10K Training

Hello friends! Ugh Monday! It is really the worst day of the week, especially after a great weekend! Today marks the day I start training for my 10K in October.  Why start training 16 weeks before the actual (easy?) event?  Well because I am not a runner. As I have said before the longest distance I have ever run consecutively has been 3 miles, and believe me when I say it was hard for me.  I don’t know why I just have no running stamina.  I am really hoping to change that.

A few weeks ago, we went to National Harbor with our friends Sean and Brandy and I really don’t remember how it came up but talked about running a half marathon.  We were all geared up to sign up for one in Va Beach, when we came to our senses and decided to start small. I did a quick google search to find a training schedule for our first 10K and came up with this:

Source

Which requires an 8 week commitment.  Then after I have completed the first 8 weeks, I will move onto actually traning for the 10K race following this schedule:

Source

Which also requires an 8 week commitment, hence starting my traning 16 weeks before the event.  To all you runners out there, is this overkill?

I was going for the slow and steady wins the race mentality, aka I don’t want to run myself into the ground and get injured.  As of right now I can run 2 miles straight, but I have some trouble with it.  Ironically, day one is a rest day? Haha, well ok so it says, rest/run/walk.  I chose to run outside with Ella today. It was really hot again today:

Poor doggie. Ok enough running talk for today, let’s move onto food shall we?

Breakfast cereal combo with half a banana, can’t go wrong. OH MAN, I totally forgot to mention this yesterday, but at Costco they had a GIANT box of Oatmeal squares, so we bought two of them. I cannot wait to dig into these bad boys.

Lunch today was something my mom made me last week.

It doesn’t have a name, it is just something that we used to eat a lot when I was younger and apparently they eat a great deal of in Iran on a hot summer day.  It’s yogurt but my mom put in a whole bunch of yummy herbs, walnuts, raisins, and apples. I had some of it, well most of it, on Saturday afternoon, but had some leftover so I brought it for lunch today with a whole wheat tortilla:

Thank you mommy!

Yesterday when we went to Costco, we bought these:

I have never tried these before and have wanted to for a while.  Today I had the Mighty Mango flavor, and oh man was this amazing.  It was just want I needed this afternoon to curb my hunger at work. 

After my run with Ella I started making dinner:

Creole Stuffed Mushrooms

Course: side dishes PointsPlus™ Value:    1 Servings:  12 Preparation Time:  15 min Cooking Time:  20 min Level of Difficulty:  Moderate

Ingredients 1 spray(s) olive oil cooking spray    1 pound(s) button mushrooms, about 24 large mushrooms    1 tsp olive oil    1/4 cup(s) onion(s), chopped    1/4 cup(s) sweet red pepper(s), chopped    10 oz chopped frozen spinach, thawed and drained    2 1/2 slice(s) whole-wheat bread, chopped into bread crumbs    1 tsp Creole seasoning, or Cajun seasoning    1/4 tsp ground turmeric    Instructions ·         Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly coat a jelly roll pan with cooking spray. ·         Remove mushroom stems from caps and finely chop stems; reserve caps and set aside. ·         Heat oil in a large skillet over high heat. Sauté mushroom stems, onion, pepper and spinach until tender, about 5 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and stir in remaining ingredients until well-combined. ·         Stuff each mushroom cap with 2 tablespoons of filling mixture. Place mushrooms, stuffed sides up, on jellyroll pan. Bake, uncovered, 15 minutes; serve warm. Yields 2 mushrooms per serving.

I obviously modified this recipe a bit so that we didn’t have 24 giant stuffed mushrooms, haha.  They were pretty good, I think they looked better than they tasted, so I was a bit disappointed.

Alright that is all for me today, sorry for the long post, I had a lot to cover today!