Hump Day Post

Can I just say I am so impressed with the bloggers out there who come up with creative post titles!?! I had a major block today, as I do most days.

My legs were dragging a little bit yesterday, so after procrastinating for about an hour and a half, I finally headed to the gym at 7:15pm.

I am an expert procrastinator. I took Oscar to the park, then came home and tried to get him to chase Lucy for awhile. I thought about starting my taxes (meaning, I tried to locate my turbo tax log in) and then looked around facebook for waaay too long. So many ways to be unproductive! :)

I did manage to do a 4-mile treadmill run.

• Mile 1 - 6.0 speed
• Mile 2 - 6.2 speed
• Mile 3 - 6.4 speed
• Mile 4 - 6.0 speed

I felt accomplished and overheated. I think they must have cranked up the heat in the gym last night.

Dinner was inspired by Chandra and Erica. I had plans to make Turkey Mini Meatloaves, but after seeing I had all the makings of a great Turkey Burger - I went for it.

Here is how I did it:

1. Saute 1 clove garlic (minced), 1/2 small onion (chopped), and heaping handful of baby spinach with a dash of EVOO.
2. Cook over medium heat until the onion is tender and the spinach is wilted. Let cool.
3. Mix spinach mixture with ground turkey.
4. Go wild with spices. I threw in a few dashes of sea salt, black pepper blend, Worcestershire, red pepper, and egg whites. I also threw in about 1/4 cup of blue cheese crumbles.
5. Shape away. I went with the normal "burger" shape.

Kevin grilled them up beautifully. (Grill marks!)

Country Bob's on the side for dipping. They were mighty tasty. Served with a slice of wheat toast w/ whipped smart balance.

Butternut squash fries with ketchup on the side.

I would say this meal was a major success because while we were eating Kevin goes, "I was NOT looking forward to this meal at all, but I have to say, this is one of the best "blog/healthy" meals you have ever made!" :)

Other Stuff

I had signed up for the Club Challenge 10-miler this Sunday. This is where all the running clubs in Maryland compete in a 10-mile race. It will be a pretty competitive bunch on a challenging course, with a lot of fast times. I'll admit that I was nervous, but I was committed to doing it and told myself I wouldn't bail last minute.

That changed when I found out Kevin's Award Dinner is the Saturday night before the race. This award dinner is special because this year - Kevin is going to be receiving a pretty big award. It is a Black Tie function in some swanky club on the top floor of the Legg Mason building that stands prominently in the Baltimore skyline. He is renting a tux and I bought a new dress. We want to relax and enjoy it! and drink as much wine as we want!

So, that was my long-winded way of saying I am not running the race on Sunday. But, I will be running 8-9 miles Saturday morning to make up for bailing on the race.

Thought you might like to check out my dress for Saturday night. A Black-Strapless-Number.

I have a hard time buying any dress that isn't black. White House/Black Market is my go-to store for dresses.

While I was in my room taking a picture of the dress, I snapped this photo:

My board with (most of) my race bibs. I would love to do some sort of collage with all of these and have it framed. So, I am curious for all of you runners or racers of any kind - what do you do with your race bibs? Throw them out? Save them? If you save them, where do you put them?

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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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