Hello and happy Friday, friends! It’s a beautiful and very warm one here in NC.
I started my day bright and early with a little cross training in the form of an early morning swim at the UNC pool! It’s a really nice pool — Olympic sized but with a divider in between so you can still swim shorter laps in some of the lanes if you want.
I can only park on campus until 7:30 a.m., so I arrived at 6:20 to give myself plenty of time. I spent 45 minutes in the pool and it was wonderful! I love starting my day in the water — relaxing and nice me time to think, but also a great workout. I swam in one of the shorter 25m lanes, and just alternated between breaststroke, freestyle, backstroke, and, every once in awhile when I was feeling particularly hardcore, butterfly. 🙂 I didn’t follow any sort of plan, just did what I felt like and kept mixing it up so I didn’t get bored! I used to swim when I was younger so it’s nice to know all the strokes so well still — I think I would get bored just swimming freestyle all the time. Swimming is definitely something that you’ll never forget once you learn it!
As I was getting ready to leave, I ran into my friend Lauren who was working out two lanes over! So funny. She taught me how to aqua jog — I’d never done it before and it was fun, but super hard! I can see why it’s great to use in place of running if you’re injured — it was a great workout.
Anyway! Before I left for my workout, I ate one of these muffins:
Those are my Carrot Cake Muffins and I can’t believe I’ve never posted the recipe on the blog before because they are probably my very favorite muffins, ever, and I‘ve been making them for years! As always super healthy but super delicious. Recipe to come on Monday 🙂
p.s. Did I mention they’re vegan? 🙂
In other news, I’m obsessed with kale lately apparently! I used the other half of my kale bundle (leftover from my “Cheesy” Vegan Coconut Sautéed Chickpeas and Kale) last night to make a delicious side dish for dinner.
Mushrooms and kale sautéed together is one of my new favorite combinations — I first made a variation of this a few weeks ago for me and Matt, and he absolutely LOVED it! He even asked what the name of the veggie (kale) was again so he could buy some in the grocery store in DC. Win!
Making this side dish is super easy, too. All you need is kale, mushrooms, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice (fresh is best but bottled works, too!). Plus cracked pepper and salt to taste!
Just toss a generous amount of kale (it will cook down a lot) into a pan with the mushrooms, a hefty drizzle of olive oil, a few squirts of lemon juice, and a minced clove of garlic.
Stir the mixture until the kale is fully wilted, add some cracked salt and pepper to taste, and enjoy!
I enjoyed the kale & mushrooms with half of this fun ravioli I picked up at the co-op the other day.
I love ravioli — such an easy and tasty dinner!
Yum, yum. 🙂
I just got back from class and now sadly have to do work the rest of the day — we have a CRAZY week coming up next week — not one, not two, not three, but FOUR tests, plus one big group paper assignment due. Arg. Matt’s staying up in DC this weekend since I’m going to have to buckle down and get some serious work done for most of it. 🙁 Boo! But I do have my very last half marathon “long” training run & brunch with the girls on the docket for tomorrow morning — 7 miles! Crazy that that seems short to me now 🙂
Hope the weather is sunny where you are, too!
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What’s your favorite type of exercise to do in the morning? In the evening? In the morning, I love swimming or running (or just the gym for elliptical/weights). In the afternoon or evening, I like things that are outside and social (like walking, biking, or tennis — I played last night for the first time in FOREVER and it was so much fun!), or things that are super relaxing, like yoga or pilates. Not a big fan of running in the afternoon/evening b/c I’m usually tired and my stomach will hurt b/c I’ve been eating all day!
