What I Ate This Week: Day Seven and Go Green Half Marathon!

So, I kind of got tired of taking pictures and recording all my food for this blog. It was a fun novel project for the first couple days... aaaaand now I am tired of it. Enough so that I didn't really do it at all this Sunday, or write anything in my blog about it yet. In any case, count this as kind of a combined post - Sunday's food with my latest half marathon!

So I signed up for the Go Green St. Patrick's Day Half Marathon on a whim - I saw that it was local and St. Patrick's Day themed, and since I was training for another race in early April, it was a done deal.

I hit Target for some green accessories to wear, and luckily, it was a super nice day out, so I was able to wear a tank to run, and I had the perfect green one.

6 a.m. race day bathroom selfie!!!

My friend picked me up around 6:45, and we arrived at the park to warm up and use the bathroom. It was a cute set up, and people were milling around in their green shirts and costumes. Lots of green tutus, sparkles, and shamrocks! I was nervous about my new sunglasses (Target $1 bin, whatttt), and that they wouldn't stay on, but I wore them on another run this week and they worked marvelously. Winning. I also attached a light up shamrock pin!

I was nervous about warming up too much before the race - for some reason, it's always seemed counter-intuitive to me to warm up pre-race, as I've always thought about it as wasting energy that I could use for the race, especially since I don't ever eat beforehand. However, my friend Ellen, who ran the race as well, is a much more experienced runner than I am, and always warms up. So we did a 10-minute slow jog/run, and I felt good and shed my sweatshirt soon afterwards.

Pre-Race Photo, Post-Warm Up

Checking out the medals pre-race.



I was more relaxed than I've ever been at the start of the race, I think especially because I know the trail on which the race was run so well. Perhaps warming up had something to do with it as well! In any case, I got off to a typical start, allowing myself a few minutes to warm up and find my pace.

I found that I was able to pretty easily sustain a 10:15-10:30/mile pace throughout the race, which was better than I thought I could do! It was definitely less easy towards miles 9-11, in which there was a stretch of path without much shade. For awhile towards the finish, I was toeing the line of pushing myself and feeling nauseous, so I held back, staying more around the 10:20-10:30/mile pace. I found one woman who was running about a 10:20/mile, and stayed right behind her and let her pace me for awhile. (She actually ended up finishing right before I did!)

Here were my final results:

Time: 2:16:22
Pace: 10:25/mile

And it's a PR by 6 minutes!!

I found one picture online of me finishing the race:

Woohoo!



After the race, a brewery was offering free beer... and then they ran out before I could get one! They were still serving when I finished and I figured I'd wait a half hour or so to stretch and cool down first... laaaaaame.

Empty beer station - lame.

So my friend Ellen, who also ran, bought me this amazing Guinness Chocolate cupcake with Bailey's Cream frosting. I didn't feel like eating much, aside from oranges and bananas after the race, but then I remembered the cupcake... and though my initial plan was to eat half, it was gone in minutes.

YUM.

(That being said, in retrospect, I do wish I had not eaten the cupcake. My sugar cravings all day Sunday, spanning into Monday, were definitely not worth it. I really do think cutting out refined sugar in most instances is the right way to go for me, since afterwards, I just always, always crave more. Stuff like a little ice cream I can do, but a whole cupcake? Sugar cravings for days. I'm learning and wheeeeelp, now I know! It WAS really a delicious cupcake though.)

So the food station at the race was decent - Power Bars, Oranges, and Bananas, as well as a separate station with Kind bars. Post-race, in the future, I will NOT be eating any cupcakes. However, the vanilla protein-packed Power Bar was decent, and I always love bananas! Much better post-race selections.

After the race we got Mexican food. Mole enchiladas. SO good.

Later in the day, I made two recipes from my Gwyneth Paltrow cookbook (again), both from the "Kids' Menu" section. But like, adults can eat that stuff too, right? :) Super easy - just tofu and cooked carrots broiled or cooked at high heat with a mixture of raw honey, soy sauce/liquid aminos, garlic, olive oil, and I added a little Sriraicha. Yum!

I used rainbow carrots - my friends did not believe it was a real thing, but it is a real thing!



Had some fruit, veggies, and (vegan) pesto mayo for a snack.

(Yes, that is a margarita with my snack!)



Finally, I made vegan chocolate chip cookies. And they're meh. I mean, they're good, but I subbed maple syrup for the type of natural sweetner that the recipe called for, and... just yeah, not as good. Still decent with a glass of milk, but I'm going to work on finding a better Paleo/vegan/low glycemic cookie recipe.

Okay! Well now that it's far into the following week, I finally finished the previous week's blog posts. Hope you enjoyed! I will keep you all posted as I continue to experiment with new recipes and different types of foods to try, as well as training for my next half on April 6th!


xoxo
S

What I Ate This Week: Day Six.

Ahhhh, sleeping in. It is so amazing. By sleeping in, I really mean staying in bed 'till like 8 or 9, since I'm usually up at 6, but it's still pretty awesome.

This lovely morning, I slept in, lazed around for a bit, then did an easy pace 2-mile run to loosen up for my race tomorrow!

I planned on eating a light breakfast a bit earlier, but it really ended up being around 11. Oops. I wanted to do avocado toast again, because it was amazing yesterday, so I made an egg, fruit, and a handful of sauteed spinach with a bit of chopped garlic and EVOO to go with it.

Breakfast, 11:00: Avocado Toast (on Ezekiel Sprouted Grain and Seed Bread), Egg, Berry and Banana Fruit Salad, Sauteed Spinach

I met a good friend for lunch in Palo Alto today, and we tried Sliderbar. I decided to go with one bunless veggie burger slider (homemade black bean patty, yummm), which had aioli, red pepper, and cucumber, and one spicy chicken slider (appropriately named "Hot Chick," lol!). We also shared sweet potato fries!

I stopped by Whole Foods on the way home - they had a wine-tasting there, but as I had to drive home, sadly I did not partake. I did, however, pick up lots of stuff for the coming week's recipes, and a pint of this local ice cream from Petaluma: Straus Creamery. I tasted it (for quality assurance, of course!) this afternoon, and it's as good as it sounds!

I decided to make kale chips today as well, as I had some leftover kale from this week. I used Oh She Glows' All Dressed Kale Chips recipe!

I wasn't hungry, so I stored the kale chips in some baggies to use for this week. The leaves and stems that I didn't use went into a baggie into the freezer to put in green smoothies.


Enjoyed some iced coffee on a hot afternoon while making the kale chips :)

Salad Course, 6:30: Lettuce and carrots with cauliflower/chickpeas, sunflower seeds, raisins, blue cheese, and lemon vinaigrette

For dinner, I got slightly lazy, and used a Tikka Masala Simmer Sauce to cook some chicken breast. But, paired with the lentils from this week, it was an AWESOME Indian dinner combo. I made some brown rice in order to add some extra carbs for fuel for tomorrow!

Dinner, 7:30: Chicken Tikka, Lentil Coconut Curry, Butternut Squash Puree, Brown Rice, Plain Greek Yogurt Topping

Finally, I made the best yummiest dessert ever. I took the extra baked apple half from last night, added chopped dates, and re-warmed it. I topped it with some caramel ice cream and oat granola, and YUM. It was like an apple crisp!

Okay, got my stuff laid out for the race in the morning - see you tomorrow for the last day of this little project!

What I Ate This Week: Day Five.

I made myself a proper green smoothie today! I wasted no time in using my "The Oh She Glows Cookbook," and made myself the Original Green Monster smoothie! I was going to have some Paleo bread, but was really full after my smoothie, so brought the bread to work instead.

Breakfast, 7:10: Original Green Monster Smoothie from Oh She Glows!

Snack, 9:55: Paleo Bread with Laughing Cow Strawberry Cream Cheese, Berries

Lunch, 12:00: Coconut Lentil Curry Soup (from last night), Butternut Squash Puree (also from last night), Cocoroon Cookie, Tangerine, LAST SLICE of Delicious g/f Leftover Pizza!

Snack, 3:30: Veggies, Kale Chips, Chocolate Chickpea Snacks

I was SO excited to pick up my packet for my half marathon this Sunday after work today! It's a St. Patrick's Day themed run, and the tech shirt (which I will not wear to run, because as we Californians say, it will be hella hot on Sunday) is super cute. I can't wait!

Had a diet coke craving. DIET COKE SELFIE! (Yep, my hair is straight today - just got my hairs did.)

For dinner, I was going to make chicken... then I realized I had forgotten to take it out of the freezer to thaw the night before. Blerrrgh.

But! It ended up being a great thing, because what I made was SO. GOOD.

Remembering flipping through the breakfast section of my new cookbook last night and seeing sweet potato home fries, and as I'm stepping up the carbs a little today and tomorrow, I decided to go with a variation on the Oh She Glows Cookbook's Sunrise Scramble with Roasted Home Fries and Avocado Toast.

I was hungry when I got home around 7:00, so I had a quick salad with vinaigrette, raisins, and sunflower seeds.

So I started off by dicing the sweet potato (which I had bought a few days ago and had no idea what to do with - win!) and adding the ingredients to make home fries, as well as some red peppers, because yum.

Instead of the tofu scramble suggested in my cookbook, I made a two-egg omelette with spinach, mushrooms, and blue cheese. Finally, for my avocado toast, I used the recipe from my Goop Cookbook which was super easy and delicious - I used Ezekiel Bread, Vegenaise, and avocado.

All together, it was a super easy, colorful, and delicious dinner!

WINE SELFIE!

Finally, I decided to make a baked apple (from Goop's It's All Good cookbook again). Super easy. Wash apple. Take out core. Mix chopped walnuts, raisins, 1 Tbsp or so maple syrup, cinnamon and nutmeg, put in apple, bake. YUM.

Happy Weekend, everyone!

What I Ate This Week: Day Four.

Happy Thursday! Is it Friday yet?

Breakfast, 7:05: Paleo Bread with Almond Butter and Drizzle of Honey and Banana; Nonfat Greek Yogurt with Maple, Berries, Banana (and coffee, duh)

Snack, 9:25: Kale Chips, Almonds

Lunch, Part 1, 11:40: Leftovers Salad (Chickpeas and Cauliflower, Salmon, Spinach, Lettuce, Carrots, Beets, Hard Boiled Egg, Mushrooms, Homemade Balsamic Vinaigrette)

Sometimes I like to throw leftover meat and veggies on a salad, if I get sick of eating them by themselves. Since, as I mentioned yesterday, I've been eating the same salmon and cauliflower several days now, it was nice to have it appear in a different context!

A note: I was just super hungry this morning - not sure if my breakfast was less filling or smaller than I thought it was (I was pretty full when I was done), or if I'm just hungrier today than usual, but I decided to respect my body's hunger signals and eat some snack and lunch a little early.


Lunch, Part 2, 12:30: Leftover Pizza, Trader Joe's 70% Dark Chocolate Wedges with Caramel

(There was another piece of pizza there but I ate it before I remembered to take a picture, ooooops. P.S. I put extra fresh garlic and red pepper flakes on the leftover pizza - highly recommend.)


Snack, 3:15: Apple, Half Lara Bar (PB&J Flavor), Veggies (Carrots, Peppers) with Hummus

More snacks pre-workout: Veggie Chips, Cashews


Activity: Track Workout with a Friend!


Then I was ravenous when I was cooking dinner, so I ate some raisins and a tangerine.


So I finally made the Vegan Coconut Curry Lentil Soup (except my version was non-vegan, since I used chicken broth oops). Delicious! I omitted the diced tomato, and used black lentils rather than red, as that's what I had in my cabinet. Also threw in a handful of kale at the end.

I also had bought some butternut squash at the farmer's market on Sunday, so I boiled and pureed it.

Served the lentils with a dollop of nonfat greek yogurt, and the butternut squash puree with a bit of maple syrup and nutmeg.

Yum! Such a delicious dinner!

Dinner, 8:00 (way late, but it took awhile to cook the lentils...): Coconut Curry Lentil Soup from Vegangela, Butternut Squash with Maple and Nutmeg

I was also super excited to get a care package from my momma today! There are always a bunch of random seasonal things in a package from my mom, but the most exciting thing in this care package was the "The Oh She Glows Cookbook" from Angela Liddon. And actually, I might make the kale chips from the Oh She Glows website tomorrow! (A will be so excited... the one time I tried to make him try kale chips, he smelled them and I was immediately denied. Sigh, the life of dating a picky eater.)

Contents of care package:

Finally, dessert at 9:15: Berry Tea and A Little Ice Cream :)

TGIF!