Hey all… sorry for dropping off the face of the planet for a little while there. It was the first full week of school, and it totally kicked my butt! It’s a tale of birthday parties, food, baking, and running. I’ll leave out the boring work details…
The week started off with a birthday party for my best friend’s 2-year-old (who is one of the most adorable, little human beings I’ve ever seen). I drove upstate to her in-laws’ house for the shindig and did pretty much nothing but eat for a few hours… chips, dip, pretzels, bread, pulled pork sandwich, buffalo chicken dip (in all it’s cream-cheesy glory), carrots (don’t they cancel out the dip or something…?), pineapple upside down cake, and a piece of the yummy cookie monster cake that my friend made.
COOKIE!!
Wow… re-reading that list makes it sound like I ate a small country! It really wasn’t that bad… I didn’t eat a lot of any one of those things (except maybe the buffalo chicken dip), but I definitely wasn’t proud of my choices for the day. On a REALLY happy note, I still managed to lose 0.2 lb that week. I was sure I’d see my first weight gain since I started on WW back in May. I’m not gonna lie, though… A little bit of gain would have been totally worth it for all that deliciousness!
Then there was running… Week 7 in my “Ease into 5k” program is a little different than the official “Couch to 5k” program. Day 1 was run 20/walk 3/run 5. It was a pretty good run! Somehow I thought that the second run was 10 minutes instead of 5. When my app made that little *ding* noise and said 2 minutes instead of the 5 minute warning I was expecting I was a little confused but pretty happy. ha ha… I’d been trying to keep a slower pace to get through the 10 minutes, and I had a bunch of energy left, so I pushed a little harder for those last couple minutes. Not too shabby…
Week 7, Day 1
Unfortunately, due to my confusion about the run, I ended up much farther from home than I had expected. Not a big deal… I can walk forever. But I took a different route to get from the running path down on the Hudson back up to Broadway. I was greeted with a bunch of stairs to climb up a pedestrian walkway over the highway followed by this…
HUGE hill!
That’s not just camera trickery… That’s one huge freaking hill! I was less than pleased, but the skateboarders (those little blobs at the top of the street) seemed to be throughly enjoying themselves.
Right after that run (and a shower, of course), I headed over to my friend’s apartment to do some baking. One of our friends was having a Samurai Power Rangers themed birthday party for her son and asked us to decorate about 75 cookies for the party. We’d baked the actual cookies on Sunday, but the decorating was in full swing. On a side note, my baking buddy and another one of my friends are training for a 1/2 marathon. I’m so impressed with them! I’m proud of not dying while I run two miles or so, and they’re out there taking laps around Central Park! ha ha… Since we’re both teachers we had limited evening time to decorate with lesson planning and whatnot. But after decorating until around midnight on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we finally finished all the cookies.
Go Go Power Rangers!
On to Day 2… run 26 minutes. From here on out there’s no walking (except the warm-up and cool-down, of course)… just building up to 30 minutes, one minute at a time. I’m in the home stretch now! This run was good… nothing to write home about, but I’m still floored by the fact that I can run for that long.
Week 7, Day 2
Saturday afternoon was the Power Rangers party, and the cookies were a hit with both the kids and the adults! That’s probably what I love most about baking… seeing how happy what you’ve made can make other people! I thankfully managed not to overdo it on the food at the party, though it was no easy task. Homemade mac and cheese, barbecue chicken, and collard greens… yum!! After the festivities I headed home and took a nap (have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE naps?!), then headed out for my Day 3 run… 27 minutes. I was a little nervous to go out there with tummy full of mac and cheese and greens, but it had been a few hours since I’d eaten, so I went out. Thankfully, all was well…
Week 7, Day 3
This week of running has maybe been my favorite yet. I was nervous about Day 1, but after I got through that, I just got the feeling that I could totally do the rest. And I like that the rest is just adding one minute at a time. I keep thinking, “It’s just one more minute than last time… I’ve got this!” I never thought I’d say this, but I’m actually looking forward to Week 8! Crazy!
Now it’s time to return to my 4-day weekend, already in progress! While I don’t celebrate it myself, we have today and tomorrow off for Rosh Hashanah. (Shana Tova to those of you celebrating it!)
wait... i'm running?! 