jason has memories of a potato soup that his mother made for him as well. For ages he's been wanting to make potato soup. I just haven't been able to hop on board a bowl of potatoes though. But I finally gave up the fight and let him make his soup. This is a vegan version using tempeh bacon. To get another level of smoky flavor, he used...

It's that time of week again! I don't know about you, but sometimes I find myself doing things that even I think are a little odd. I think we all have those little idiosyncrasies that make us unique. If you've been reading my blog for a long time, then you might recall that I've mentioned some of these before. So, I do apologize if I'm being repetitive. But, I thought that I'd share some simple, random idiosyncrasies I have. I count. I'm not a math person, but I count, maybe it's a throwback to ballet days. But if I'm running sometimes I randomly start counting and there are certain hills that I count my steps to the top. I'm an expired license spotter. Not as cool as a storm spotter/tracker mind you, but it's a gift I have, well for AR plates anyway. Here they alternate the expiring year with either read, blue, or yellow. So it's easy to spot an expired tag based on color ;-) Jason thinks I'm nuts by the way. I hoard t...

Do you think about what you do throughout the day in terms of how it can affect the next day?  Typically, I am not thinking about my current actions affecting the next day, unless it's something very much planned out. But day-to-day routine actions? No. No, not really. But when you think about it, everything we do today, does affect tomorrow in some way. If I get off my lazy rear and get laundry done today, then it's clean the next day (obviously), and it has freed up a bit of time that might allow me to fit in something more enjoyable, like reading or trying a new recipe. My morning 800s today were tough. I almost bailed on doing all 4 of them. It was humid, windy, much warmer than it's been. I really didn't want to do them. I'll blame it all on my running partner. But, getting them done today will make me a faster, stronger runner tomorrow (well, maybe not exactly tomorrow, but other tomorrows with an "s"). You can of course apply this idea to...

Are there any veggies or ingredients that sort of scare you off? For me, kale is one of those. It took me a very long time to try it out. One of the only reasons I did was because our neighbors gave me a bunch. I had it in my head that it would be bitter, that it had to be cooked to be palatable. So, my first recipe with kale was a soup. I quickly realized that I loved the texture. It stood up very well in a soup, so my next stab at cooking kale was to saute it. I started combining it with apples, butternut squash or sweet potato, and of course kabocha. I loved how it paired with sweeter ingredients. Roasting kale was my next step, and not just kale chips, but roasting it so that it's mostly tender with a few airy, crispy edges. But I kept seeing recipes for massaged kale that looked and sounded fantastic. All the right flavor combos. But, I was still leery that it'd be bitter somehow. But a couple of weeks ago, I finally broke down and gave massaged kale a try. The verdic...

Have you ever let a bad situation start to define that particular situation for you? We don't let a bad day define all of our days ahead, but sometimes it's easy to let that happen with workouts. Thankfully my weekend, as a whole, was nice. Not rushed, simply enjoyed. And I didn't let a bad run set me up for failure for the next run. Luckily, the weekend started off on the right foot. Friday, Jason and I didn't really have any special Valentine's Day plans. We did have lunch together, something we rarely do during the week. It was a nice way to break up the day. We went to our typical Happy Hour spot and just sat back and relaxed for about an hour. On our way out, we realized that the market next door (owned by the same people) was having a little wine tasting (and beer and whiskey). We decided to stop in and check it out. They also had some locally made hummus on hand to try out, which was fantastic. I tried a white wine, the others were reds that I don't p...