Week of Fitness 2/24-3/2/2014

Hello friends! I hope you are all doing great! I just wanted to stop in to let y’all know how my marathon training is going!

Sidenote: Ryan’s work and my school were both cancelled today because of icy roads! It’s so weird to me that it’s March and only a week before spring break and we are still having winter weather! Saturday it was 80 degrees here, and Ryan and I went outside to enjoy the weather. I wore shorts and a tank top! Now it’s freezing. Typical Texas weather.

Anyways, here are last week’s workouts!

Monday: 4.62 easy miles. My legs were extremely sore last weekend from my last long run, so I did this run easy. Then I did a new arm workout that I can’t wait to share with you guys! Also, I did some yoga poses that Christine said were good for runners!

Tuesday: 5×50 workout from PurelyTwins

Wednesday: Wednesday was a stressful afternoon that made me very short on time. I was only able to run a fast two miles and then do random strength and cardio exercises inside as I waited for dinner to cook.

Thursday: 5 miles, and I planned on doing abs in the afternoon, but we had a really busy afternoon and night and I wasn’t able to get around to it. That’s totally okay though

Friday: Yoga, oh how I am growing to love yoga and the challenge of trying to improve. 🙂

Saturday: 20 miles!! I was happy with how this went, and I felt much better when I finished than I did the week before after running 18!

Sunday: Rest! After those super long runs, I always love rest days. 🙂

If you read my last post then you know that I said I was going to go back on my mileage last week…that obviously didn’t happen since I did a 20 miler. I started thinking, and instead of taking a rest week, and then running 20 miles and 22 miles back to back weekends, I decided to run 20, cut back on my mileage this week, and then two weekends from now go for 22 miles. Last week I also didn’t get in near as much strength training as I was hoping for, so I am going to try to get in more strength workouts this week!

Okay, now time to go off and enjoy some time with the Hubs! Have a great day and week!

P.S. I miss posting more often! Love y’all!

Week of Fitness 2.17-2.23.2014

Hello again! Sorry for only posting the weekly fitness updates. Until I can get my blog self-hosted, this will be about all the posting I do. But I want to keep you updated on my marathon training, so I will make sure I keep these posts up. Last week was another good, hard week of training!

Monday:5 miles, 11 minute yoga with Ryan. I scheduled 7 miles for this day, but didn’t have time for that long of a run that morning.

Tuesday: This superset workout that was great! Then I did Olive to Run Ab’s workout that you can find here. Just scroll down the page a little to find the workout I did. I only had time to go through the ab workout once before I had to shower and get ready for work.

Wednesday: 8 hard 400x’s. I would run one 400 at a comfortable pace, then run one 400 hard until I had ran 8 400’s at a hard pace and 8 at a comfortable pace, for a total of four miles.

Thursday: Unexpected rest day. I was out late Wednesday night bridesmaid dress shopping with my beautiful friend Shelby who is getting married in June, so I didn’t go to sleep until about 11:00 Wednesday night. This is incredibly late for me, and I knew my body needed sleep, so I let myself sleep in until I had to get ready the next morning, and I wasn’t able to work out in the afternoon because we had plans.

Friday: 1 hour of very challenging yoga. I loved it!

Saturday: 18 miles! Now my longest run yet. Friday night my dad actually asked if I wanted to run a 15k with him Saturday morning. He knew I needed to do 18 miles, so he suggested I do the course twice. I can never turn down a chance to run a race with my Dad, so of course I jumped at the opportunity and just ran the course twice. 🙂 This long run was very hard though! I struggled the last five miles, and those  were a lot slower than the ones before. Part of this might have been because my competitive side got the best of me. I might have run the first nine miles a little too fast since I was running against other people and obviously wanted to beat them. 😉 But, it was all worth it when I finished my 18 miles and my parents held up a trophy and told me that I placed second place in my age division! I was pretty excited since I really wasn’t planning on running this race for speed.

Sunday: rest!!

I have been increasing my  mileage for the last four weeks, so now I will decrease my mileage this week to give my body a break. I am excited for this break because I think my body needs it. It’s crazy to think that I only have two more long runs before the marathon! In two weeks I have a 20 mile run, and then the week after that I am scheduled to run 22! I can’t believe the race is coming up so quickly!

I hope you are all doing great! I really miss blogging regularly, and I’m hoping to be self-hosting soon! Even though I have not been commenting as much lately because life has gotten busy, I have still been keeping up with blogs, and I still love reading everything y’all post!

Questions:

1. Tell me some fun things from your weekend. 

2. What workout are you most looking forward to this week?

3. What are some delicious meals you have eaten lately?

4. Do you have a good, easy homemade granola recipe? I would love if you would share it with me; I want an easy recipe to make! I love me some granola! 🙂 

Fitness Week of 2/10-2/16

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend! I had a fantastic weekend celebrating Valentine’s Day with Ryan on Friday night and then celebrating my birthday with my family Saturday night and Sunday. (My real birthday is actually today though.) We all had so much fun! I wish I could share pictures with y’all, but still hoping to switch to self-hosting soon! Remember, you can follow me on Instagram to still keep up with some of my pictures!

Saturday night my parents took Ryan and I and my brother and SIL to Saltgrass, a nice steak house, for dinner. I had grilled chicken with vegetables and a salad, and it was delicious! That night we stayed up late talking and laughing since we were all spending the night at my parents’ house. Sunday morning Ryan, Ben, my Dad, and I all played tennis, which was a blast! Then my whole family came over for a huge lunch of turkey, dressing, corn casserole, and a ton of other good food and desserts! We also got to play some ping pong and shoot Ryan’s new bow and arrow I got him for Valentine’s Day. It was seriously such a perfect way to start my birthday! I look forward to celebrating some more tonight with Ryan, and Ryan even says he will take me out to eat just us this weekend to celebrate my birthday too! 🙂

Anyways, I normally like to share my workouts from the past week on Sundays, but I never got a chance to post yesterday, so I wanted to briefly share last week’s workouts with y’all today.

Monday: 7 miles, 20 minute post run yoga (from doyogawithme.com), my add-on leg workout 3xs through.

Tuesday: Love Your Body workout from Purelytwins and my amazing arms workout 2xs

Wednesday: 4x400s & 4x800s. I would run one 400, walk for a minute, run one 800, walk for two minutes, and then start again with a 400 until I completed the workout.

Thursday: 6 miles and 8 minute abs

Friday: yoga from doyogawithme.com

Saturday: 17 mile run

Sunday: active rest day, tennis with the family.

I was so excited and happy after my 17 mile run because I felt great! This was the longest distance I have ever run, and the fact that I felt good during it was really encouraging since I am getting closer and closer to my marathon!

Anyways, I better go because since I can’t put new pictures on my posts, I am trying to keep them short. 😉

I hope you all have a great week!

Questions:

1. How was your weekend? Tell me some fun things you did!

2. Any plans for this week?

3. Are you off work today for President’s Day? I wish I was; Ryan is. We have a teacher work day, so I will be in training all day. 

4. How were your workouts last week?

Week of Fitness 1/27-2/2 and Meal Planning

Good morning! I was up early this morning (as usual), so I thought I could bust out a quick post as I finish up my meal prep for the week! First, let’s go over this past week’s workouts. In case you don’t remember, I went down on my mileage this week for my marathon training. For four weeks straight I increased my mileage every week, so this week I went down to give my body a break. I will be increasing my mileage again this week.

Monday: 3 miles. This was supposed to be four, but Monday was extremely cold here (at least for us Texans 😉 ) and very windy, and three miles was all I could endure.

Tuesday:This HIIT cardio strength workout 2xs

Wednesday: 3 miles at a harder and faster pace than normal and my Work All of Those Muscles workout 3xs through

Thursday: Unexpected race day. I was going to run four miles before work, but I didn’t sleep well that night and was sniffling the whole night. So when my alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. I knew I needed to let my body rest. I really wanted to run because I didn’t know if I could get my workout in any other time, but sometimes rest is more important. That afternoon I did our grocery shopping for the week so I couldn’t work out then either. It’s okay though, I’m sure my body appreciated the extra rest.

Friday: Yoga video from doyogawithme.com. This video focused on doing a deep release for my hips, hamstrings, and lower back. I felt so good after this! I also did a 60 minute plank after the video before I had to go get ready for work.

Saturday: 8 miles

Sunday: Rest Day

I really went back on my mileage this week, but now I’m really ready to get back to some longer runs this week! This week just seemed crazy, so I’m reading for a good week of workouts!

Now for this week’s meals:

Saturday (last night): stuffed spaghetti squash that was so good! Courtney called it “Sensational Stuffed Spaghetti Squash” for a reason! I did mostly exactly what her recipe said, but instead of a couple of slices of bacon I added tempeh for protein, and I didn’t use goat cheese because we didn’t have any of that.

Sunday: Wing it. I’m not exactly sure of our plans for tonight since the visitation is tonight. We might be with family later tonight, we might not. We will just see how it goes, and if we end up being at home, we have plenty of food so I can throw something together!

Monday: Baked coconut shrimp with Amy’s twice baked potatoes

Tuesday: Lentil walnut loaf with butternut squash and some type of other vegetable.

Wednesday: Black bean and butternut squash burritos with guacamole, veggies, and chips for Ryan. Instead of rice for this recipe, I am going to use quinoa.

Thursday: Crock pot lasagna soup. Since I have started doing my grocery shopping on Thursdays (which I love, now I don’t have to deal with the grocery store on the weekends! Whoo!), I learned that I definitely don’t feel like cooking once I get home from the store. So having a meal already prepared in the crockpot this night is going to be wonderful!

Sidenote: I plan on doing a post sometime in the near future about my whole grocery list, and how I shop on a budget!

For meal prep this week I chopped up four onions, four bell peppers, sliced up three bell peppers for snacking, washed, peeled and cut up carrots for snacking, sliced and baked a butternut squash, roasted broccoli, squash, zucchini, and mushrooms for side dishes, chopped up a cup of diced broccoli, cooked 2 cups of quinoa, and chopped up mushrooms for eggs and salads during the week. This will make my week oh so much easier! 🙂

Lastly, I know I have mentioned this a lot, but I definitely want to buy my own domain and self host my blog. I need some suggestions of good companies to use for this! Any advice you can give I would greatly appreciate! I have used up all of my free space for media on the free version of WordPress, and I am ready to improve this little blog of mine! 🙂

I hope you all have a great Sunday, and please continue to keep my family and I in your prayers. I should be back posting on Tuesday. 🙂

Questions:

1. Blogging advice for me on my own domain name and on self-hosting?

2. How was your week of workouts?

3. What are you cooking this week? 

Fitness Week of 1/20-1/26

Hello everyone! I hope your weekend is going fabulous! Mine has been, and I am so excited for a rest day because this has been a good week of marathon training, but now my body needs to rest. As always, here is my fitness from the past week:

Monday: 7 miles

Tuesday: my at home HIIT workout and this tight tummy workout that I have pinned on my ab workouts page on Pinterest.

Wednesday: 4 miles. I meant to do some speed work and strength today, but it didn’t happen. Four miles was perfect though!

Thursday: this 30 minute killer at home cardio workout that is on my cardio Pinterest board and three rounds of my Shoulder andAb Burner workout. A five mile run with strength work was scheduled for this day, but Thursday was soooo cold here, and after walking outside a lot of the day at work (my school is an outdoor campus), running outside just sounded miserable. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, even with marathon training you have to be flexible!

Friday: 45 minutes of power yoga from doyogawithme.com. This was such a great reminder of how much I have to improve on yoga! I love that I have started doing yoga once a week, and it’s great to do the day before my long runs. I’m hoping to eventually do it more than once a week.

Saturday: 15 miles.

My long run Saturday felt great! I actually think I felt even better than last week when I ran 13 miles. This was a huge encouragement because I know I have some much longer runs coming up, but I am actually looking forward to them! I will go down on my mileage next week though. For the past four weeks I have been increasing my mileage every week, so this week I will decrease my mileage to give my body a rest. After that, my mileage will begin to increase again.

Now it’s time for me to go make some breakfast, do my meal planning for the week, and then get ready for church! This afternoon I plan on relaxing with Ryan at home, getting our grocery shopping done, and hopefully doing some food prep for the week!

Questions:

1. How were your workouts this week? What was your favorite? My favorite was my long run and the power yoga! 

2. What are you doing today?

3. Do you have any suggestions for what meals I should cook this week?