Labor Day Weekend

What a week it was...all due to a crazy deadline at work. BUT, I am happy to report that I kept up with my running despite working 60+ hours.


Last Sunday to loosen our legs a bit, Kevin and I went for an hour mountain bike ride. I tracked our ride through Patapsco State Park using Trail Guru - a very cool iPhone app.


The map below shows the path we took through the park.


You can see more about our ride HERE, including a scary picture of me after the ride. Sweaty helmet hair is tough to fix.


Other workouts this week included:

• Mon - 6 mile run
• Tue - Arc Trainer 40 mins, Row 15 mins
• Wed - OFF
• Thu - 6.2 mile run
• Fri - OFF
• Sat - Lift 40 mins, upper body and abs only.

Which brings me to today -

• Sun - I am happy to report that I completed 14 miles this morning.

It was a tough first 3 miles because we were on a main highway and I always seem to feel miserable during the first 3 miles of any run. We had a great bay breeze from the water and eventually got on more secluded back roads. 14 miles later, I was thirsty, hungry and my legs were aching. Came home and ate a donut. It tasted DELICIOUS.

I have lots of other things to show you and write about, but I forgot my camera cord and am down at the beach for the Labor Day Weekend.

Let me give a quick shout out to my DAD and SISTER though...HAPPY BIRTHDAY to both of you!

In the meantime - you can find me on TWITTER HERE - since I am officially addicted. Fun to see what people are up too. My famous favorites to follow - Chris Cooley, Taylor Swift, Andy Roddick, Demi Moore, Jessica Simpson, Serena Williams, Rick Baylis, Ruth Reichl, and many others...


oh and you will also find me at the beach or pool RELAXING - Mango Mojito and good book in hand.
Enjoy the rest of your labor day weekend!

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Labor Day (Turkey Mini Meat Loaves and Mango Drink!)

This morning started out with another variation on the breakfast burrito. This time it was turkey bacon, tomatoes, egg whites, cheddar cheese, and some taco sauce. I also had half a banana. For a mid-morning, pre-mountain bike snack - I mixed some non-fat vanilla stoneyfield yogurt with Go Lean Kashi Crunch, blueberries, and a drizzle of honey. Today's workout was an hour and a half of intense mountain biking through patapsco valley state park. I have slowly been getting better (thanks to guidance from my boyfriend, who got me into riding) and today I did more log jumps than ever before. I almost fell a few times, but the fear is starting to go away. Usually, Kevin rides ahead and then waits for me, but today I was pretty close behind him, which means i am not riding my brakes the entire way. Yesss.

After our big bike ride, we stopped by La Madeleine for some lunch. I ate way to heavy, but I was SO hungry. I got a half creamy mushroom soup and half french dip with au jus. Chips came with the sandwich and i tried not to eat too many of those. I did have two slices of whole wheat bread to dip in my soup. They had mango iced tea which was so refreshing. I added a splenda to sweeten it up a little bit.
Later this afternoon, Kevin and I walked oscar to the park and started this navy seal workout. Basically, we did 4 sets of 15 push-ups and 20 sit-ups (the kind with someone holding your feet so you come all the way up). Each week, you increase the amount of reps and are supposed to do this 3 times a week. Let's see how this works in the coming weeks!

For dinner, I had taken out ground turkey and wanted to find something to make that was healthy. So I found this recipe on cooking light.com for Turkey Mini Meat Loaves. These were OUTSTANDING. I followed the recipe exactly except that I didnt have fresh parsley, so I used the dried kind, but I didnt think it mattered much. Also, I stuffed a few of the little loaves with gorgonzola cheese and then some with shredded cheddar, which made it nice to find little pockets of cheese throughout!!! Oh and since my package of ground turkey was about 20 oz. - I almost tripled the recipe. Here are the cute little loaves about to head into the oven. Since I only had a sixer muffin pan, I rolled the rest into meatballs and stuck those on a regular baking pan.
While those were in the oven for 30 mins at 350 degrees. I sliced up some zucchini and sauteed them in PAM with fresh ground pepper. I also toasted some pine nuts for the whole wheat couscous I had on the other side of the stove.
For the whole wheat couscous, I followed the package directions, but used chicken broth, only 1 TBSP light whipped butter, and added in some dried parsley, garlic, salt and pepper.I also came up with this new, amazing drink tonight. The weekend guests left some sparkling water and I had picked up some Mango Nectar juice from TJs. The juice was a little too sweet by itself, so I added some sparkling water and had this sparkling mango juice. A little vodka would be good in it too....another time!
Here is my plate from above, I added a few crumbles of gorgonzola to the zucchini also! Hope everyone had a great, relaxing holiday weekend - I know I did!

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