Belated Weekend Wrap-Up and Hands of Fire

Weekend Wrap-Up
I wanted to post this last night, but was a bit incapacitated due to the Hands of Fire Incident of 2013 (we'll get to that in a bit).

This weekend ended up being busier than I expected, which was fine by me! Nice and social, mixed in with cough, mumblemumblethree grocery store visits. I don’t want to talk about it. But since grocery stores/shopping for food is pretty much my happy place, it was a good weekend!

On Friday night, Dan and I went for a pre-movie quick meal at Mosaic District. He hit up Chipotle, but I opted for Sweetgreen! I hadn’t been to the new Sweetgreen located near me yet, and I had forgot how much I liked it. I had their Chic P salad, which was quite tasty and filling. Too filling for movie snacks! Bummer. We saw Django--it was absolutely awesome. I liked it way more than I expected it to. It dealt with the tricky subject with appropriate gravitas/respect, but still kept it feeling like a fun revenge flick. Definitely go see it!

Why do my pictures have that grey line? Friends!

I met up with some girlfriends in the city on Saturday night. We had fun catching up over dinner and drinks. They are two of my closest friends but unfortunately live far enough away (Maryland!) that it’s tricky to see each other as often as we would like!

And then some terribly drunk man hit on us,
and we made faces like this.

Not amused, dude. Although a little amused.
Amused enough to take photos. 

And then Sunday was full of football (ughhhhh Patriots), grocery stores, and general laziness.

Weekly Workout Summary
I’m really enjoying my “training cycle” thus far [sidebar: I always feel the need to put anything that a “real” runner would say in quotation marks, as if because I’m slow/relatively new, running terms don’t apply to me. Well, that’s stupid. I’m going to try to stop doing that!]. Running four times a week seems to be helping my speed/endurance.

Monday: 3.5 miles @11:37. I hadn’t slept super well the night before and remember just feeling pooped/not wanting to run. I was proud I got out there anyway!

Tuesday: Tough 75 minute power vinyasa flow class. My upper body was sore for days after this.

Wednesday: 5.3 mile tempo run--middle 3 miles at 10:29 pace. This felt comfortably hard, like tempo runs should!

Thursday: 3 miles  @ 11:06, followed by a 20 minute yoga podcast. I’d typically do strength on Thursdays, but my arms were still beat from the yoga class. So I did more yoga, which counterintuitively made them feel a bit better!

Friday: REST.
Saturday: 7 miles @ 11:15. This wasn't too bad! A little boring because the "Wait Wait" podcast I had queued up was just re-airs from previous shows, but I made do.

Sunday: 40 minutes at-home yoga (2 20 minute yoga podcasts). I use the free 20 minute Yoga Download ones because I’m cheap. I like doing one faster paced power vinyasa flow followed by a stretchy flow (for this one I did Hip Opener #2).

Today’s Workout
More yoga, bam. 75 minute power vinyasa class. Either I'm seeing improvements or the new instructor went easier on us this week than she did last week.

Today’s Eats
Ahhh Hands of Fire 2013. Okay. So I tried to make this recipe for stuffed poblano peppers (discovered when featured on Rachel's blog), except substituting pre-cooked lentils for the ground beef (I'm a vegetarian).

This recipe obviously involves some poblano peppers, which are a fairly spicy but not crazy spicy pepper. And I've cooked with them before just fine. Same thing with jalepenos--obviously I don't touch my eyes, but as long as I wash my hands with soap it is usually fine.

Well apparently this batch had the most RIDICULOUS HELLFIRE CAPSAICIN known to mankind. My hand (that had seeded the peppers) was burning so ridiculously bad. To recap, here is what I tried (per the advice of the internet) and did NOT work to remove the pain: milk (provided temporary relief but went away after 30 seconds), soap + water, dish detergent + water, lemon juice, acne face wash with salicylic acid, rubbing my hand (briefly) with olive oil, and mayonnaise.

I was in so much pain that I finally just called Poison Control. They recommended two options: 1) rubbing alcohol, which, if it works, should take away the sting immediately. 2) Soaking the hand in oil (any would do, I used canola) for a prolonged period of time, upwards of the 30 minutes, occasionally massaging the oil into the affected area. Quite unfortunately, the rubbing alcohol did not provide the immediate relief. It seemed that capsaicin had really settled in. So I did the oil thing, which finally provided relief after 45 minutes. It was still in a bit of pain, but not pain in a needing to constantly run it under cold water way, so I was able to fall asleep. Today it was tingly but not in pain.

PSA: WEAR RUBBER GLOVES WHEN DE-SEEDING HOT PEPPERS.

So anyway, the meal. It was decent. I think the pepper just hadn't cooked enough? Next time I would pre-cook the peppers for a bit. I'm sure the recipe is much better as it is intended to be made (meat!).

Out of season tomatoes blocking the view of the pepper.

Today's leftovers were WAY better than the first batch yesterday, since I re-heated it in the microwave, softening up the pepper. And I topped it with avocado instead of out of season tomato. Much better!