half marathon training

Planning Session #1

Thanks to your guys’ encouragement, I think I’ve broken through the mental block of my setback. Tuesday’s run was a bit better than Monday’s, and then yesterday morning I felt amazing. I don’t want to get ahead of myself and overdo it, so I’m going to either take a rest day today or go to a power yoga class this evening. I want to do a ten-mile run either tomorrow or sometime this weekend, so fingers crossed that will go well too.

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Waiting for the sun to rise.

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One of my absolute favorite ways to spend an evening is to pack a picnic and a bottle of wine and head to the beach with Jeremy to have a sunset picnic. Ninety-five percent of the time, I make a kale super salad to eat for the beach dinner. It’s the perfect picnic food; it’s super easy and so delicious (I just follow this recipe and leave out the pomegranate arils). Now that our trip to the South is over, I feel like we can finally start planning for the big Europe Trip 2014. We brought our notebook and started jotting down everything we could think of to start preparing for this huge next chapter in our lives. Our replacement at work started this week, which makes everything seem that much more real. It’s kind of (actually, very) overwhelming to think about where to begin, but as long as we write down everything we have to do and start tackling things one by one, we can totally handle it. We’re even getting close to buying plane tickets. I am starting to get REALLY excited. We want to have one of these beach picnic planning sessions once a week. There’s something about being on the beach that helps your thoughts make more sense, and things seem a little clearer. A glass of wine helps too.

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The best kale salad.

The best kale salad.

Juice Ranch Healed Me

I’m feeling much better after a couple nights of better sleep. STUFT Mama linked to this article on ProForm about how important sleep is, and after looking at it all I could think was, “Oh… great.” My mom and grandma have the same sleeping issues I do, so I feel like I’m doomed to always deal with it. Oh well!

I didn’t exercise on Monday, and headed to the best juice place in town, Juice Ranch, for their green juices and immunity shot (a blend of lemon, ginger, cayenne, garlic and oregano oil, taken like a shot and with an orange slice chaser… burns so good). It really did make me feel so much better immediately afterward. (I took a super artsy picture of my juices on the top of my dirty car with the ocean in the background, but it got deleted from my phone. It’s too bad, it had a huge nasty garbage can in the background and everything. Instead, I took this picture from Juice Ranch’s Instagram account, it basically looked the same…)

Juice Ranch's Greens and Ginger makes everything better.

Juice Ranch’s Greens and Ginger makes everything better.

Yesterday I went for a run during my lunch break (I’m fortunate because I don’t have a set time/length of my lunch breaks and the beach is so close I can smell it outside my office, so I can just run on the beach path), and it was so nice to get outside and sweat a bit after a few days off. It’s important to take breaks when you are sitting in front of a computer all day (13 hours yesterday, Tuesdays are Wednesdays are rough).

Wearing all black once again… I need to work on getting some bright colors on me.

Wearing all black once again… I need to work on getting some bright colors on me.

This is Pez. We found her in a box when I was 16.

This is Pez. We found her in a box when I was 16.

I went to bootcamp this morning and even though I didn’t get much sleep, it felt really good. I love bootcamp (I’ve been taking classes with Jenny Schatzle for about a year), it’s so intense and we work all muscles, and do sprints on the treadmills. My half training plan called for a track workout with sprints, and at bootcamp we did four rounds of minute-long hill sprints. I figured that counts.)

Post-bootcamp. Please excuse the crazed expression, I'm a selfie noob.

Post-bootcamp. Please excuse the crazed expression, I’m a selfie noob.