only tuesday?

ack, it's only tuesday. last night after work i was going to head down to the gym but then i thought the skies were clearing up so i planned a new running route through high park. so off i go, and it begins rain rain raining on my head, but i keep going. sometimes running in the rain is hardcore, other times it is crazy. this might have been a crazy time. so i make it to the park, and am run run running, and enjoying the nature, and it sort of stops raining, and smells great by the way, so i'm having a good time. until i reach this massive hill. there were a lot of runners on this hill running it up... i guess it's a good workout spot. so i make it up the hill and feel great about myself and keep going. then there is this big hill going down! running downhill is not my idea of fun... it's too hard on the knees. but i make it down and then... an even bigger hill going up. people, this hill was so steep that if i stood up straight i would have fallen backwards, arms flailing whoaoaoaoaoaoa! (like that.) but i made it up. from start to finish, i was gone for an hour and 45 minutes, burned 630 calories, and ran almost 8 miles. that is a lot! i was soooooo tired by the end.

my boyfriend had to stay at work late so he stayed over and brought us burritos. i figured since i burned so many calories i could pretty much eat whatever i wanted. i was just saying the other day that we never eat burritos together (and i never eat them alone haha) so he wanted to try them out. i wasn't that impressed. anyway i think it was poisoned because after eating it i passed out on the couch and had to be dragged to bed.

so the summer challenge is over. i wanted to run 15 miles per week and try a new vegetable each week as well. a few weeks in i realized that trying a new vegetable each week was not my idea of fun, so i switched it up to a new food. here are the results of my weeks:

week 1 food: bok choy
week 1 running: 15/15 miles
week 2 food: eggplant
week 2 running: 15/15
week 3 food: red lentils
week 3 running: 19/15
week 4 food: quinoa
week 4 running: 19/15
week 5 food: wheatberries
week 5 running: 19/15
week 6 food: homemade pad thai
week 6 running: 21/15
week 7 food: nutritional yeast
week 7 running: 25.5/15
week 8 food: protein powder
week 8 running: 19/15

overall i am mostly impressed with the running. at the beginning of the challenge, it was difficult to run 15 miles per week, but as you can see, as the weeks passed, it became easier and easier. overall i ran a total of 152.5 miles and averaged 19 miles per week. it is about 100 miles from toronto to buffalo, new york, so i could have run there and halfway back. :o)

in other news, this morning i did 30 minutes of running on the treadmill in 15, 10, and 5 minute segments, as well as some arm weights. there was this girl who took the only set of 5-pound dumbbells on the treadmill while she walked, which annoyed me a little. most of the time she would rest the bells (still holding on to them) on the handlebar! seriously.... a) walking with weights in your hands is not good for you and b) gym equipment hog! oink oink oink!

tonight is my book club and i haven't finished the book yet. i will try to get as much done as i can at lunch and after work. we are reading "water for elephants" by sarah gruen and it's awesome. it's about the circus!

anti-boredom workout

it is so beautiful outside today. the sun is shining and the breeze is warm and there are lots of police on bicycles. i went for a five mile run this morning and i could really feel that spring is in the air. i was crying. not joking. but not out of happiness... from allergies. yee-gads! some years i am affected by allergies and some years i am not. it's hit or miss. those trees with the white flowers are blooming all of a sudden and it's really making me tear up.

i think it's these flowers, they smell really nice:


last night i hit the gym and didn't know what to do. i was kind of tired because it was monday so i looked online and found fitness magazine's anti-boredom workout. it says it will burn 400 calories. it didn't for me (about 300) but it was still a good workout. i pushed it to the max and here is what i did. RPE = rate of perceived exertion, measured on a scale of 1-10.

BIKE
0:00-5:00: warm-up, RPE 5
5:00-7:00: 85 rpm (rotations per minute) level 10, RPE 5-7
7:00-8:00: 100 rpm level 10, RPE 7-9
repeat minutes 5:00-8:00 two more times
14:00-15:00 recover (relaxed pedal), RPE 5

(in between machines i did some free weights)

ELLIPTICAL
15:00-18:00: moderate (level 6-9), RPE 5-7
18:00-20:00 increase (level 16), RPE 7-9
20:00-25:00 repeat

(more free weights)

TREADMILL
25:00-27:00 5.8 mph, RPE 5-7
27:00-29:00 7.0 mph, RPE 7-9
29:00-33:00 repeat
33:00-35:00 5.8 mph, RPE 5-7
35:00-40:00 4.5 mph, RPE 4

(then i did some situps and stretches). definitely an anti-boredom workout. :)

tonight is book club and we are discussing lullabies for little criminals which was amazing and i recommend it to everyone! i wish i knew i could buy it for so cheap instead of paying $17 in the bookstore. that's cheap cheap (like a little bird.)

today on the menu is some oatmeal, banana, strawberries, yogurts, clementines, etc. same old same old.

monday whoopah

i need this week to recover from the weekend. on saturday night i didn't go to bed until 5am and then slept until 1pm on sunday. what am i, a teenager? i mean, come on. i am really enjoying coffee this morning. other than that things are pretty good.

so my summer challenge week two vegetable was... eggplant. i have had eggplant before but haven't cooked with it. i don't even know if i can say i "cooked" with it. i cut it into slices, brushed it with oil, and then bbq'd the slices. not the most exciting. i probably wouldn't make it again. it was chewy and not in a good way, although the taste is nice. i've heard of eggplant parm, and once i had eggplant stuffed peppers which was quite nice as well. did i mention i charred them a little? oops. it was my first time using the condo bbq and it wasn't the best time i ever had.

so onto this week. for breakfast today i made "overnight muesli" which is: 1/3 cup oats, 2 x 100g fat free yogurts, 1/4 cup skim milk, 1/2 chopped banana, 4 blackberries, and 1T slivered almonds, all stirred up and covered with plastic wrap overnight. then this morning i chowed down. it was cool and refreshing. i missed hot oatmeal a little but it's good to switch it up. variety is the spice of life. i ate really crappily all weekend—not overdoing it, but not healthy and poor nutrition choices—so this week i want to do a detox of crap, if it can be avoided.

my menu today is:

breakfast:
overnight muesli described above

snack:
1 string cheese
1 royal gala apple

lunch:
lean cuisine chicken cacciatore

snack:
1/2 cup baby carrots
1/2 cup baby tomatoes
1T hummus
1/2 banana

dinner:
not sure yet actually.

today i wore my heart rate monitor on the bike ride to work. from leaving the door to my apartment, to coming in the door at work, it took 25 minutes, 0 minutes in the optimal heart rate zone (not surprising), 91 bpm average, 116 max bpm, and 61 calories burned. how interesting is that. i will wear it again on the way home. today was a really pleasant ride - no wind, nothing weird. fun times. su

summer challenge

5 miles today completing this week's runs.

and 5 miles from start to finish - from my condo, walking 5 minutes, stretching a bit at the end, and running up 10 flights of stairs, took 59 minutes, burned 453 calories, and put my in my optimum heart rate zone for 49 minutes. :) i even went above 165 (my max.) on some hills. yipadeedooda!

hair cuts and product reviews

today i got a haircut. since i am a lady of leisure i should take care of these things while i can. actually, scratch the leisure part. i need the structure of going to work everyday to avoid going mental.

last night i stayed up really late finishing my work. i had to courier it (it's book proofs that we are checking for errors before sending to the printers) this morning to my boss. now i am waiting for more work. EDIT: i just got a call from the courier and it won't be here until 8pm... hmmmm... that isn't very leisurely!) after couriering it i went on a five mile run. woohoo. it was long and not the easiest but it felt good to do it. then i had the fastest shower humanly possible, scarfed down some instant oats and rode my bike to the hairdresser. i didn't really know what i wanted, but he said he liked the length so wouldn't chop that much off. i have a pretty specific way that i want my bangs cut and i thought i explained it pretty well. apparently not.

this is what my hair used to look like (this is last sat):

i straightened it before going out but it was so hot in the dance place it went a bit wavy. it's alright, but the ends are gross.

now it is quite a bit shorter. and the bangs are SO SHORT. i feel a bit ridiculous actually. i can't take a picture now and show it. why? because i just watched a scrubs episode on dvd and one of the nurses died and i was blubbering like a whale. ah, vanity. tomorrow i'll try.

last night i bought a new hair straightener/flat iron on ebay. if you don't have one of these you are seriously missing out. i had a nice red chi but it broke :o(. i bought a karmin brand one this time because it has "tourmaline" ceramic plates, instead of just ceramic ones. it wasn't more expensive or anything.

after my hair appointment i rode to my office to see if my heart rate monitor had arrived because it finally said "out for delivery in toronto" on the canadapost website. it's true, i still don't have it. it wasn't there yet (at work) and i didn't want to hang around in the danger zone so i just came home.

here are my product reviews for today:

ONE: special k satisfaction cereal

description from the website: Special K* Satisfaction* is a delicious cereal with a great blend of wheat bran flakes, crispy rice puffs, rice-soy squares and crunchy oat clusters that is a source of food energy. It is a good source of protein and high source of fibre, with one gram of fat per serving.

my review: this cereal is quite delicious, but it didn't keep me "satisfied" for very long. in the commercial there is this woman who can pass muffins at the mid-morning meeting because she's "just not hungry." well, i'd be hungry. next!

TWO: pita gourmet high protein pita pockets
click here and then click on "pita pocket: whole wheat" in the yellow category, then click on "high protein: 284g"

my review: yum yum and healthy too. each pita has 140 calories, 1g of fat, 10g fibre, and 10g protein. they are a pretty decent size and while i wouldn't advise breaking them open and stuffing them, they are great to make a folded taco-style sandwich. they are thick like real pitas. :) i found them in longos. yesterday i had the above mentioned sandwich and today made a pita pizza.

today's menu:
all bran bar (2)

oats with mango (3)
(5)

5 pickles (0.5)
(5.5)

pita pizza:
pita (2)
1/4 avocado (2)
2 slices ff cheese (1)
spinach (0)
sun dried tomato (0)
tomato paste (0)
(10.5)

2 source yogurts (1)
strawberries (0.5)
special k satisfaction (1)
(13)

dinner: ?

hello monday

well - it's monday and i feel pretty good today. but only because i forced myself to get into bed at midnight, and slept until 7:45am, skipping morning exercise. i am going to workout later.

i am at home right now. i was at work for a bit. on friday at about 3pm the roof in the hallway collapsed from the rain, and big pieces of black mold and ceiling and the lighting fixtures and wires all crashed down to the ground. i work in an old building... really old. it used to be a shipping dock when the waters of lake ontario came further up the shore. part of my building is an historic site that can't be destroyed, but part of it (my part) can. they are trying to sell it to build condos, but somebody along the lines is having trouble with permits... anyway, they refuse to do any maintenance on the building because they want to sell it and tear it down. so our hallway has been flooding and small pieces of the roof has come down and finally it really came down.

so we sent some "samples" of the mold to a mold detection company, so see if it's safe or whatever, and until we know, we are working from home. i couriered myself a bunch of stuff so i'll actually be working. but it's good because now i feel like a lady of leisure.

summer challenge:
i finished up 15 miles for week one. it wasn't easy. 15 miles is a lot. it's three, five mile runs, or four shorter runs. but i prefer not to run on consecutive days so something has got to give. i think i'll aim for three longer runs, but if it's not possible, then i'll just do more.

my week one new veggie is a total cop out. i looked in the grocery store but all the new veggies looked so weird to me... i would have no idea how to prepare any of them. i'm going to have to pre-plan this stuff and come up with a recipe beforehand. so my week one veggie is BOK CHOY. i had it in a beef chow mein dish in a chinese food restaurant in china town. it was wilty and gross. i'm sure if i prepared it myself it would be better. that is why it's a cop out haha.

today's menu is:

1/2 cup mixed berries (0.5)
1 serving special k satisfaction cereal (3)
1 cup light silk soy milk (1)
coffee (0)
(4.5)

1/2 piece rye bread (0.5)
source yogurt with pumpkin and fibre sprinkles (2)
(7)

pita (2)
lean chicken (1)
cheese (1)
avocado (1)
honey mustard (0.5)
lettuce (0)
tomato (0)
(12.5)

source yogurt (1)
oatmeal (2)
(15.5)

big salad with lettuce (0)
poppyseed dressing (2)
peas (1)
veggie burger (2)
almonds (2)
(22.5)

week one summer challenge

3 more miles today to make it 15/15. i really didn't want to run but the challenge pushed me to do it... so that's good :)

i will post about my new veg tomorrow. (it's not that exciting)

ugh

3 more miles on the DREADMILL (it was raining all day) for the summer challenge. :)

3 more tomorrow to finish up 15 for the week.