Break time

It's time to take a break from running.

It pains me to say that, but my shins have been acting up again this week.

And it's just not worth it right now.

I know I need new shoes. I'm pretty sure that is basically the entire problem.

I've got my eye on these:

Brooks Adrenaline GTS 11. Last year's model. I tried on the 12's and really liked them but I've heard from multiple sources that the 11's were crazy awesome and superior in every way. So I just need to find a place to try them out.

But we are trying to be smart with our money right now (have a third acre to landscape in a couple of months), so we decided new running shoes will have to wait until our next credit card cycle (we put everything on our credit card... and we pay it off every month... and I know the experts say to never do that... but we have been doing it for years and have never paid a penny in interest... and have made hundreds and hundreds of dollars in rewards... so on we go... and I don't know why I elaborated on that... or why all the dots... but anyway...).  :)

So my Valentine's gift from Justin has been predetermined: new shoes.

So the next few weeks I will cross train in every way imaginable. 

Barbell classes.

Cycle classes.

Conditioning classes.

That really cool elliptical at our gym that is crazy hard!

Maybe I will join Justin in swimming.

That guy. He has been swimming like crazy. His workout of choice lately has been creating indoor triathlons at the gym. And yesterday he swam 16 laps straight! I may have a good swim coach on my hands.

Alright, here goes anything and everything BUT running!

Three runs, feeling fine!

Monday: 20/20/20 Elliptical/Bike/Stairmill

Tuesday: 4.5 miles. 9:40 pace for the 1st 2 miles, 9:13 for the second two. Nice slow run to baby those shins and burn fat. And right when I started my cool down, the Party Rock Anthem came on and I just had to aprovechar. I bumped it up to 8:34 for half a mile. Sure felt good to run at a normal pace.

Wednesday: Got inspired by Munro's wake up early post and got up at 5 a.m. to do a 5:30 cycle class at the gym. Won't be doing that again. ;)
Thursday: I can't remember, I think I took the day off.
Friday: Ran 4 miles... 9 something pace to start and finished with an 8:34 for the last 2.5 I think. Shins were okay. Just a barely there kind of pain in the warm up but fine for the rest of the run and post run.
Saturday: I was really feeling a long run. I wanted to do nine. My shins felt fine, but again, just that barely there feeling like "don't do anything crazy." But I decided 9 would be okay if I took it easy. I went to the gym in the late afternoon and had to run on the treadmill because we had some nasty pouring rain/snow weather. I also had to hurry because we were having my sister's soon-to-be-in-laws over for dinner and I was out of time. Totally ran out of time and only did seven. I warmed up at a 9-something pace and then ran a range between 8:00-8:34 the rest of the way. Everything felt fine, woo hoo!

Dressing Recipe of the week:

I love good salad dressing. I've kind of fallen off the calorie-counting bandwagon, but I still eat salads almost every day for lunch. This is a dressing I made up this week that I really enjoyed... we'll call it 

Avocado Dressing:

-.5-1 avocado

-1 T. light mayo

-2 T. lemon juice

-1/2 cup skim milk

-about 2 T. cilantro

-1 clove garlic

-Seasoning salt to taste

I threw this on some red leaf lettuce, tomatoes, red onion and broken tortilla chips and scarfed it. So good.

New Recipe Favs and Weekly Recap

So logging calories in My Fitness Pal has had it's awesome days and it's not so awesome days, but for the most part, I think I'm doing pretty good. Just wanted to jot down a couple of new healthy recipes that I am LOVING.

Cherry Almond Protein Shake:

-Vanilla protein powder (we use Lifetime Fitness' whey protein, has 100 calories and 22 g protein)

-1 cup almond milk

-1/3 cup frozen cherries

Oh my goodness, the almond cherry flavor is divine, I love having this in the late afternoon when I'm starving

About 200 calories

Light and Creamy Ceasar Salad Dressing:

I love ceasar salad and I'm so glad I found this recipe on food.com

-1/2 cup light mayo

-1/2 cup skim milk

-2 tbsp parmesan cheese

-2 tbsp lemon juice

-2 tsp mustard

-2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

-2 cloves garlic

Mix it all up in the food processor and pour it on chopped romaine, thinly sliced red onion, shredded parmesan (I didn't have any so I haven't done that yet) and make croutons by cutting up a slice of bread and sauteing it in a little olive oil & garlic, and seasoning with salt and parmesan cheese. 

I love this salad. You could add rotisserie chicken and make it a dinner.

It's hard to get a calorie count on the dressing, but it makes a pretty good amount so I put it into a recipe calculator and if it made 10 servings, each serving would be about 40 calories, so yeah, awesome.

Here's my recap on running on such:

Monday: Total Conditioning (the class from h-e-double hockey sticks at our gym)

Tuesday: Spin class

Wednesday: Ran 4 miles, easy breasy. Super slow 10 minute pace to keep my heart rate low and burn some fat and also avoid any shin pain. Shins didn't hurt at all.

Thursday: A DAY OFF, wow.

Friday: Ran 2 measly miles before it was wayyy too dark outside to be running, oh well.

Saturday: Ran 8 miles on the treadmill at about a 9:30 pace for the first couple of miles and then an 8:34 for the rest. We had a gloriously beautiful, sunny, mild winter day today so it killed me to run on the treadmill, but Justin was up skiing with Makenzie so I had to take the boys to the childcare. Had very mild shin pain in the beginning and absolutely none when I was done so I think I'm doing okay on that, horray!

Next week I will still take it easy on my pace, but I think I'll do 3 days of running (Friday didn't really count this week) and see how it goes.

Cross Training

Well last week's "good week" turned into this week's shin splints so I had to turn to alternative forms of exercise.

 Monday:
My shin pain was mild at this point so I decided I would run 4 miles on the treadmill.

Monday was the day after New Years. The MADHOUSE at the gym was almost comical. Seriously, people?! I could barely get a treadmill. But I got one and started off on my 4 miler when I noticed a guy in the row in front of me was over 5 miles into his run, an 8:30 pace that he made look realllly easy and NO headphones. How do you do that on a treadmill? I really need that music to keep me going. As my run went on, so did that guy. He hit 6, then 7 miles. Before long, his machine stopped since it only goes an hour and I noticed he just started it right back up and kept running. Yep, I was kind of being a running stalker, but whatever, you gotta do something to keep you entertained when you're running on that hamster wheel, right? The guy ended up running about 8.5 on a Monday on a treadmill with no music. I was inspired. All of a sudden 4 seemed really weak. So I did 6.4. Felt great. Until I stopped. And my shins hurt. Quite a bit. Doh! Stupid, "inspired" me.

Tuesday:
So Tuesday was a spin class. I used to HATE spin classes. I could let go of the fact that they made my butt hurt for days, but for some reason they just seemed really grueling for me. But Tuesday there was this peppy instructor who had just spent all of her iTunes Christmas gift cards on some rockin' 80's music and she had some old Arnold Schwarzenegger body building movie on the big screens up front. It was fun. And it burned. Oh man my legs were burning so freakin' bad, it was ridiculous. And I liked it.

Wednesday:
I went to the crazy, insane, want-to-kill-myself-now circuit class that we go to almost every Wednesday night.

Thursday:
  I did spin again. And liked it again. And it burned like crazy again.

Friday:
Crazy, but I did another spin class. I get my heart rate monitor on and it helps me know how hard I'm pushing. It takes a LOT of burn in those quads/butt/hamstrings to get my heart rate even close to my normal running heart rate. I feel like it's doing some major strength training in my legs so it really helped me not feel so bad about not running. Also, I had my first women's basketball game Friday night (so happy to finally be in a stake that has women's sports!) and my shins felt ok after that so I decided it was a go to try running again on Saturday.

Saturday:
I did 7 miles on the treadmill and took it nice and easy. I tried to keep myself at a 9:30 pace, but I got kind of impatient and did a 8:40-something for the third mile and then an 8:30 for the last 2.5. My shins were really not so bad afterward so that was good.

And lastly, Becca- thank you so much for telling me about My Fitness Pal.

I did really good on the weekdays (this weekend has not been so good), but I'm totally determined to get right back on track tomorrow morning. That app is exactly what I needed so thank you, thank you!