Chicago Marathon Val

*** Don’t forget to enter my giveaway to win a year’s subscription to Vegetarian Times, here! ***

Happy Saturday everyone!   It’s almost 8am, and right now I am usually about 10 miles into my typical Saturday long run!  But instead, I’ll be running my 20 miler tomorrow… it was nice to “sleep in” today!

It’s been a crazy busy week over here.  As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve had a couple back-up posts – my John “The Penguin” Bingham interview, and my Vegetarian Times giveaway to fall back on in a sense since I’ve had little time to blog with the craziness going on at work.  Being a school social worker is a wonderful, rewarding job, but there was an abnormal amount of crises this week which kept me on my toes, to say the least!

I have a really fun post coming up soon, but first I wanted to do a quick recap of the week!

On my birthday on Tuesday, my wonderful parents sent me these beautiful flowers!

Unfortunately, Mike had started to get sick on Tuesday and wasn’t feeling up to going out to eat.  So, we ordered some sushi/Thai delivery from a new place that we haven’t tried before, Thai Spoon.  This was recommended by Jenn from Eating Bender, who raved about it – with good reason!Half of the sushi above was mine - avocado rolls, and sweet potato rolls – and other other half was Mike’s.  The sushi was very affordable as it is, and Thai Spoon also has a great deal where all sushi rolls are 1/2 off if you dine in between 4 and 7pm! Nice!  I also got a tofu noodle dish with veggies and a garlicy sweet soy sauce on top. 

 It was very good for an easy meal to eat at home while watching The Biggest Loser!  I had been anticipating this season’s first episode for weeks, and it did not disappoint!  It’s always more fun a few weeks into it when you get to know the contestants even better, so I’m excited to get further into the season.  When Ali Sweeney started off the episode by talking about the marathon that the contestants ran last year, did you also think that she was going to make them run a marathon?!?!? I was so panicked for them, until she mentioned that they only had to run the LAST mile of the marathon, which still ended up being quite a fiasco!

During the past couple days I’ve definitely had at least a few plates of this…. it’s turned into something that I actually crave on a daily basis! I LOVE the Food Should Taste Good multigrain chips dipped in pasta sauce.  Mmmmmmmmmmmm……..Some Kashi cereal that I got as a sample….. nothing fancy, but was great once I doctored it up with some almond milk, flax, and a banana!Lots and lots of banana soft serves a la Gena…..I got an enormous sampling of products from the great people over at Gu! Thank you, Gu!!!! I can’t wait to try everything, especially their new “Roctane” products which supposedly provide you with even more energy than the regular Gus.

My only concern is that the flavors they sent me aren’t the ones I’ve been “practicing” with on my long runs.  Do you think it’s ok to try out a new flavor during my 20 miler tomorrow, or should I stick with what works, and try the new flavors on shorter runs?  Or, should I “sample” the new flavors today – not during a run, but just to try the flavor to see if I like it?  What do you think?Since Mike has been feeling under the weather all week, I also made us a few of these wheatgrass drinks.  I also came to an AMAZING conclusion. 

Wheatgrass shots plain = Disgusting

However…..

Wheatgrass mixed into orange juice = Delicious!!!Seriously!!!! It tasted like a thick, sweet and delicious fruity smoothie.  Try it!!

There was also lots of new vegan ice cream products, courtesy of some lovely coupons sent to me from So Delicious.  I wanted to try their coconut milk products, but first off started out with their soy ice cream.  Vanilla and chocolate are both delicious, but the chocolate is especially superb!!!

Keep in mind folks, I haven’t been vegan for very long here so I know what good ice cream is supposed to taste like… and this is it!! This is not one of those “it tastes like good soy ice cream”… it truly does taste like plain old tasty chocolate ice cream, except there is nothing plain about its decadent, rich taste!Even better… are their ice cream sandwiches!! These are truly outstanding.  They are only 90 calories per serving, but honestly, if you can stop at just one then you may just be a bit crazy   I can never stop at one!

So that was my random smattering or foods from the week.  There were also some workouts in their too…

A weak bike session on Tuesday (that’s what happen when I skip my regular spinning class, it’s so hard to get the same intensity workout on the bike when I’m on my own!!)….

 A 10 miler on Wednesday night which was a bust…… I have consistently had terrible night runs no matter what.  It’s definitely based on what I’m eating before hand, because without fail every single time I run at night I always end the run with excruciating stomach pain.  What gives?!?!  (Do you have any advice how I can get around this problem?)

A REAL spinning class on Thursday… oh spinning, how I missed you!!!!

Friday was a rest day, and today I’m going to officially “rest” again for tomorrow’s long run, but I’m going to stretch my legs a bit by taking a short walk around the neighborhood.

Tomorrow’s 20 miler should be a blast – the way our training group (the Chicago Area Runner’s Assocation) has it set it is so that it’s an actual race, called the Ready to Run 20 Miler, complete with bib, timing chips, and hopefully that complimentary beer at the end, too ;)

***

Last night Mike and I had an amazing meal at Everest, which crazily enough is known to be one of the best restaurant’s in America, if not the world! It was beyond extraordinary and I can’t wait to share the experience with you in my next posting!

I’m off for a quick walk and then we are headed to Indiana to see my family for a bit to celebrate my birthday. In the meantime, don’t forget to enter my Vegetarian Times giveaway….

On that note, what’s your favorite magazine, whether it’s cooking, fitness, fashion, gossip, ….?? Mine truly might be VT, I just love it!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 8:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.