Getting back into shape sucks and peanut (!) peanut butter (jelly)

Note to self:

Getting back into shape sucks. Am I seriously the same person who would run 20 km every weekend? Plus cross-training, yoga and speed/hill repeats interspersed throughout the week? I'm having a hard enough time getting back to running 10 km ... cumulatively ... throughout the week :(

Anyway, I've discovered how to do something new and exciting... ok, it's new and exciting (to me)... making my own nut butter! It's SO easy. Why is this exciting? You can make your nut butters to taste! And you can avoid all of the nasty hydrogenated oils that are added to pre-made nut butters. I had thought that it was cheaper to make my own peanut butter, but once I factored the cost of the electricity to power the oven and food processor and the gas/time to obtain materials - I think it barely broke even. HOWEVER, homemade nut butter tastes SO much better!

The process:

Step one: Acquire nuts. I picked up raw peanuts from Bulk Barn, but any nut will do.

Step two: If nuts are not roasted, roast nuts by placing on some sort of oven safe tray, turn on oven (350F) and place tray inside oven and close door. Check nuts obsessively every 30 seconds to make sure they are not burning. Get distracted by re-run of How I Met Your Mother and start watching show. Realize at commercial break that nuts are in oven, proceed to panic, run over to oven and pull out tray.
Step three: Let nuts cool. Sample delicious freshly roasted nuts every 15 seconds. Burn mouth and fingers each time, complain about the burny pain and then continue sampling delicious freshly roasted nuts. Once nuts are cool, place nuts in food processor and turn on. Wait for magic to happen...


You can add a touch of oil to help the process along a bit. I added a drop of sunflower oil. Once it became buttery, I sweetened it up with some agave syrup. We're almost there...


Yay, done!! Can you tell which one is mine?

michelle sits on her ass and does nothing

Ugh, I've been so lazy lately, I've been thinking about renaming my poor neglected blog, "michelle sits on her ass and does nothing"...

However, this is about to change! I have two 10-k races coming up in May and I am hell-bent on getting a personal best on at least one of them. Hopefully it shouldn't be too hard, since my last recorded 10-k time is a pathetic (yet cool), 1:11:11.

What does a former runner turned couch potato do to get back into shape? For the last few weeks, I've been going out and doing 5k runs a couple of times per week to get back into the groove. Next up, I'm going to start to incorporate yoga and spinning into my week. I bought a 10-class hot yoga voucher from team buy a couple of months ago. I think it's time to give it a try. I need to make up a training calendar to put on my fridge. I like to put pretty stickers on the days where I successfully complete a workout :)

I suppose I should change up my diet a bit. I did enjoy eating processed foods and cheese with every meal...now I CRAVE junk food all of the time. My energy levels have become perpetually low and my mood sucks! time to go back to experimenting with healthier non-processed foods and superfoods! Although I did just replenish my snack drawer at work, maybe I'll start eating healthier once that's finished? It's just wrong to throw out delicious cookies!!! Besides, what's wrong with eating cookies (and chips) for breakfast, anyway?!??

Most importantly, I've refreshed my ipod with new running music. I did love listening to musicals while training for my last half-marathon, but it's starting to drive me crazy!! When the Phantom of the Opera comes on my ipod now, I need to restrain myself from throwing the damn thing down the street. I've gone back and loaded up my ipod with new Eminem. Yay for getting iTunes giftcards for Christmas! I LOVE running to Eminem. Till I Collapse by Em and Nate Dogg has been my favourite running song for years now. Not only to the beats match up nicely with my natural running cadence, but the combo of Slim yelling at me and his lyrics keep me going when I feel like dying. Since my blogging has become like my lifestyle (lazy), I'm going to sign off on this post with a few snippets from my most favourite running song:

'Cause sometimes you just feel tired,
Feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
And just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up
And not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.
......
Until the roof
The roof comes off
Until my legs
Give out from underneath me
I will not fall,
I will stand tall,
Feels like no one could beat me.

Ode to Kale!

O Kale, how I do love thee? Let me count the ways
I love thee to the depth due to your nutritional might
My eyes will search for thee, when you are hiding out of sight
Somewhere in the crisper drawer or maybe behind the soy.
I always search for thee, if I cannot find thee I will start to pester the boy

I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by smoothie or by chip
I love thee purely, when eating you I do not require dip;
I love thee freely, as does the boy he says

I love it when my blender is put to use
With kale and banana and yummy fruits about to be pulverized in a drink
Yet I also love thee dried in the oven with garlic powder and nutritional yeast I think
With all of your antioxidants and vitamin profile,
I do not mind the little green bits stuck in my beguiling smile
I shall but love thee better there is no denial

Yum, three cheers for kale! I've been on a big time kale kick lately.

There have been green smoothies:


This was a blueberry + banana + kale green smoothie: 1 glass of water, 1 banana, a generous handful of kale, splash of pineapple juice and a handful of blueberries. I left it on the counter while I was doing a few other things in the kitchen and it completely seperated! I probably didn't blend it for long enough. I stirred it up before drinking and it was yums. Kale is probably my favourite green for green smoothies. I just really like the flavour and texture it brings to the drink.

There have also been lots of kale chips. John and I ate an entire bunch of kale in less than 24 hours. Crappy picture of one of the batches, but it was major yummy time:


This was super easy to make. The only trick is to watch out for burning at the end, crispy kale is delicious, burned kale is not so much. To make yummy kale chips: I just ripped the kale leaves into pieces (no stems), washed + dried them. Put them onto a parchment covered baking sheet and tossed them with olive oil, lemon juice, salt + pepper, garlic powder, nutritional yeast and a bit of chili powder. Then baked them in the oven at 350F for 10 minutes, flipped them around and then continued baking for another 7-10 minutes. THEY WERE SO GOOD. I wish I was eating them right now!!!!

My running is slowly getting back on track. I've been doing more running just for the sake of running and it's been feeling pretty good. I'm starting to get the itch to go after another half-marathon. It might be kinda fun to travel somewhere and run half-marathon, as I've only ever run in local events. But we'll see...I am a creature of habit, so travelling somewhere and NOT being able to engage in my usual pre-race activities is a bit intimidating!

Post-vacation blues and you are what you eat

In August, John and I went on a 10-day road trip to the east coast of Canada. We stopped in Quebec City, Bay of Fundy (on the New Brunswick side) and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. It was amazing! There are so many interesting things to do and beautiful things to see. For example, the view from our tent at Cape Breton Island. We woke up to this every morning:


The Cabot Trail was beautiful. On the first morning, we went out for a drive and pulled off to the side of the road to snap a few pictures. The scenery was so pretty and we were a little hungry so we decided to have a mini-picnic for breakfast. It definitely beats my usual breakfast locale, which is my dreary grey cubicle at work.

Behold!
*sigh* why did I come back home again?

Anyway, I'm getting a bit off track. The point of this post is supposed to be about food. I had a grand old time on vacation. We spend about half of our time camping and eating camp food (i.e., burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches, beer, beer, beer) and the other half of our time staying in hotels and eating restaurant food (i.e., a side of fries with everything!). In Quebec City, we definitely indulged in the locale cuisine ... mmm, poutine ... I had a salad once but it came with duck confit (mmm, duck braised in fat) which probably cancelled out the healthiness of the salad. Oh, and also it came in a tortilla bowl, with a side of bread (white) and butter (lots) and I washed it down with beer. When we came back, we were too tired to go grocery shopping right away so we ended up eating a lot of take-out and other convenience foods.

I felt terrible when I came back from vacation. Part of it was the post-vacation blues, coming back to the ugly concrete GTA after spending all so much time in beautiful nature and interacting with people who were actually nice and friendly was quite the shock. The other part was likely due to the lack of nutrients in my system. My hair was looking limp and lifeless, my face started breaking out and my skin was looking ashen and unhealthy. I felt awful, I had no energy at all...waking up and trying to get out of bed every morning was almost impossible. I was perpetually in a bad mood and was constantly struggling to get through the day. After a week of feeling like crap, I got myself to the grocery store and bulk food store and picked up the following feel-good supplies:
- lemons
- cranberries (frozen)
- hemp seeds
- cacao nibs
- chia seeds
- bananas
- walnuts
- spinach
- protein powder (chocolate flavoured)

With these items I made the following yummy things:
- water + lemon - ok, so its not very fancy. but I would drink it at work all day and at home all night.
- cranberry smoothies - with greek yogurt
- green smoothies!! made with spinach + varying combinations of bananas, cranberries, peaches, pineapples, pears and/or mangoes
- hemp milk - blended a couple of tbsps of seeds with a cup of water. Sometimes I mixed in cacao nibs, agave nectar and a pinch of salt to make it chocolate hemp milk and NO I did not get high off the hemp seeds. I don't think they sell anything containing THC in Bulk Barn.
- chia pudding - a couple of tbsps of chia seeds soaked in a cup of hemp milk or vanilla rice milk for about 15 minutes (stir every once in awhile). I'd also add varying combinations of dried cranberries, cacao nibs, walnuts and/or banana slices. Banana + walnut was my favourite. I learned that it's better to let the chia soak for a bit before adding the extras. When I mixed everything together first and then added the milk, I found the chia seeds tended to clump together.

I started cooking dinner again - with vegetables! quinoa! not deep-fried meat! legumes (beans/lentils)! And I started to hit the gym again. This is where the protein powder comes in, I found if I had a protein drink after a hard work-out, my recovery time was much quicker. Mmm, and the chocolate flavour tastes surprisingly inoffensive. The brand that I'm using right now is Whey Gourmet. I'll put this to the test when I start training for my next half-marathon.

I've been feeling much better this week. My energy levels are starting to perk back up again and I'm feeling a lot less like a dirty slob. I need to start setting my next set of goals. This little hiatus from doing things has been nice, but without a goal to work towards, I feel like I'm drifting around aimlessly :(

Update time

Wow, almost 3 months since my last post?!? My poor neglected blog!

Life became very hectic this summer, between working crazy hours during the day plus coaching during the evening and weekends - I didn't have much time for anything else. Well, that's all changed now - coaching is finished for now and summer hours at work has come to an end. No more summer hours means no more Fridays off, but I also no longer have to work 1.0 to 1.5 hours of overtime each day to get that day off. Due to massive burnout, I ended up taking the last 3 weeks off to recover and enjoy the rest of the summer. Here is a small list of things that I fully intend on, but may not actually end up posting about:

- Dragon boating
- Coaching
- My first 5 km race in 2 years
- Road trip to the East Coast!

I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't run at all since my 5 km race in August :( I just needed to take a little break from running. With training for two back-to-back half-marathons, coaching and the ankle injury, running stopped being fun and had become a bit of a chore. But I do miss it, so for now I'll just run for a bit just for the sake of running...and run whenever I want, for distances that I want and at a pace that I want, instead of feeling obligated to run on scheduled days for x kms at a set pace.

As for what to do next, I have a couple of plans that I've been mulling about in my head. Perhaps I will share them once they start their metamorphosis from caterpillar of thoughts into butterfly of actions.

Long time, no post!

My posting has dwindled down to a slow trickle these days. I used to compose most of my blog entries on my 20 km runs, but since my half-marathon, I haven't done anything longer than a 10 km! Coaching is on-going, it's time-consuming, but it's been a lot of fun - I've got a really good group. We meet 3x a week - one night is a seminar night followed by a run and the other nights are just practice runs. It's made me a bit nostalgic for my early days of running - back when everything was still fresh and new! (Haha, and back when reaching new distances did NOT involve hours of running!) I've been telling my group some of my old running stories and the different experiences I've had. Actually, now that I think about it - most of my energy has been going into talking about about running to my group and writing recap e-mails (of our weekly seminars) instead of writing blog posts.

There hasn't been much running going on with me right now. I've mostly been going out on practice runs with my group and I haven't had time to go out much on my own. After my last half-marathon, I was convinced that I was finished with half-marathons for the year...but I'm starting to miss having a half to work towards. I miss my weekly 20 kms and the focus that it gave me! :(

So, not much running around for me, but I have been doing stuff. Last weekend, I cashed in my groupon for Tree-top Trekking and went up to Horseshoe Valley with John. We were safely tethered up, with a safety harness around the waist and safety ropes - and we spent the morning on various obstacle courses up in the trees. We had to climb ladders and walk across various tightropes and unstable bridges. At one point there were two platforms and we had to swing from one side to another using a rope! I did fall at one point on one of the unstable bridges. The safety ropes stopped me from falling too far and I was able to pull myself back up. It was a little unnerving! The zip-lines were probably the most fun, although I had a hard time stopping myself from spinning around. I think I landed mostly backwards! I thought I was fairly fit, but my upper body was killing me for 3-4 days afterwards.

Next challenge - Dragon boat racing! My ancestors would be so proud of me!!

Post race wrap-up and what to do next

Oops, sorry for the long break! I've been distracted with the rapture and the ending of the world and haven't gotten around to posting my post race wrap-up yet. It's very time consuming to prepare for the apocalypse ;)

Race review

The race organizers were a bit more generous this year with the race kit. Last year, my race kit consisted of a t-shirt, a sample pack of 2 Advil, 1 chapstick and a couple of one-use heating pads. This year, behold the bounty:

The package of chocolate Werther's originals did not survive the week.

I was a little leery of the weather - as this was my view for most of the day before. Ah, it was so delightfully dreary!
On race day itself, the weather was a little chilly and it rained off and on for the entire race. This was just fine for me, since I have a tendency to overheat when I'm running and I actually enjoy running in the rain. I brought along a hoodie for the walk over to the starting line, but ended up tying it around my waist while I was waiting in the crowd for the race to start because I was already starting to get a bit warm. I'm proud to say that I did NOT cry at the end. I did get a little misty eyed at the starting line though. Especially after the the national anthem was sung and the crowd started to cheer for us when we all started the race. Argh, I do not know what's happening to my icy cold heart of steel!!

The course was beautiful - we ran down around the Credit Valley area, UTM campus, Mississauga Road - the posh neighbourhood with the million dollar homes and down along the lakeshore. Despite the rain and gloom, the trees were so green and pretty and the waves crashing hard along the lakeshore were quite cool.

For the first bit of the race, I was following the 4:15 marathon pace bunny. I ended up losing them somewhere around the 8 km marker. I think they stopped for water at one of the aid stations and I lost them in the crowd. Then I started to follow this one lady who was dressed in a black and white polka dot tank top and a white running skirt. Wearing white during a rainstorm - how scandalous!! The black and white polka dot tank top looked like Lulu's Power Y tank top, but I've never seen a polka dotted tank at Lulu (and let me tell you, I've been online stalking them for years). Ever the creepy stalker, I kept on (unsuccessfully) trying to catch up with her to confirm its authenticity. (Ah, the strange little games one likes to play to keep the mind occupied for 21 kms.) But I ended up losing her when she turned off to continue on the marathon course. Around this time, I started to run with the two sets of 2:15 half-marathon pace bunnies (dammit!). I passed one of the 2:15 pace bunnies, then the other one passed me, then the one from behind passed me, then I passed the other one...it was all very confusing. I ended up finishing around 2:15 without any pace bunnies...I don't know where they disappeared to, as I started to space out a bit around 20 km. My time was still off from my personal best, I think I could (and should) have done better, since I was killing all of my old times at the 5 km and 10 km markers - however, I did SO much better than my personal worst at the Chilly half, so I'll take it as a victory!!

Where do we go from here?

After my race was finished and my celebratory sushi lunch was digested, I started to suffer from a bit of post-race depression. For the last 6 months, I've had half-marathons on my mind and I've had plans/schedules which were centred around my goal races. I had rolled my ankle back in March just before the Chilly half and since then I've been getting random flare-ups of pain - so I didn't want to train for another half-marathon this year and thought that I should probably back off a bit from the distances. For the first time in months, I found myself without a challenge to work towards. So, I sulked around for a week and quietly pondered what I should do next. I didn't have to wonder for too long - since I can always count on the Running Room to welcome me back into their world of dry-fit technical running clothes and 8AM weekend training practices. Starting on Monday, I'm excited to announce that I'll be coaching the Learn to Run clinic! I'm a little nervous, but mostly looking forward to this new experience. I've had a lot of support over the years from my previous coaches and fellow runners - I'm excited to be able to pass along the things that I've learned to my new group of runners and introduce them to the exciting world of running :)