Even though I’m mostly following Runner’s World’s FIRST training program for my marathon, I decided to switch out their speed workouts with alternating workouts of the following:

1. 1 Mile repeats – Basically I’m just going to run a series of mile repeats, increasing by 1 set every workout (every two weeks) at whatever pace I can maintain for the duration of the run, with 3 minutes of rest in between. I’ll go into more detail on this when I do it next week but I’ll be starting with 4 x 1 mile @ 8:15 or so.

2. Yasso’s 800s – The speed you do these are supposed to represent a fairly accurate finishing time for a marathon. For instance, I want a 4:00 marathon time (well, ideally), so by the end of training I have to be able to run 800m in 4 minutes ten times (10 x 800m @ 8:00 min/mile). Pretty simple, right?

Today I did the Yasso’s.

Warm up : 0.2 miles, 3:00 minutes

0.8 miles @ 6.2

800m @ 7.5

2 min @ 6.3

800m @ 7.6

2 min @ 6.3

800m @ 7.7

2 min @ 6.2

800m @ 7.7

2 min @ 6.2

800m @ 7.6

2 min @ 6.1

800m @ 7.8 – 8.0

Cool down : 0.3 miles, 4 minutes

Distance: 6 miles (9.8k)

Time: 54:00

Pace: 9:00 min/mile

I realized during my run today that my mantras are sometimes a bit questionable. Today the mantra I kept repeating in my head was “Pain is love, baby”. I’m not sure if this represents some sort of Freudian sadist/masochist dilemma between my ego and id, or if I’m just a lame, corny person. This is just one of the reason why, despite all appearances, I would make a terrible role model for young girls.

I don’t think it needs to be said but I wasn’t it any actual pain during the run. It was quite pleasant, actually.

Song of the Run: Kanye West – Stronger

Yeah, this song is just kick ass for working out. Not much more to say about that.

I’m off to a wine tasting tonight. Pretty much one of my favourite things on earth.

I haven’t really talked about it yet but I’ve been dealing with some pain from my right IT band and have been going to physio for it. I’ll talk about my treatment in more detail at another point but for right now I’m trying to run indoors, especially if there’s a lot of snow like there has been. I found that the snow and ice was so unstable to run on that I think it was really hurting my form and putting undue stress on my joints.

So that means I’m stuck on the treadmill for now.

If I were to compile a list of the pros of doing a long run on the treadmill it would look approximately like this:

Pros

- no snow

. . . and that’s about it.

I have nothing against treadmills for shorter runs and I love them for doing speed training but I never love a treadmill run and usually long runs are labours of love as much as anything else for me. I covet the outdoors and the challenges it brings as well as the beauty of the environment and the treadmill has none of that. Plus, I miss my runner’s high. I’ve never gotten a runner’s high on a treadmill and I doubt I ever will.

Anyway, enough whinging from me. The run actually wasn’t all that bad. I split it up into 4 different sessions so that I wasn’t using any one treadmill for too long and took about a 5min break in between each set to use the bathroom, fill my water, stretch and complain to my parents (who were also there working out) about how much long treadmill runs suck.

Stats:

Distance: 25km (15.5 miles)

Time: 2:27:00

Pace: 9:28 min/mile

I’m definitely happy with the pace. I was only supposed to maintain a 9:45 min/mile pace according to my training plan but I find the treadmill a bit easier than outside because of the lack of hills (I do always run on at least a 1.0 incline, though) so I tried to keep my pace a little higher. It helped with the boredom too.

Anyway, no real knee pain, other than the typical general soreness I get and my legs only got really sore on the last 5km or so.

Song of the Run: MGMT – Weekend Wars

This is a new band to me and I’ve really been enjoying their stuff. This song is pretty mellow which made it good for a long run and it just has a nice groovy beat that kept me from getting bored.

In other news (not really) – I officially have the ugliest feet on the planet. If two marathon runners feet got together and had babies my feet would be what those baby feet had nightmares about.

I’ve always had ugly callused feet, which never really bothers me because I like them that way. I live 80% of my life barefoot so I need a solid foundation But now they’re just nasty. I’m pretty sure I’m about to lose one of my toenails and more will likely follow and I have about 6 separate blisters on the arches of my feet. Good times.

Alright, I’m done icing my knees and I need to go make a quick dinner and get off to work. Have a good night all you night sleepers

I think it’s working

We went to see Avatar tonight and I loved it. If you ever want an idea of how I would envision my ideal world (without all the war and mayhem, of course) just watch that movie. It’s pretty much my perspective in a nutshell. It helps that I’ve spent pretty much my whole life wanting to live in a tree I’m tempted to do a full movie review here but I’m not sure it’s the place. I work in the film/tv industry and I hold movies very close to my heart so I find it difficult to not want to write whole essays on the subject at times.

Before the movie I did a lovely little hot yoga session. Very mellow and relaxing class tonight. I was really focussed in savasana tonight. When I finally opened my eyes everyone else was already out of the room and I hadn’t even realized it!

My eats today were pathetic because I was in such a rush to get to yoga after I woke up and then in a rush to make it to the movie. I grabbed a key lime pie Larabar (one of my favourites) on the way to yoga and picked up some stuff from the to-go counter of the health food store on the way to the movie. Including an edamame & arame salad, green onion cake, and a kombucha in niagara grape flavour. I really love kombucha and I think it’s a great alternative to pop, which I can’t stomach at all anymore, not that I want to drink it. I do worry about the caffeine content from the tea, though. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on here before but I no longer drink caffeine because I suffer from severe physical side effects from it (I’d rather not get into the details right now). I had a larger bottle than usual so my fingers are crossed that the caffeine content isn’t enough to affect me too badly.

I have a few eats from earlier this week to share, though. Just the good stuff

Truffles! I made these for a work party of Dan’s but there were lots left over so I’m giving them away for Christmas. They are super rich, made entirely with 72% chocolate and cream, so one is a dessert in itself. They were also ridiculously easy to make, if a bit messy.

I also made a raw, vegan version with cashews, flax, dates, agave, cocoa powder and a bit of peppermint extract. These don’t win in the texture department but I think I liked them better taste-wise. But I’m a sucker for minty stuff. And they definitely win the health prize.

Vegetable stew with a homemade biscuit.

I try to stay away from white flour but I had a craving for biscuits and that’s one of the few times where whole wheat or spelt flour isn’t going to do it for me. They were more than worth the small health sacrifice

This vegetable stew was a very simple recipe, I loosely adapated it from Susan’s Beefless Stew. I wanted something close to the kind of stew I grew up eating – traditional British beef stew. This was pretty close but lacked a bit in flavour. I ate it with some Sriracha, though, and that definitely helped a lot. It made a huge pot full so most of it has been slipped into the freezer for a later date.

Lastly, I made a lovely little salad the other night in an attempt to use up some of the oldball ingredients in my fridge. I don’t want to do a grocery run until after the holidays and I’m running low on everything, so I had to get creative. Luckily this “salad” turned out amazing.

Roasted cauliflower with sauteed black beans and shallot, topped with capers, goat feta, almonds & bread crumbs mixed with honey, parsley, tarragon and chives. Lovely menagerie of flavours going on here.

Hopefully I’ll be back in a couple days with some good Christmas meals to share. We usually like to do it right .

Merry Christmas, all!

Man it felt good to run outside. No amount of mileage on a treadmill or track ever makes me feel like I’ve actually been running. I enjoy it on some level but as soon as I get back outside on the road/trail/path it’s a whole different world. Unfortunately, the huge amounts of snow make it really difficult to maintain a decent pace. I try not to be bothered by this because it’s not really that important as long as I’m doing what I can, but once I get into marathon training next month I’m worried that it’ll hurt my ability to train adequately.

Distance: 14.5k (9 miles)

Time: 1:31:00

Pace: 10:00 min/mile

Not a terrible pace by any means, but I was aiming for a 9 min/mile pace so it feels crappy anyway.

Song Of The Run : I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

This song always makes me want to dance and as I’ve mentioned before I love to dance while I run, so this one always gets my spirits up. It doesn’t hurt that the song started just a minute after this lovely old man smiled at me as I ran past and lifted his adorable, puffy yellow gloved hand to give me a thumbs up. I couldn’t stop smiling after that. It just shows – no matter what you think about your performance, there’s always someone out there who thinks that what you’re doing is pretty great.

I stopped in to my local health food store after my run to pick up some groceries. I wasn’t planning to get much but there were so many fun items on sale that I ended up with a full bag (funny how that always happens ). I don’t usually buy very much packaged/processed foods so I thought I’d share some of today’s purchases, just for fun.

This is my favourite brand of tofu. It’s made somewhat locally (Nelson, BC is about a 7 hour drive from Calgary), it’s organic and made with minimal ingredients. I try to stay away from too much soy, but I love tofu and this is the freshest, most authentic stuff you can get. Even the herbs used for flavouring are local and organically grown. I haven’t tried the curry flavour before; I usually buy the ‘hot’ flavour and it’s my favourite by far.

This is the only brand of raw milk cheese I’ve found but that’s okay because it’s really good and it’s Canadian as well. I’ve had both the old cheddar and now the parmesan. The texture of the cheese is a bit harder than traditional, pasteurized cheese but the flavour is better than most commercial cheeses.

Delicious, delicious Manna Bread. I like to pack chunks of this into my lunchbox. It’s so dense and flavourful that I just eat it straight, either cold or heated slightly. I also got some Ezekiel english muffins. Now that I’ve been converted to sprouted grain bread products I just can’t imagine going back to the regular stuff. For some purposes I can see wanting a softer, more refined bread but I’m a big fan of breads that are full of grains and have a more dense texture. For a softer grain bread I eat Healthy Way’s Flax Multigrain bread, which is probably my favourite brand of sliced bread.

I don’t usually like canned soups and the ingredient list on these isn’t ideal but they were on sale so I decided to pick up a couple for those times when I just want a quick bowl of soup on a cold day. I’ll let you know how I like them.

PB&J Larabars! I was so excited to see that my store finally got this flavour in (still no Tropical Fruit Tart, though). They were on sale 3/$5 too.

I’m really starting to have a stock-pile of protein powder but when I saw this today I couldn’t resist. I haven’t been able to find brown rice protein powder until now and it has a higher protein count than the hemp protein I usually use. I like the nutritional quality of hemp protein better so I’ll probably still use that primarily but this will be a nice change. Plus, Cafe Caramel flavour sounds yummy.

Now onto the onslaught of chocolate. Haha.

I’m making truffles for a function at Dan’s work on Friday so I had to pick up a bunch of dark chocolate.

They only had one bar of Green & Blacks baking chocolate left so I had to supplement it with some Cocoa Camino. I’m sure it won’t be a problem

They also had the regular Green & Blacks bars on sale so I picked up a bunch. These may or may not get slipped into some Christmas stockings. I don’t trust myself around this much chocolate.

I also picked up this gourmet chocolate bar from Wild Sweets. They had a good selection of different chocolates so I picked this one to do a taste test and see if it was worth the cost. I had a piece after dinner and good God in Heaven, this stuff is so good. The quality of the chocolate is amazing – dark and rich with a nice smoky finish – and the fillings are perfectly balanced. I really love praline so this was perfect for me. It’s definitely a special occasion chocolate, but lucky for me I consider a lot of things to be special occasions .

As much as I love when companies are Canadian, knowing that I can order these chocolates online at any time is a terrible temptation. I want pretty much everything on their website. The wine confits alone are enough to make me want to cry with sheer pleasure.

I also finally got my hands on some raw cacao powder. I bought this mainly because I needed some to coat the truffles but I’ve been wanting to splurge on some of this for months, so it was really just a good excuse

And thus ends my cornucopia of chocolate shopping trip. I made sure to let the cashier at the store know that I was baking with and giving away most of this chocolate because it looked pretty funny stacking it all on the counter.

When I got home I made myself a real dinner, once again involving my new obsession with cornmeal.

Roasted Vegetables & Black Beans on Cheesy Grits

This was actually a really easy meal to put together. I’d soaked the black beans overnight so I threw them on the stove to cook while I showered and took pictures of my shopping trip. Then I cooked up the grits using this basic recipe:

2 cups water

2/3 cup almond milk

1/3 cup cornmeal

salt & pepper to taste

1 tbsp earth balance or butter

1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese (I used my raw cheese mentioned above)

1/4 cup grated parmesan

Heat 1 cup of the water and the milk until boiling. Add the cornmeal and stir quickly so it doesn’t clump. Reduce the heat and cook until thickened, adding the remaining cup of water 1/4 cup at a time until it reaches the proper consistency, about 15-20 minutes. Remove from the heat, add salt & pepper, earth balance and stir in the grated cheese until smooth.

Makes two servings.

While the grits were cooking I chopped up some broccoli, brussels sprouts, zucchini & shallot and roasted them in the oven at 425 for about 20 minutes. They were topped with olive oil, salt, paprika and cayenne pepper.

Then I put everything together in a bowl and topped it all off with a little nutritional yeast and sriracha.

This is pretty much the definition of comfort food to me. I love roasted veggies and the grits really added a nice textural element, different from the rice that I often have instead. And sriracha pretty much makes any meal better, IMO.

That’s it for me. I’m making truffles tomorrow so hopefully I can get some good pics to share of how it goes.

Basic Pinole Recipe

1/4 cup course grind cornmeal

1 tbsp sweetener (I’ve used agave, maple syrup & brown rice syrup)

cinnamon to taste (I use a lot)

~ 3/4 cup water

1 tbsp chia seeds (optional)

Combine the first three ingredients in a bowl and mix. Add the water, stir, and microwave for 1-2 minutes (you could also cook it on the stove for 15 min or so). Once cooked, stir to smooth out the mixture and add the chia seeds if using. Let sit for a couple minutes to let the chia seeds absorb the excess water, adding more water or other liquid to reach the consistency you like. If you don’t want to use chia seeds you can either microwave the cornmeal mixture for longer to thicken it up or just use less water. I like mine to be a bit thinner than I would oat bran with more of a ‘cream of wheat’ consistency.

I usually add toppings and eat this about an hour before exercising. It digests really well and is very filling for less of a caloric load on the body. I love the slightly gritty texture from the cornmeal and the chia seeds give it a really cool consistency. It’s also a flavour that lends itself well to many different additions.

Here’s another bowl, topped with raisins and pom arils. This was a pre-run snack.

And another with sliced banana. I like to keep my pinole pretty simple so far, mostly because I usually just use it as a snack.

And today’s breakfast. I played around with this one a little and added pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon, maple syrup and 1/4 cup pumpkin puree to the cornmeal. I also added some hemp protein powder to give it a little more protein heft. Topped with raisins and apple butter. This might be my favourite combo yet.

Some people seem to think that ‘grits’ or ‘pinole’ is less healthy than oatmeal or oat bran but I find the nutritionals to be pretty comparable if you’re buying a good brand. I buy Bob’s Red Mill brand coarse cornmeal and when compared to the same brand of oat bran or rolled oats the only real difference is that the cornmeal has less protein. It actually contains more fiber per gram than most of the oat products. So, not so bad at all.

Of course, it’s never going to replace a good bowl of oatmeal, but so far I’m quite the fan.

BTW – the post title comes from the Wikipedia article on pinole. In case you were wondering