I’ve had the best day and it’s not even 1 p.m. yet 🙂
(Rocking my awesome new SparkPeople bamboo performance shirt that the lovely Stepfanie sent me! It’s soooo soft and comfy — and great for running since it wicks and dries super fast.)
This morning, Matt headed off to play soccer and I headed off to meet my grad school friend Jillian for a 5 mile run. Yay! We had beautiful weather for it 🙂
We ran 5 miles in 45:15 minutes and went all through Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and UNC’s campus. It was beautiful — although a bit hilly! 😉
Splits:
- Mile 1: 9:13 (warming up & hills!)
- Mile 2: 9:08
- Mile 3: 8:47
- Mile 4: 9:22 (hillsssss)
- Mile 5: 8:43
Average pace: 9:02. Sweet!
Our run ended in Carrboro, which is the town over from Chapel Hill, and we had the brilliant idea to wander over to the Saturday morning farmers market! We’d both been wanting to go and never made it 🙂
It was fun wandering around and checking out the goods. Plus, there were samples! Perfect for after a good run. You can’t tell in this picture, but I’m holding a PURPLE sweet potato! Literally bright purple. I bought a couple to bring home 😉
Sweet potatoes were everywhere at the market — including some ENORMOUS ones! Check out this one that was literally the size of my arm:
That’s my “this is an intense sweet potato” face. No big deal.
I also bought some beautiful and very flavorful tomatoes (don’t worry, we sampled them first, heh). Farmers market tomatoes are sooooo superior to grocery store tomatoes.
My last purchase was a top secret one for tonight’s festivities! A bunch of the girls in my program and I (and Matt! My friends love him — he’s good at being a social butterfly 🙂 ) are heading over to our friend Elle’s place for homemade whole wheat pizzas! Jillian and I came up with an idea for one of the pizzas and it’s going to be seriously epic… stay tuned 😉
When I got home, the awesomeness continued because Matt made me an omelette while I iced my legs 🙂
Look how pretty he made it 🙂
Two eggs filled with 2% sharp cheddar cheese, tomatoes, green peppers, and spinach. Mmm.
On the side — a bowl of applesauce with cinnamon! 🙂
Yay! Thanks Matt 🙂
So, back to icing my legs — I’ve been reeeeally bad about it lately. When I was training for my half marathon, I literally iced my legs (knees, back of knees, shins, ankles) after EVERY single run, no matter how long. It really helped with soreness and avoiding injury! I always rocked the frozen peas because the texture was much nicer than regular ice, although they quickly got too melty (especially since half the time I forgot to put them away after I used them) and then, as a result, too icy the next time I used them. Plus, I couldn’t put them directly on my legs — too cold and wet!
But that’s all changed because, friends — I’ve found my leg-icing soulmate.
Those would be Paradice Packs! If you are a runner, you need these. I’m serious.
The Paradice peeps were nice enough to send me two of their ice pack cuffs to try out. They have all sorts of sizes — I got the P300 cuff (for knees), and the p150 cuff (for ankles). Matt has been stealing the ankle one for after his soccer games!
The ice packs feel like bean bags and consist of a soft, durable, fabric bag with free floating frozen balls inside — a lot like frozen peas, in fact! But these don’t get soft and soggy 🙂 I love that the fabric is enough that you can wear the cuffs directly on your skin if you want, and that they are cuffs, so you can ice all around your entire knee, ankle, etc. at the same time. Now all I need to do is buy two more so I can ice everything at once 🙂
I’m off to enjoy the beautiful weather — it’s so nice being in town for once! Have a wonderful Saturday — I hope it’s gorgeous where you are, too.
