Comments (5)

By Liz, November 18, 2009 9:32 pm

Howdy.

So lately I have gotten obsessed with the show Glee (on Fox Wed at 9). I just happen to be watching it right now. It’s so  funny and the song and dance numbers are great. Love love love it!

Anywho, let’s get back to the food shall we?

Breakfast was pretty darn spectacular, but when are oats ever not spectacular?

Made my oats the same as this time. I also threw some oat squares in there, too…once I ate some oats off the top…hehe. That jar was practically overflowing!

I didn’t really get hungry for lunch until 1:30 and that was waaay too late to eat lunch before practice at 2:30. So, I snacked on my after practice snack turned lunch…

I call this “Larabar decontructed.” Just some dates, peanuts and dried cranberries.

It was my last hard workout of the season and of the year today. It was pretty darn easy…just some more short and fast speedwork. 2×200m (39 sec each), 400m (1:21 min) and a 200m (39 sec). Super fast and pretty fun. I warmed up and cooled down total of 2.5 miles…so I ran almost 3.5 miles today.

After practice snack today was what I was supposed to have for lunch…leftover beef stew that Jacob made yesterday…and I totally forgot the whole picture thing. Oops!

After snacking on stew, I was soo tired. So, I decided to rest my eyes “for just a minute.” Well, that minute turned into 3 hours! It was around 8 when I woke up and dinner had to be quick and easy.

Omelets to the rescue! I did a 2 egg omelet with cheddar and spinach and I thawed out and toasted a leftover waffle from Sunday’s breakfast plus 1/2 and orange on the side for vitamin C action.

And you can’t forget the chocolate…

Someone*cough* Jacob *cough* finished my Hazelnut & Currant chocolate bar…so it was time to crack open the 85% dark chocolate. This is truly my favorite chocolate ever…ever.

I’m feeling pretty darn out of it right now. I hate it when I wake up from a nap and just feel all groggy and worthless. Eh, I have a test to study for, too. After Glee though.

Have a good Wednesday night. Next time you hear from me I’ll be heading to State meet! Can’t wait!

Comments (4)

By Liz, November 16, 2009 8:58 pm

Good evening guys. As the title implies, today was actually a pretty good day.

I got lotsa good sleep and woke up super refreshed.

Ate a yummilicious breakfast.

It was a bit chilly for a Chunky Strawberry, but it was just what I was craving.

Work was chill.

Lunch was bomb!

Oh leftovers, I love thee.

I remembered why I don’t eat oranges very often.

They’re tasty, but a pain in the arse to peel!

Cross country practice was kick butt: 400m fast untimed to loosen up, 2×200 (41 sec each), 600 (2:15), 400 (1:28), 200 (41 sec).  We’ve been doing a lot of quick tune-up work to prepare for STATE!!

Snackage was a granola bar (unpictured) and carrots and almond butter.

Always a good combo!

I tried one of my fun New Frontier’s buys…

This coconut water was pretty good. I’ve never had coconut water before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I”ve heard good things, and the fact that it is like a natural sports drink really appeals to me. It had a subtle coconut flavor and a slight thickness to it. It almost tasted like plain water! It was kind of expensive and only tasted okay, so I probably won’t be buying this on a regular basis. I always love trying new things though, so I did enjoy sipping on it with my almond butter and carrots.

Dinner was fab-u-lous. My roommate Justin cooked up burritos for all the roomies and his girlfriend and brother came over, too. So it was kind of a festive night. There were a few shots of tequila had, but I refrained. Tequila is just really not my thing. Here’s the version of burrito night I had…

A salad the size of my head: spring mix, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, radish, steak, refried beans, cheddar cheese, 1/4 avocado, salsa and blue corn chips. I will admit, I was a tad bit too full after cleaning my plate…but it was oh so delicious!

Instead of a margarita with my dinner, I had a beer.

Probably not the best flavor combo, but it tasted fine.

I wasn’t too full for dessert…but when am I ever

Just some Green and Black’s Hazelnut and Currant chocolate. Heaven in bar form my friends!

So yes, Monday has been a good day and will be a good evening…as there is no imminent homework to do.

I will leave y’all with a Vibram update: I ran a 2 mile warm-up and 2 mile cool-down in them today. I think I may have overdone it a bit. These shoes do require a serious break-in period! Here’s the blister I got (probably was the Vibrams but could have been something else).

Ya, kinda gnarly. Also, my other foot was extremely sore. Tomorrow I am going to take a complete break from wearing them and go a bit easier on the miles that I run into them for now. Looking forward to when my feet are completely used to them though. And, yes, they are still very comfortable and I still love them…I just need to work up to spending more time in them.

Okay, time to veg out! Night!

Comments (6)

By Liz, November 4, 2009 11:19 pm

Hey guys! I have been really slammed with life in general lately, so I apologize for my lack of posts. However, I am here to chronicle my past few busy days. There are some interesting tidbits to discuss!

Okay so Monday!

I ate one of these….

Have I mentioned that I am in absolute love with Chunky Strawberries? Haha, I am truly obsessed!

I did some Trader Joe’s shopping and got some crazy cool stuff…like Sprouted Wheat Bagels (yum!), Pumpkin Butter (yummier!) and Peanut butter filled pretzels (the yummiest of yum!). I got other things too (like 5 jars of peanut butter-what addiction?) but those 3 items are definitely the standouts of the bunch.

So, the real excitement on Monday began after I got home from work and TJs. This was the day that I was finally able to get some new running shoes. My old shoes are kinda…what’s the word?…GROSS! They smell like dirty gym socks and are covered in dirt…not to mention that the cushioning is completely worn out and I have put almost 700 miles on those babies. Yep, it was time for a new pair. So, Jacob and I ventured down SLO to get me a new pair. Sadly, the only stores that sell my shoe are 45 minutes away and my work (running shoe store) doesn’t carry my brand. Okay, so I get to the first store…don’t have my size. I get to the second store….don’t have my size. At the second store though I got a new pair of racing flats that were only 20 bucks!! I couldn’t pass that up, especially because there are holes in my old ones. But, I still didn’t have the prize in hand. I went to a third store…and they didn’t have my size! I was kinda pissed. We had just spent precious time and gasoline to go down to SLO to buy me some running shoes that I was in desperate need of, and we came out fruitless! However, we made the best of the situation and decided to go out to eat for a dinner date. We ended up going to get Indian food, because Jacob has never had it before. Oh, that boy needed to be enlightened. Now, I’m a bad blogger and didn’t bring my camera with me. I wasn’t planning on needing it, as I thought my shoe expedition would be a quick one. But let me just tell you, the food was amazing. I definitely ate my fair share…plus a pint of beer. Hey, you gotta live a little! We don’t go out to eat very often, so I thoroughly enjoyed our night out. Only drawback, we got home kinda late from out unexpectedly long outing that I had to stay up late and do homework. Boo!

Tuesday was pretty run of the mill. School, school, school. The most notable part was my speed workout at cross country practice. I did 2×200m then 4×800m then 2×200m. It was a very fast workout. The first 200s weren’t timed. My 800s were supposed to be at 3:24. My actual splits were 3:21, 3:18, 3:16 and 3:13. My last 200s were :45 and :40. I was a speed demon! Again, I exceeded my coach’s and my own expectations regarding my abilities. I’m very proud of myself. Total, including warm-up and cool-down, I ran 4 miles. SoCals here I come!

And now we have arrived at Wednesday, good ole Humpday!

My day started off with a swim. I created a good little workout for myself: 2oom warmup, 6×300m. Between each 300 I would alternate either 10 pushups or a 1 min plank. I did 30 pushups altogether (a few of them were girl pushups) and 3x 1 minute planks. Total, the swim was 2000m. It took about 45 minutes.

Okay, so I gotta throw this out there….I have a new addiction. Lately, I have just been craving coffee! Yesterday and today I stopped at Starbucks and got a tall black coffee with 2 pumps pumpkin spice and a splash of half and half. Boy of boy, this is good! I need to refrain from making this a habit though, as my bank account will slowly get drained if I do.

Next order of business…breakfast…

Featuring 2 of my TJs foods: Sprouted Wheat Bagels and pumpkin butter. The other half my bagel is smeared with peanut butter. And if you didn’t realize, that yellow blob in front of the bagel is eggs.

Work work work…uninteresting leftover soup was consumed with a pear and my other super cool TJ find:

Whoever thought to put peanut butter inside of a pretzel was a genius!

Look what was waiting for me when I got home!

My new pair of Mizuno Wave Rider 12s! Since no stores had my shoe, I resorted to buying them off the Internet and I got 2 day shipping, because I needed these guys bad! The Wave Rider is my all time favorite shoe ever. They were my first shoe when I began cross country in high school, and I haven’t gotten sick of them yet. Yay for new shoes!

Check out my old pair:

Can you say “well worn”? These were subsequently thrown in the trash. The stench was so bad on these guys, I couldn’t even keep them or kick-a-round shoes. But first, I had to get a side by side picture, so y’all could see the striking difference.

Go Mizuno!

I also bought two nifty items at my work today.

1) a new pair of Superfeet for my insoles.

These were recommended to me by my podiatrist when I broke my foot two summers ago. I’ve been wearing them in my running shoes ever since. They add a bit of arch support and really cup the whole foot so it feels comfortable and locked in place. These are great and I highly recommend them. It’s cool also, because they sell them at my work, so I get a discount…yay!

2) My second item was a pair of Skins compression tights

I have been wanting a pair of these for forever! However, I didn’t want to spend all the money (they retail for 100 bucks!). I just found out about a program that the Skins company offers to store employees (not Skins store employees, but employees of stores that carry their products) that gives them 30% off wholesale, which brings the price down to 40 bucks. That’s a big difference! So, I bite the bullet, and decided today was the day to get me some Skins. Check out the website on the link and read about them. This product may be expensive, but I can already tell that these work! My legs feel fresher and less sore. These will especially come in handy when I’m riding in a van for 5 hours down to LA for SoCals tomorrow. I’ve been hanging out in these all day.

Pretty darn comfy. My legs feel awesome. I’ll give a full review on these at a later time when I can test them out a bit more.

I spent most of the afternoon today baking my Superpowerfood muffins for the team tomorrow. Sadly, they turned out a little burnt, but they taste okay. I also made homemade Larabars for the first time. I used this recipe. They look just like a Larabar!

I took a little nibble and they taste just like a Larabar, too! I made PB & J Larabars, although I have ‘t had the real version yet. I used dates, dried cranberries and peanuts. Simple and delicious. I made these because one of the girls on my team is hypoglycemic and can’t eat flour or refined sugar. So, I wanted to make something that she could eat, too. I hope she likes em!

The rest of the afternoon included some of this…

and this…

(Barbara’s Shredded Oats in fat-free milk)

plus I did some homework. This evening I had a work meeting where I was served chili, salad, rice and bread for dinner. No pics though, it didn’t seem appropriate. More homework after that…and now I am here, typing away.

I’m pretty exhausted. I’ve had a busy busy day. Tomorrow I am leaving for SoCals at around 10am. I still need to pack and stuff…but I’ll do that in the morning. I’m racing Friday morning at 10:30 (send those vibes my way!) and getting back Friday evening. So, till then…tata for now!

Gotta catch some Z’s. Night guys!

Comments (7)

By Liz, October 28, 2009 10:12 pm

Ahh, another hump day is over. Wednesdays are always pretty darn stressful for me. I actually didn’t think I had much homework this week, but since Tuesday I’ve had quite the load of assignments piled on me. But hey, I’m halfway through the semester…so I just gotta get through it.

I was planning on getting up early to workout this morning, early as in 6:30. However, my plans changed quick once the alarm went off. Instead I slept in till 8 and had a leisurely breakkie.

It was an oats in a jar kinda morning. Sadly, this was my last jar of peanut butter. *moment of silence*

This jar of oats included 1/2c. oats and 1 tbsp. chia seeds and 1/2 an apple cooked in water, cinnamon stirred in at the end and topped with walnuts. But of course the shining star was the ooey, gooey peanut butter lining the jar. Ahh, the simple pleasures of life my friends!

I made my lunch, sipped some tea and watched the Today show before heading out the door for work.

At work I got another large shipment of Asics shoes in, so that took up a good 3 hours of my 4 hour shift. Lunch was had around 11am. I got hungry for lunch really early today.

Lunch was a whole wheat tortilla wrap filled with 1/4c. of hummus, 1/4 of an avocado, lettuce, carrot, broccoli, radish, grape tomatoes and about an ounce of fresh parmesan cheese. Here are the innards:

For dessert I had that pear peeking out from behind the wrap.

Since I had lunch so early, I got hungry right before my shift was over. I was planning on working out after work, so I munched on half of this clif bar for a pre-workout snack.

Workout today was an easy recovery day at the gym. 45 minutes on the elliptical (incline 4, resistance 10, avg stride per min 165). Then I did some core work, lunges and squats with a 10lb medicine ball and 3 sets of 10 pushups. After that I swam a relaxing 1000m in the pool, which took about 20 minutes. The other half of the clif bar was eaten immediately after working out. I was pretty famished!

Post workout snacking this afternoon included a hard boiled egg:

Jacob was my lovely hand model for that pic. My other snack was the super special thing I got at the store exactly 1 week ago. Remember my hint was HEAB. Well, sorry to disappoint you Allison, but it was not almond butter (although almond butter is pretty spectacular). It was actually…..drumroll please…a Kambocha squash!

Those are 3 of the 4 quarters of the cooked squash. I prepared my squash by following the directions on the sticker that was on the squash.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 370 degrees F and cut squash into quarters.
2. Get baking sheet, place quarters face down on sheet and fill the bottom of sheet with water (I think the water prevents the squash from sticking to the pan)
3. Bake for 30 minutes
4. After 30 minutes, turn squash over and top with a mixture of 1 tbsp melted butter, 1/4-1/2c. honey, cinnamon and nutmeg. Bake for another 20 minutes.
5. Eat up the wonderful goodness!

Here is the quarter that I munched on immediately after baking:

I gotta say, this squash quite literally rocked my world. I was a bit wary to try it when I first saw it on Heather’s blog. No offense Heather, but you have quite the adventurous palate and I was a bit intimidated. But boy of boy what this squash good! The texture was buttery and smooth…almost creamy. The taste was slightly nutty, almost bland…so the honey and spices really helped kick it up a notch. I now have a tupperware full of cubes of Kabocha goodness. You can bet you’ll be seeing this for a while around these parts.

Let’s not forget about dinner though.

I had a mini steak seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic powder, sweet potato fries/chips baked the usual way in 425 degree oven tossed in evoo, salt, pepper and cumin, and a huge pile of steamed green beans. Oh, and tons of bbq sauce of course!

You know it’s Halloween time when the candy starts coming out!

One of my roommates bought trick-or-treater candy yesterday, so dessert was pretty obvious. I couldn’t decide which one I wanted more, a Take 5 or a Reese’s cup, so I just had both. I’ve been good though and kept these off limits to just after dinner and only 1 or 2 candies…no more!

Okay, well I still have some major studying to do…the story of my life.

Oh wait…I almost forgot to tell y’all how the race went yesterday! Quick recap: I ran a 22:41. The course was hilly and the weather was crazy windy. That was also a PR for that cross country course. My teams’s #1 girl won the race, and our girl’s team as a whole won 2nd. The guys team got 5th. It was our home course, so we totally represented. Like usual, I always have doubts about my performance, and I know I could have pushed a little harder. But all in all, this was one of my best races all season. So…yay for me and yay for my team. So Cals here we come!

Good night guys!

Comments (7)

By Liz, October 26, 2009 8:19 pm

How’s the Monday treating y’all? Or maybe I shouldn’t remind you guys that it’s the beginning of the week? However, there are two  awesome things to look forward to this weekend! 1 being the fact that Saturday is Halloween…which is just fun! 2 being the fact that the day after Halloween is when we fall back…aka the end of Daylight Savings Time (for all US peeps not in Arizona). So that means early mornings will be much much easier!

So, I didn’t post yesterday because I didn’t really do or eat anything spectacular. Although I did indulge a cheesy cracker craving that I’ve been having for a couple weeks. So, I went out and got cheez-ts. Totally not a healthy food at all, but since cheesy crackers have been on my mind for weeks, I thought it best to just get the craving out of the way. Also, I have discovered Hulu. Am I like way behind on technology or what? But ya, it’s amazing. I literally spent my whole afternoon and evening watching online tv! I watched Greek, The Office (re-watched the wedding episode!) and have officially become obsessed with Glee! Haha, I was sooo productive yesterday.

It was back to reality today. I actually had to do stuff…imagine that!? Due to the fact I had a few too many cheesy crackers yesterday, I decided on a light and super healthy breakfast.

My breakfast included 2 scrambled eggs seasoned with salt and pepper and topped with a little bit of grated parmesan, 1 slice of ezekiel bread smeared with about a tablespoon of peanut butter and 1/2 a banana sliced. Totally hit the spot.

Work was work. Nothing to special to say there! Lunch was more soup, 2 granola bars and a pear.

That was the last of my soup. It’s good soup, but I was starting to get a bit tired of it. I’ve had soup for lunch for the past 4 days! Ya, I’m over it.

Practice today was an easy peasy 4 miler in 38 minutes. I did some core work for around 5 minutes afterwards. Tomorrow I have a super important big race! If y’all wanna send good vibes my way at 3pm Pacific time it would be appreciated The race tomorrow is WSC finals, which is our regional meet. This meet will determine if we go onto so-cals. I really need to get my game face on and rock it! So, I’m a tad nervous…okay I’m really nervous…but I’m going to try and channel all this nervousness into positive energy and determination to kick butt (my butt that is!).

Anywho, I had a yummy snack when I got home after practice.

I made a mini Chunky Strawberry. Just the perfect amount for a snack. I used a 4 frozen strawberries, 1/2  banana, about a 1/3 cup of whole milk yogurt and 1 tablespoon peanut butter. Topped it with 4 banana slices and a few walnuts (I’m out of granola and cereal). I thought it looked soo cute in that little cup. Cute food is just yummier!

Homework ensued but then hunger took over my mind and I had to make dinner. Actually, I assembled dinner.

Haven’t been getting my quota of leafy greens lately, so I made a salad. Just some spring mix, radish, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, cuke, homemade hummus, 1/4 avocado, a serving (2tbsp) goddess dressing, grated parm and a high fiber whole wheat tortilla with butter on the side. This salad was especially divine tonight. I think I got the proportions of all the ingredients just right.

Dessert was extra special tonight.

That is a coconut popsicle! These are amazing…like mouth watering, dreamy, creamy amazing! Check out the package:

There’s nothing too scary or bad for you in these. Only 130 cals is pretty awesome for a treat that tastes so decadent. The sugar is high, but hey…it is dessert. The thing I like most about these bars is that there are pieces of shredded coconut surrounded by the coconut cream. Totally yummy texture sensation. I found these in the Hispanic foods section of the frozen food section…there is a large Hispanic population in my area, so they were pretty easy for me to get my hands on…but not sure about your area. Keep and eye out though…these are so delicious!

Definitely going to get my rest tonight. I still have to go to all my classes and stuff tomorrow before my race (it’s a home meet). I even have a class afterwards! I for sure need to be rested up.

Goodnight guys!