So Much!! (Part 2)

Since I missed blogging pretty much the whole month of April, you can read Part 1 here.  And in case you missed it, ONEderland happened!

To catch up on what's been happening with my running.  It's just starting to be hat season rather than toque season.  Yay!  We still have overnight lows of below zero but it's coming I can tell!  I'm still in the half marathon clinic and I think it's going pretty well.  In a perfect world, I'd be running 5 times a week.  But our leader said it's really most important that we get in our tempo run, steady run, and long run.  I sort of do that.  I do get in the 3 -4 runs but the difference between my tempo speed and my steady run is non-existent, hehe.  I call it tempslo.  However, when I do run with this one girl who is slightly faster, I run a little faster.  Most of the time, I'm running with a different friend of mine who is in the clinic and he is a bit slower than me so I tend to be a little slower on those nights.  So I guess I do have a bit of a tempo and a steady.  I'm not too concerned about not running 5 times because I do three classes a week of cross-training and usually a video at home once or twice a week.  

The other day I had a big realization while I was running.  I kept thinking that I wasn't getting any better.  Running was just as hard as it ever was and I was just really feeling like I sucked.  I was struggling and pretty much gasping for air.  I was running with the woman who was faster and another girl that is much faster but coming back slowly after an injury.  I dropped out of the conversation so I could keep up chugging along, feeling discouraged with my lame lungs.  It wasn't until I stopped my Garmin that I realized that my "short" mid-week run that night was 6.38 km.  That was pretty much the distance of the week one long run.  My long run last Sunday was 13.8 km.  So while my feeling of difficulty each week has stayed the same, what I'm capable of within that difficulty feeling is increasing.  I have to remember that and cling to that.  I also read a great article in Runner's World about Kara Goucher and Shalane Flanagan and Kara talked about how she struggles with self-doubt.  Whoa, wait, Kara Goucher doubts herself??  If one of the female elite runners struggles with doubt, I'm definitely not immune.  

So, fun stuff, I kept thinking that I keep registering for all these races in the future and I've yet to run one this year so last weekend I registered for a little fundraising run at a park close by.  Because the run was to raise money for two sick kids in the province, there wasn't a set distance and you just chose the number of laps to run around the park.  My homework run that Saturday was 5 km so I ran three laps of the park for a total of 5.66 km.  It was a great way to spend a morning.  Lots of people from my run club came and my friend Malinda registered too and we ran together.  Her brother took a picture of us but I cropped her out because I'm not sure if she wants her picture on my blog, hehe.

The WW online is going really well.  I've been great at tracking and finding things I really like to eat and enjoy that are point friendly.  Among those things, roasted broccoli.  How had I never heard of this or tried it until Hungry Runner Girl.  It is so delicious and I'm currently making my way through a costco bag of broccoli florets.  I spread florets on a cookie sheet, give it a spray with olive oil, sprinkle with garlic powder and salt & pepper.  Bake at 400 for 17 minutes.  In my toaster/convection oven, 17 minutes was perfect.  In my regular oven, it's 14.  So when you first try it, start watching it at 13 minutes.  

My other new favourite thing is chickpea "tuna" salad.  It's really unbelievable how much it looks and tasted like tuna salad.  I even took some to work and got a couple people to try it and they are sold too.  Then I took it a step further and made . . . a tuna melt.  OMG my youth.  I can't get enough of these tuna melts now.  I came home after hill training one night and made myself "tuna" melts and veggies and an icy cold coke zero with my feet up in compression socks and frozen corn across my shins and it may have been the best part of my week.  For the chickpea tuna salad, you can pretty much google it and there are a ton of recipes around.  I didn't have strange things like kelp powder so I just tossed in what I would normally toss into tuna except a bit more seasoning.  Drain and rinse chickpeas and mash with a fork, not hummus mashed just broken up.  Then add everything you want.  I added a couple tbsp of dill pickle relish, a couple tbsp of mayo, 1 tbsp soy sauce, sprinkle of nutritional yeast, chopped celery, onion flakes and salt & pepper.  Enjoy!  It makes 4 1/2 cup servings and 1/2 cup is perfect for two slices of bread or sandwich thins.  I used sandwich thins, topped with "tuna", sliced dill pickle, sliced tomato, and a light cheese slice and then into the oven.  So so good.  

And coming up . . . on Sunday, I've got a race!!  It's the police service half-marathon relay and I'm doing it with my friend Nicole from work.  It's going to be fun and there's a pancake breakfast after and a super cool break-apart medal.  I did the race in 2010 as well and it was great.  I'm not going to worry about my time but at the same time, it would be nice if I could beat my time from 2010.  Race report next week!  Wish me luck!