Hey friends! I’m so glad many of you enjoyed my how to get rid of sugar cravings post from yesterday! Keep those comments coming.
Sooooo, remember how I said I was totally over track workouts? Yeah, well… I already changed my mind. I know you’re probably all unsurprised… Matt and my mom were when I told them. 😉
I took 2 weeks off from my track group after the Nike Women’s Half Marathon, intending to stop going for awhile as a breather from training. But to be honest, I really missed it! With daylight savings time, we now have beautiful light mornings again, not to mention awesome fall weather, and I was bummed to not be out there enjoying it and seeing my track buddies. So, yesterday I decided to go back and just see how it felt. 😉 We all know how that ended!
My track group friends were all like, “Where have you been?! Wait, you were going to QUIT on us?!” One of them said something simple and perfect – “But why would you quit? Running is fun!” You know what – he’s right! I think I’ll probably change my mind on this when it’s dark and icy out come February/March, because then the track really isn’t fun, but as of now, it still is, and that’s all that matters. I’m going to just do the track once a week; that way I’ll get to see my buds, take advantage of the beautiful mornings, and not lose all the speed I worked hard to get back this year, but I’ll still have lots of flexibility to mix it up other days with running/workouts. Perfect!
Yesterday morning’s workout was five 1200’s (3 laps around the track) at a solid but not insane pace. I ran with 2 of my friends and chatted the whole time, which added a nice extra challenge (and also made the laps FLY by). I took Monday as a rest day so I felt extra energized yesterday, which was nice, too.
It felt great to be back out there. 🙂 My watch above shows just the workout portion (the 1200’s – came to about 3.75 miles at an 8:09 min/mile average) – I also did about 1.5 miles of warm up/cool down (combined).
In other news, last night Matt and I had my high school BFF Jenny’s husband Dan over for dinner! Dan is finishing up his medical residency and has been interviewing for jobs; he has a bunch of interviews up here in the DC area this week and Matt and I decided to invite him over for a not-so-subtle “here’s how awesome life could be if you guys moved up here” dinner. (They currently live in GA, which is far away and sad.)
We decided on steaks for the occasion, and Matt picked up some NY strip steaks at Whole Foods and threw them on the grill along with some asparagus (coated in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper), mushrooms (not sure what he threw in the pot with them), and onions. Meanwhile, inside, I baked some sweet potato wedges. They were coated in a little olive oil, cumin, garlic salt, and pepper.
We all enjoyed a beer outside (it was a gorgeous night last night) on the deck while waiting for the food to cook. Yum! We roasted the sweet potatoes at 450 for about 20 or 25 minutes and they came out great.
We had quite the feast! The mushrooms and caramelized onions were an awesome addition to the steak. I didn’t make it through all of mine so we have some good leftovers for later, too. 🙂
Fun night! And now, it’s back to work. Have a fabulous day, my friends!
