New ab workout

I know it has been a while since my last post but I have been busy/sleeping/coughing my head off. I will just try to do a quick overview of my whirlwind weekend.

Friday morning I got up early to head down to the coast for a visit with Chris, we met for lunch at Newk’s and I tried something new: Tomato basil soup, so delicious!

After lunch I drove to the condo and rested for a bit. Chris was meeting his running group to run the bridge that afternoon and I was trying to decide if I felt well enough to run too. I really didn’t feel like driving the 10 miles down the road to meet them so I decided to run 6 miles and meet Chris at work to ride with him to the bridge. Makes a lot of sense right? Anyway, when it was all said and done I ran/walked 9.3 miles.

After a grocery trip to Walmart and a long hot bath, we watched the new Men in Black movie and then headed to bed.

Neither of us felt up to running a race the next morning so instead we did some marathon shopping or rather nonshopping. We were out for about 5 hours going to different stores and spent a total of $75. That included lunch at Chick-fil-a, I decided to try something different and got the chicken salad sandwich. I like the chicken salad, but didn’t enjoy the bread, it had a sweet taste to it that I don’t typically enjoy in my sandwiches.

I spent the rest of the day/night watching the SEC Championship, my Dawgs gave it a good shot and had me biting my nails down to the very last second.

Needless to say after our long day of shopping, the emotional roller coaster of a game, and coughing my head off nonstop all day, I had no energy left for a run. And that is where my streak ended 😦

I spent most of the day Sunday coughing uncontrollably and napping on the couch. I guess this sickness finally caught up to me and I was exhausted. I got just enough rest to give me some short lived energy for dinner with Chris and his co-workers at Leo’s Wood Fired Pizza. Chris and I ate here before about a year ago and finally made it back to eat again. I decided to stick with what I had last time and got the Marlyn Monroe. It has chicken, tomatoes, bacon, and ranch, so so good! I only ate half at the restaurant so I didn’t look like a piggy, but I swear I could have polished off the whole thing.

I woke up this morning still kind of tired, so I have been sitting around all day trying to rest. I did find the one positive to coughing myself into fits of panic for the last two days….sore abs. Yes, apparently all you have to do to get in a great ab workout is to get sick and cough for 2 days straight.

Birthdays, Apologies, Grossness, and Running

First I want to send a big shout out Happy Birthday to my Daddy! I know I have already told him about 5 times today but you can never hear it enough right? I was also told that this deathly sickness that has settled into my sinuses was my Dad’s doing and not my Mom’s. I didn’t even know my Dad was sick but apparently he got it first and then passed it on to my Mom. So, Mom, I’m sorry I blamed you 🙂

The funk has gravitated from my throat to my sinus cavities and is seeping out my nose (I know, TMI!) You know that awkward moment when you are vacuuming and your nose hocks a snot loogie? Yeah, that happened.

So let’s get away from the nasty stuff and move on to running, packing, and eating. Though food is not tasting the greatest right now, I am forcing myself to eat lots of eggs because they need to be used and I hate throwing away food. For lunch today, I had eggs scrambled with green pepper, tomato and mozzarella. I choked them down with some toast and grits, I think it would have been tasty in any other circumstance.

I’ve been spending the day cleaning and packing so I can see the hubster this weekend. Clearly Daisy is a big help when it come to packing.

I am still on my run streak, despite the breathing setback. I logged 2 miles yesterday and the longest, most painful mile today, but it is done. Oh well at least I got to see the pretty colors of fall.

So yeah, this box of tissues was full yesterday. In case anyone wants to send me an early Christmas present, I will probably finish this box by tonight 😉

Or juice, cause people need juice!

 

Sick day

This is going to be a quick post because I feel like my head is about to explode. Over Thanksgiving my Mom shared her dirty germs with me and now I am sick.

Mostly just a sore throat that is causing me to cough and making my tension headache that much worse. Tylenol is helping to minimize the pain but not completely getting rid of it.

I still managed to get my sick butt outside to continue my run streak. I didn’t even put on running clothes, just went in my sweatpants and long sleeved t-shirt I had been wearing all day. It was a chilly 40 degrees, which aggravated my throat, but my headache went away during the run. Of course it came back with a vengeance after I was done, but I got my mile in and then climbed back into bed. And that has been my day…

Giving up the fight, but keeping the streak alive.

Since I ran my second half marathon in October, I have been trying to continue with my training. I had hopes of running my third half in December, my fourth half in January, and my first full marathon in February. Unfortunately my body had other ideas and I have finally given up the fight. Lately, most of my runs have not been the greatest and I have been fighting my way through them. I’ve been unable to go any further than 15 miles without some kind of injury sidelining me. For the last few weeks, every run I have done over 3 miles has resulted in pain and always in a different spot so it doesn’t seem to be a recurring injury. I just think my body is telling me I need a break and I need to scale back my weekly mileage. 

I will conquer you one day marathon!

On a more positive note, I can still run and I am keeping the streak alive. I have managed to run at least one mile for the last 7 days and I do not intend on giving up on that challenge. Here is how the miles have added up so far:

Tuesday: 2 miles

Wednesday: 1 mile

Thursday: 10k fun run

Friday: 1 mile

Saturday: 3 miles

Sunday: 12 miles

Today: 1.5 miles

I left my cousin’s house on Saturday morning to head home and after it warmed up, I went out for my run. I was planning on a long run on Sunday morning so I didn’t want to go too far or hard but I was feeling good so I ran out 1.5 miles and ran the whole way back feeling pretty strong with a pace of 8:51. It was a great run and gave me hope for the long run I had planned for Sunday. So that night I carbo loaded with some delicious pancakes with peanut butter on top.

I got up Sunday morning and knew that I wanted to get the run done first thing because I run better in the mornings. But it was 25 degrees out! So I bundled up in my running capris, compression socks, thermal top, my new pullover from Walmart, gloves, and a headband to keep my ears warm. At mile 3 there was still frost on the ground:

My hands got hot around mile 2, so the gloves came off, but I needed everything else to keep me warm for the rest of the run. Here I am happy for a walk/fuel break at mile 3:

At mile 6 I started feeling some pain in my achilles/calf muscle so I turned around and had another walk/fuel break.

Please excuse the luggage under my eyes, that’s what my allergies do to me.

It is so peaceful and beautiful running out here:

It was a struggle with the pain in my calf continuing to irritate me but I made in back home, 12 miles in 2 hours 1 min. I was pretty sore the rest of the day so I did my best to continually stretch and foam roll. When I woke up this morning I still had some residual pain in my calf so I rested most of the morning before heading to the gym around 10:45.

I decided to take it easy to try to work out the soreness in my legs, 35 slow minutes on the bike and 35 minutes at level 2 on the stair climber. Then I needed to get in my run for the day and it was raining outside, so I reluctantly hopped on the treadmill and did 1.5 miles at an average pace of 10:30. It was boring! But I got it done and the streak continues!

How many men does it take to fry a turkey?

I have finally made it back to civilization! I spent my Thanksgiving out at my Cousin’s house in the country where there is no cell phone reception and very spotty internet service. It was nice to disconnect for a bit, but now I feel like I fell so far behind, so I’ve been spending most of today catching up on my internet life.

So here’s what has been going on for the last few days. Thanksgiving morning I got up early and walked down the street to participate in a local 10k fun run. It was a chilly 35 degrees but the weather quickly warmed up, especially after we started running. There were fitness challenges at each mile and I chose to try and do as many of them as I could. I started out too fast on the first mile so the 20 pushups were a bit challenging. During the second mile I was trying to keep up with one of the other runner’s so I was pushing pretty hard when we made it to the 20 jumping jacks. After that I had to slow down a bit and managed to do 10/15 burpees at mile 3. I got passed by a lot of people at this point and I was feeling pretty tired. That was when I decided to just skip the rest of the fitness challenges and try to make it back in one piece. Despite a foot cramp at mile 5, I finished in 1 hour 1 minute, which I was pretty proud of considering how bad I was feeling.

I headed back home to shower and grab my stuff so I could drive out to my Cousin’s house. I got there around 11:30 and was ready for lunch. I tried to eat something small since we were supposed to eat at 4pm. I also found these beauties waiting for me.

They were oh so delicious as evidenced by this only 12 hours after being opened.

There was some napping, football watching, and waiting for food during the hours of 12pm-6pm. Apparently, the turkey took longer than they expected so we didn’t end up eating until 6pm and I was past starving.

How many men does it take to fry a turkey?

Due to my desire to keep my stomach from eating itself, I scarfed down my plate full of goodies before I even thought about taking a picture.

Getting our grub on

Fixing our plates

I told my Dad he needs to be my official blog photographer since I didn’t have my camera with me and I forgot to snap a pic of my food. My Dad worked his magic and actually caught me before I devoured dessert to take a picture of the sweet deliciousness (minus one bite)

7up cake, caramel pound cake, and the best dessert in the world, peanut butter pie!

And then one of me about to swallow my fork whole (please excuse the awful hair, it had a long day)

I, of course, ate way too much and felt miserable for the rest of the night.

Friday morning we got up and sat around for a while waiting on our 10am breakfast call. After breakfast we decided to go to Walmart in the small town of Louisville, MS to see what kind of Black Friday deals there were. We figured with it being such a small town and waiting until after all the door buster deals were done, it wouldn’t be that bad. It wasn’t that crowded and the worst part was all of the merchandise taking up most of the floor space, so it was hard to navigate with a buggy. We found good deals on some Blu-Ray movies and I scored this awesome find:

These were $6 so I got one in red and one in dark grey. Once we got back, it was warm enough to get my one mile run in to continue my streak. I tried out my new red top and I absolutely loved it! This is what it looks like on:

After my one mile run, I was famished, so I went and ate some Thanksgiving leftovers and then joined in on the weekend entertainment.

Yes we are standing around watching a stump burn, we stood out there until dark keeping the fire going and enjoying the crisp fall day.

I tried to get some pictures of my Cousin’s pig Ellie because she is a behemoth! I never could get her to face me so here is the best shot I got.

Then I went out front and decided to do some hill training so I could eat more Thanksgiving leftovers for supper. I did one trip and called it a day, but it was fun to get some fresh air into my lungs.

Here is the spread of leftovers we had for supper:

Deviled eggs, gravy, green beans, corn, stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, ham, chicken and dumplings, corn casserole, black eyed peas, rolls, and homemade sourdough bread. yummy!

Then we spent the rest of the night laid out in front of the TV watching Duck Dynasty. This was my first time watching this show and it might become one of my new favorites, it is so funny!

Okay now that I have caught you up on my Thanksgiving,  I think my brain needs a break. Time to love on Daisy and get some rest before my long day tomorrow.

What did you do for Thanksgiving?

Did you get to spend time with your family?

Try any new and interesting foods?