Weekly Work Out Summaries

Since I accidentally spent the bulk of my free time the past couple weeks watching Scandal, I've got two weeks of weekly wrap ups to catch up on! Here's the workouts only (food and fun to come).

June 24 - June 30:
Monday: REST.

Tuesday: 3.5 mi @ 10:58 on the treadmill in the morning. This felt way too hard for what it was.

Wednesday: Rest.

Thursday: 4.7 mi @ 10:51 on the treadmill. Followed by an actual strength session (aka I didn’t bail and used heavy weights!). Felt good to knock out a tough workout on a week night.

Friday: 60 min slow flow yoga when I got home from work. This was a Yogadownload podcast and really hit the spot. Some longer, strength-oriented holds, but lots of stretching and not so vigorous that I worked up a sweat. Perfect for a Friday night!

Saturday: Around 5.6 mi outside, but I don’t have any specific data!! Ughh. My stupid NEWish Garmin never picked up the satellites, wtf. I was really annoyed to be slogging out in the heat for over an hour but not have any real data!

Super attractive bathroom selfie demonstrating how I feel about running in the heat.

Sunday: 3.3 mi @ 10:36 on the treadmill. Followed by another strength session--this one was split into some heavy weights at the gym, followed by interval/body weight exercises with Dan when I got home.

Weekly mileage: 17.1 miles
June mileage: 60.8 miles. Not bad!

July 1 - July 7:
Monday: REST

Tuesday: 3.5 mi @ 10:55 on the treadmill in the morning. Followed by a strength session with heavy weights. At night, Dan and I did a quickie body weight strength workout!

Wednesday: 30 minute "lunar flow" yoga before bed, aka guided stretching/rolling around on the ground.

Thursday: 4.7 mi @ 10:47 on the treadmill.

Friday: 3.3 mi @ 10:28 on the treadmill. Followed by a strength session--split between gym and at home with Dan! We did a Crossfit-style "AMRAP" of 5 push ups, 5 crunches, 5 squats for three minutes.

Saturday: 45 minute hip-opening flow yoga at home. This was a pleasantly tough podcast!

Sunday: 5.8 mi OUTSIDE. At a frustratingly slow pace for me currently: 11:27. It was 81* when I left and 90* when I got back. Shocker, avoiding the heat/running indoors is not making me better at running outdoors in the heat. Bleh.

Weekly mileage; 17.3 miles.

In Sum
On one hand, I need to GTFOff the treadmill and get outside. On the other, doing this will inevitably make me hate running with a fiery passion and make me want to skip all my runs, ever, for the rest of the summer. So I am just going to try to get outside once or twice a week, to make sure I can still run hills etc., but not stress out too much about general suckery or pace or losing running fitness. In theory.

Weekly Wrap Up

The week of June 17 - June 23.

Weekly Workout Summary
Monday: REST. Trying out rest days on Mondays lately. I typically have a harder time sleeping on Sunday nights, so getting up in the morning for a workout isn't ideal. And Mondays are always long days at work, right?

Tuesday: 4 mi @ 10:39. Outside in the morning. Not as bad as the morning has felt lately--not sure what was different? I wasn't as humid, and I think I wasn't as hungry.

Wednesday: 3.3 mi @ 10:34 on the treadmill. I did a normal-ish treadmill pace with six sprints thrown in. Followed by a strength workout--some at the gym, some bodyweight exercises with Dan once I got back!

Thursday: 60 minutes power vinyasa yoga in the park! That location near me that does the free Sunday morning yoga is starting a Thursday evening session too. It was so awesome--teachers from one of my favorite studios, really good, athletic flow, and a beautiful outdoors setting. Excited to go to this throughout the summer!

Yes I got up after class and took a picture. So cool.

Friday: 4.3 mi @ 10:37. Outside after work. It was warm out (~80*) but not as humid as it could have been, so this actually wasn't so bad.

Saturday: At-home strength session + 30 minutes yoga for runners from Yogadownload. I did another at-home strength session with Dan--I'm liking these! (Though I do know I should keep up heavy, in-the-gym lifting as well). We're doing something loosely modeled after the NYT seven minute workout.

Sunday: 5 mi @ 10:43 on the treadmill. I cut my long run short since this was the first week I returned to 4x per week of running since the end of April (!). So I didn't want to push myself too fast/increase my mileage too much.

Weekly mileage: 16.6 miles.

Felt pretty good about my workouts this week. Hoping to stick with the 4x a week running going forward--I know from past experience that it really does make a difference in my running!

Notable Eats
Nothing super exciting on the eating front during the week--lots of eggs for dinner. Here's a lunch of the week:

Salad with edamame, avocado, and blue cheese; whole wheat English muffin with cottage cheese

Dan and I did one of our wine and cheese nights on Saturday night. We do these probably too much, but whatever, they are delicious and awesome. The spread!:

I was particularly proud of that Caprese salad featured in the front. Made with basil grown on the porch! (attempt #2).

My plate:

Whiskey ginger in the background.  Toes in the foreground.

Life Events
Not a ton on this front. Had another low-key weekend, though not quite as purely fun as last weekend was. Started watching Scandal, which was a mistake. Though it is the perfect summer show--kind of campy, intriguing, and very addictive!

This week I need to start to get serious about doing a self-study economics class to prep for grad school in the fall. The summer is already starting to get away from me!

Weekly Wrap Up

Trying to get back into this whole blogging thing...a belated weekly wrap-up of life events from last week! (June 10 - June 16).

Weekly Workout Summary

Monday: 30 min power vinyasa yoga podcast at home (from Yogadownload.com).

Tuesday: Rest.

Wednesday: 3.7 mi @ 11:06 pace. Outside in the morning. Struggling to get outside for my runs recently, so I was glad I got out there, even if it was slow.

Thursday: Rest.

Friday: 3.5 mi @ 10:45 pace on the treadmill in the AM. Followed by a strength session.

Saturday: 60 minute detox flow yoga at home (again Yogadownload.com. Bought a subscription recently--thoughts to come!). This was a really good sweaty flow.

Sunday: 6.2 mi @ 10:48...on the treadmill. Woomp woomp. And honestly, this makes 3/4 of my last "long" runs that I've done on the 'mill. Not ideal. I just don't do well in the heat/humidity and just refuse on principle to run in the rain. Snow and cold? Sure. But rain is miserable and so is the mugginess. Maybe if I was training for something it'd be a different story, but for now, this works!

Not my best week, but fairly typical as of late. Just having a hard time getting motivated lately to really push-push-push every day. But I am pleased I'm getting in some morning workouts!

Notable Eats

Dan and I did loaded baked potatoes for the week--cooked up a bunch on Sunday and ate them all week long. I made tempeh to go along with it (Dan did BBQ pork). Really tasty!

Please note that those chives are from my haven't-killed-it-yet chive plant on the porch.
Coughdon'taskaboutthebasil.

Saturday's eats were quite notable as well, as featured below!

Life Events

Saturday featured pretty much all my favorite things in life: the farmers' market, the pool, finishing a good book, date night with Dan, and way too many desserts.

I visited the Falls Church farmers' market for the first time--oh man, was it awesome. I had only been to other local smaller markets, but this is the real star of the show in NoVA.

Also, there were fresh, made-right-in-front-of-you doughnuts. Amazing.

With a toppings bar to boot. Oh hello caramel. 

Here's my haul--not a ton, but a lot of veggies and some eggs and cheese! It appears that berries aren't quite in season here yet--only saw one or two vendors with them and they were pricey. I'm hoping it is the case that they aren't quite here yet...hoping I didn't miss the season!

For lunch I cooked up some farm fresh eggs. It was crazy how orange the yolks were.

And the afternoon featured lots of pool laziness, reading on the porch, and sweating it out with that 60 min detox flow referenced above. Awesome afternoon!

Porch chair boat. Please excuse the extremely dorky PJ shorts with words on them.

Topped with an equally amazing night. Went out to dinner at the new(ish) Matchbox in Merrifield. Dan and I had gone once before and loved it just as much this second time. Just a really nice relaxing date night featuring delicious food!

Eager beaver.

Handsome date!

Why yes, we did share that dessert trio featured in the bottom right.
Yes, it features more doughnuts.
No, I don't want to talk about how many doughnuts I had that day. 

I told Dan at the end of the day that it seriously felt like my birthday. It was a day full of relaxing things I love and delicious eats.  Great Saturday!

There Goes May

Ah well
Best intentions, or something, right? I posted a big fat goose egg during all of May. So what have I been up to?

Work. Mostly this. I'm coming off a month+ period where I was pulling ~60 hour weeks (including a fair amount of weekend time too). And I know you lawyer-types are rolling your eyes at those paltry hours, but I found it tough. I think a lot of it was the high-intensity nature of the work--constantly go-go-go, finish the next thing. barking orders, etc. Too stressful. Things are still fairly busy, but feeling a lot more manageable and at a less frenetic pace. I'm glad to be back to normal with my <50 hour weeks (funny what a difference 10 hours feels like!).

Working out. I kept up what felt like a reasonable amount of physical activity during the crazy work period. Sometimes this looked like only two short runs and a yoga session all week. Others it was three runs, two strength sessions, and two shorter, at-home yoga sessions (five days total--combined strength + run on two days). The latter was more typical. It wasn't quite what I had planned, but it gets the job done. A week ago I did my longest run to date since the 10-miler--8.3 miles. I averaged a 10:33 min/mi pace, which is pretty good for me! So I don't feel like I'm losing too much running fitness with this pared down schedule. I've also starting making a concerted effort to workout in the morning. I'm only doing it a couple times a week, but it really helps--both heat-wise and work-wise. I'm hoping to keep this habit up!

I struggled during this phase with vacillating between two minds: 1) Work is hard! Don't make life harder by making yourself workout more. You've had a rough week; sitting on the couch all day is totally appropriate. 2) MUST DO ALL THE WORKOUTS. Because if you miss one workout, you know how you are--all or nothing. Slippery slope back to non-runner-dom and gaining the weight back.

Ultimately, I tried to force my mind to settle on option 3): do what you can, but don't kill yourself. Working out is a great stress reliever, and you know you feel better if you do it--but don't hesitate to give yourself a break. It was harder than I thought to actually achieve this mindset, but I think I was able to act in a moderately even if I still think in extremes.

Eats. More of the same. Proud of myself for not relying too much on eating out/frozen foods/etc. during the time. I relied on lots of repetition--cook one big meal on Sunday night, eat it for dinner through Wednesday. Breakfast and lunch were mostly the same (oatmeal and salad, respectively). Though I definitely accrued more Starbucks stars than usual!

Life. Lots of good stuff here. Family time, Dan time, friends time. Made some progress on cleaning/cleaning out/fixing my wardrobe holes. And some apartment decor improvements assisted by my mom. Made some life decisions (we are going to stay in our apartment for a while longer, got a new phone!), put off some others. But things feel pretty good.

Weekly Wrap Up

General summary of life happenings from last week (April 22 - April 28).

Weekly Workout Summary
Monday: REST.

Tuesday: 5 mi @ 10:39. This run felt good--my body felt so stiff from sitting so much at work.

Wednesday: 60 minute hot power vinyasa. Instead of my normal 90 minute class, I went to the studio's 60 minute "power hour" class that starts later (the idea being that those that work later can still make an abbreviated class). I definitely will be back--it's a nice alternative when I can't get out on time.

Thursday: 3.5 mi @ 10:21. Got home from work late and didn't want to do my strength training after, so I bailed. Not good!

Friday: REST.

Saturday: 6.5 mi @ 10:45. I feel like I'm getting slower, but I think I just have bad perspective. More on that soon.

Sunday: 3.5 mi on the treadmill. I tried out some HIIT as my "speed work" for the week. I came across this post when looking into HIIT a while ago, and basically used SUAR's workout modified for a slowpoke like me. It looked like: .5 mile warm up @ 5.2 mph; 60 seconds @ 7.1 mph, 90 seconds @ 5.2 mph, repeat 5 times; 60 seconds @ 7.3 mph, 90 seconds @ 5.2 mph, repeat 5 times; cool down @ 5.4 mph. [I think I could go a little faster next time, but I didn't want to kill myself the first time trying it.] Then I followed it up with a longer strength routine. Really good workout!

Weekly mileage: 18.5 miles

Non-plan plan assessment: Missed one strength workout, but I'll take it! I worked fairly long hours this week, so I was thrilled to fit in most of my workouts.

Notable Eats
See above reference to work schedule--not much notable here. Also, they were providing lunch for us everyday (since we were doing long days and were working through lunch). I tried to make healthy choices when available, but since I normally rely on my lunch to be my healthiest meal of the day (big salad + carb, usually), this threw me off a bit. Plus, they made lots of snacks available--and clearly chocolate was the one I reached for the most. Fail! This week (since the "big work thing" is going on for two more weeks, at least) I'm vowing to pack my lunch some days and stick to my own snacks (for the most part). I definitely feel better when I eat better, so I just need to remember that in the moment when chocolate feels like the perfect remedy to a particularly tough area.

Life Events
The aforementioned work ruled the week, unfortunately. But! Saturday did bring a fun event by way of Great Grapes Wine Festival in Reston, VA. We met up with Dan's sister, brother-in-law, baby (!), and some of their friends. Lots of fun was had by all!

But pictures were only had by Dan and I.

The event featured wine from Virginia wineries. I don't know much about Virginia wines (even still) and have negative 7 to offer in terms of intelligent oenophile discourse, but we tried a few tasty varieties. I would recommend all the wineries featured in the photo below, Williamsburg Winery especially (and they were inexpensive too! We went home with three bottles from them).

Thank you to Dan, my hand model in the upper right.

Definitely a great way to spend a Saturday.

Recreating this fantastic photo op.
Actually no we weren't. This is just my go to pose. Awesome!

Goals lately

So I had March goals at some point, right? And it's almost April. Whoops. Really let April get away from me!

How’d I do on my March goals? Well, the fact that I’ve failed to revisit them until now should probably be an indication. Let’s see.

Relationships: this one was actually pretty good! Dan and I had a few really nice date nights and lots of quality time, in addition to fun time spent with both of our families!

Mental: I didn’t do that great on updating the blog more frequently in March, but I’ve been trying to pick it up in April. I really enjoy posting--just hard sometimes to take the time to put words to the page.

Body: Sunscreen. Man, I am so bad at this. I did not do well on this at all in March. In April, it has been a bit better. But the time I always forget to do it is before my weekend runs! They are outside during the day, so it is really the main time I need to actually remember to do it. I think I need to start putting the bottle out and visible the night before.

Home: Work on cleaning out. Well Dan and I did make some progress here. We collected a couple of bags of stuff...except they are still sitting in the trunk of my car, whoops. I need to take those over. But I still need to do another purge of my summer stuff as I rotate out my winter wear and to get my act together with selling some of my nicer stuff.

April Goals?
Well, oops. My main (mental, not actually stated anywhere) goals for this month were to: actually start the sunscreen habit and just generally be more social. As discussed above, the sunscreen habit is still a work in progress. The being more social goal is going okay! I went to an event with my coworkers, went to a few different yoga events and met people, and am exploring running group options in the area to meet runner friends too. And I’ve made upcoming plans with current friends too.

I’m hoping to get back on the goal tracking train for May--to come this week!

Weekly Wrap Up

General summary of life happenings from last week (April 15 - April 21).

Weekly Workout Summary

Monday: 5 mi @ 10:35. I remember zero details about this run. 

Tuesday: REST.

Wednesday: 4.5 mi @ 10:35.

Thursday: 60 min vinyasa yoga - went to a fun yoga event put on by my local Lululemon. Details below!

Friday: 3.5 mi on the treadmill at the gym - included 3x800 stretches at 6.2 mph. Then I did a strength training session--which made me so embarrassingly sore for how easy it was. Need to stick with it!

Saturday: REST. I was at work for a while, boo.

Sunday: 7 mi @ 10:42. Though I had to break it up a bit with a pit stop at the local high school for a bathroom break. No fun. Then in the evening, Dan and I went for a ~30 minute walk! This was really nice and something we want to start doing more frequently. 

Weekly mileage: 20 miles. 

How'd I do according to the new non-plan plan? Pretty good--missed one strength training session. And the particular yoga I went to wasn't heated/vigorous, but it was a nice stretch. 

Notable Eats

Dan and I went out for a "fast casual" dinner on Tuesday night at Cava Mezze Grill. I got a delicious rice bowl w/ falafel and a gazillion awesome veggie toppings and spreads. So good.

That pink stuff is pickled onion. Be still my heart.

Boring weeknight meal that can be made in five minutes flat, check:

Put bread in toaster, stick (already cut up) green beans in microwave, scramble eggs. Done.

Slightly less boring weeknight meal. I tried making some roasted chickpeas with leftovers I had from salads, thinking meh at least I'll use them up. Wow was I wrong--these were so good! Just olive oil, salt, chile powder, and paprika--toss them in the oven at 350* for 30 minutes. Definitely worth trying.

Plus sweet potatoes with sunflower butter + green beans. Can you guess what my veggie of the week was?

Dan and I did one of our at-home date nights on Saturday, which is really just an excuse for us to buy cheese/fancy meats (for him) and drink. Winning. Featuring cheese and breads, carrots + hummus, and berries. With a whiskey ginger off to the side.

Clearly the second plate feature more cheese, less produce.

Weekly events

As I mentioned above, I went to the "Om in the Sun" event put on by my local Lululemon on Thursday. 

Oh look whose picture they used again. 

It was a lot of fun! Not the most vigorous practice in the world, but certainly started to work up a sweat and a fun social activity. I met some new girls in my neighborhood, so that's always good! [Though, sidebar: at the beginning it felt like just a giant Lululemon employees gathering. They came from ALL OVER the DC area, not just the local store, and I felt a little weird that I didn't work for them! But then after it was clear there were others that participated too].

At the end of the session- namaste - Source: Lululemon Tyson's Facebook page.
I'm in the purple in the super distance!

And then after two local food places, Sweetgreen and Cava, fed us with quite the spread of eats! Tasty.

Sweetgreen juices (so good), dips and wraps, and a make-your-own granola bar!
Photos taken after the food was pillaged by hungry yogis.