So my day was pretty usual, aka pretty terrible.  Goodness I hope I can make it through the last semester.

Good thing I got home and remembered I had put my leftover coffee in the fridge.  Another good thing is that I make the best iced latte on the planet and I cheered up a bit!  I paired my latte with a serving of Cinnabon cereal and a serving of pita chips.  Not the healthiest snack but it worked.

Trooper was looking up at me with his cute doggie eyes so I got out a bag of treats we had bought him from the Doggie Dessert bar at Petco.  All of these dog cookies looked so….human.  So yes, I did it.  I tasted the dog cookie.  It tasted like a cookie.  Not as sweet as an Oreo but it wasn’t bad.  I wouldn’t eat the rest of the bag or anything but not bad.

My hubby wanted me to post a picture of the HUGE steak he cooked for himself the other night.  He didn’t eat it all in one sitting.  We sliced up part of it for steak salad the following evening.

Some other random food pictures I found on my camera card:

An entire bag of frozen veggies and bagel thin for dinner.  This dinner took approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds to prepare.

I ate this for lunch one day this previous weekend.  Almond butter toast and and an apple are not real substantial, but when you are sick you just eat whatever sounds good.

By the way, I ran today!!!! Actually it is the first time in 4 whole days that I have exercised at all.  I started small and did 3 miles on the treadmill.  The marathon issue is remaining untouched for right now.

Massive dilemma in my house…I can’t find my Saints shirt for the playoff game today.  Ugh.

Last night I had one of my favorite dinners:  leftovers salad.  Basically I just put all the leftovers from the fridge on top of lettuce and call it a salad.  This salad included chickpeas, 1/2 Boca, tomato, steamed veggie mix, mushrooms, and carrots.  I also had half an everything bagel-thin with Laughing Cow.  The everything bagel-thins are great as a mock dinner roll.

This morning I drug myself out of bed and headed out to run.  Run…I am failing at running.  I am so down about school starting that I have literally sat on my couch most of the week watching TV for about 10 hours a day.

Got over to Rice and they are filming some car commercial…ugh!  Traffic was terrible, the road was blocked, I forgot my Garmin, but I ended up running for an hour anyway.  It felt terrible and I have no idea how in the world I am going to run 17 miles tomorrow let alone run 26 in a month!

Anyway I returned home, showered, made a pot of coffee, and ate a bowl of cereal with huge amounts of cereal!

I have crap to do then am going to watch the Saints game with my boys.  Did I mention I woke up with a sore throat???  I just got over being sick so I am not too happy with my immune system right now.

Are you watching the playoffs? Although I love pretty much all football, playoffs of anything tend to be pretty exciting!

Happy National Running Day!  Time to run it out boys and girls!  Are you running today? I woke up to 82 degrees, 76% humidity, and it feels like 88 degrees out so celebrating National Running Day is rough in Houston.  For any Houstonian readers there is an organized run at Memorial Park tonight at 6pm.  I am going to complete Insanity and see if I feel like battling the heat-this Indiana girl still can’t hack this heat!

In case I whimp out and stay in the A/C here are some of my own running tips to help those who don’t live in the tropics known as South East Texas.

Karissa’s Running Tips

• Start small. You have to crawl before you can walk, and you might have to walk before you can run.
• Hydrate and fuel. Drink water!  Keep hydrating and eat something so that you can power through!
• Get good shoes. I was actually messing up my legs by running in shoes that were wrong for my feet.  Go to a running store and get a shoe fit for you!  Preventing injury is worth the extra $.
• Get some gear. “Some” gear is the key word.  You don’t need everything, running should be a somewhat cost effective sport.  But if it is hot I recommend getting a moisture wicking shirt and if it is cold buy a decent coldgear under-layer.
• Have fun! Running is “me” time.  Listen to music, clear your head, pick a scenic route, do whatever you need to enjoy your run!

What are some of your best running tips?

The first day of finals studying and I have gotten no studying done. I have just been trying to keep up with my daily assignments which have increased a ton! All of my professors seem to be trying to play catch-up and are loading the work on. Not good timing. Needless to say, I am going to try and stay up really late or get up really early to get in a couple hours of study time.

Monday recap:

Breakfast was a nice big bowl of oats/bran. This was a hearty change from the GM. I made a huge batch to last me the week! This morning I topped mine with banana, strawberries, and AB.

There was also coffee consumed x2.

Lunch was courtesy of My Fit Foods. I got a great Groupon deal the other week for a $35 giftcard for only 15 bucks! Steal.  The hubby and I knew things were going to be crazy this week so we picked up some meals this weekend.  When you go to store, all meals have labels with size, nutritional information, heating instructions, and best by dates.

These are Miguel’s Snack tacos.  3 tacos, 270 calories, 3.5 g fat, 41 g carbs, and 18 g of protein.  These were quite yummy.

I ate 2 of the tacos and saved one for the hubby to eat.  I am a volume eater-I need to consume a lot of food- so these meals are just too small for me.  I added a side salad to bulk it up.

Overall, the food was good but the meals are pretty pricey.  If you really don’t have time to shop or cook then this would probably work for you.  The hubby and I really need more food (more volume) and definitely couldn’t afford to do this for every meal.  With that said, it might be a good solution for finals time!

Snacks included some pita chips, grapes, and handful of jelly beans.

Dinner was quick and the hubby prepped everything for me.  Sweetie.

I had another Lavash wrap stuffed with hummus, sauteed mushrooms and onions, diced tomatoes, and some scallions.  I love these wraps!  Wish I could find them somewhere besides Wal Mart because I hate making the trip outside the loop.

On the side were carrots, cucumbers, and ranch.  Simple and delicious meal.  Eaten on a paper plate-one less dish.

After dinner we headed to park to run.  Bad call.  We went right after dinner so that I could get back and work.  Maybe it was lack of time to digest, maybe my stomach just hurt…but my “run” was really more of a walk.  I “ran” 3 miles in about 34 minutes.  My stomach was in terrible pain and I just couldn’t run.  Lesson learned.

Study.  Pass out.  Goodnight.

Ah, it is amazing how much better sleep is without a security alarm going off every 40 minutes!

Woke up to another beautiful morning and had a green monster:

Yum.  Is it just me or do these just make me feel better?  I always seem to have a better day when I start it with a GM!

St Pattys recap:  Green food!

Lunch started with the best salsa ever!  As a two-year honorary Texan I would like to think I know my salsa, and this stuff is top of the line!  (For locals, it is available at Central Market!).

Salad with veggies and green salsa!

Sammie on multi-grain bread with Laughing Cow, mushrooms, tomato, spinach, and salsa

This sandwich was amazing, plain and simple.

My friends called me about 1:30 and told me they were on the Tipsy Clover’s patio drinking green beer.  I headed over.

No green beer for me.  With running two half marathons this weekend, I am being really careful about hydration.  I did enjoy a nice glass of green water and a pizza roll.  ( I also picked up some major tan lines!  Houston sun is already in full power!)

When the hubby got home from work he and Trooper walked down,

Aren’t my boys the cutest!  The great thing about a lot of the Midtown bars is that they allow doggies outside on their patios.  Trooper was a hit!

Family photo.  I had my sweater on by this time to prevent my farmer’s tan from getting worse.

Trooper sporting the green Budweiser hat.

After the bar we headed home for a quick relax and dinner:

I wasn’t very hungry after my pizza roll, so I just made another salad.  More green!  St Pattys definitely helped me meet my veggie quota yesterday!

After that we hit the park and did a quick 3 miles.

Did you have some green beer or green food?

I got my butt going and ran 12.5 miles in right about 2 hours.  It was slow and somewhat painful given that I put in 11 miles yesterday, but that is my last long run before my race this weekend!

I used this on my feet and bra strap area before my run.  It prevented blisters/soreness in my feet, but it didn’t stop my already formed blister from getting worse.  Guess I should be more preventative!

Lunch was sandwich and snacks:

Sorry for this picture.  I need to start using my new camera!  I had a sandwich thing, topped with apple chicken sausage, Laughing Cow, and mushrooms.  I put this baby under the broiler to get toasty!

Then added some pretzel nibblers (so addicted to these things!), carrots, and hummus.  The chicken sausage was a bit greasy for me, but I used to old paper towel blot to fix that!

Off to whip up game day recipes!

It is game day people!  I am up bright and early because for some reason my body only wants to sleep in on days that I have class.  Oh well.  Hope you enjoyed my Super Bowl links yesterday!

Here is a quick Saturday recap:

The hubby is sick but still ran with me.  He walked a lot of it.  I took this picture, not of him but of the sign behind him!

Love it!

I got back to the apartment, got Trooper, and took him to meet the hubby!  Trooper was congratulating him.

Seriously, he is the best dog ever!

It was chilly and windy, so after my run I wanted a nice big bowl of warm oats!  Welcome PB & J Oats.  Really it was AB& J Oats.  This is 1/4th cup oats, 1/8th cup Oat Bran, 1 cup water, topped with 1 serving Special K Fruit and Yogurt, few almonds (random), and scoops of almond butter and jelly!

I then proceeded to take a nap.  Later in the day we hit up Sams and spent a ton of moolah!  Ahhh, the hubby and I consume the same amount of food as a 5 person family…no joke!

Dinner was made with Sam’s goodies.

Spring mix salad, mushrooms, carrots, blueberries, Boca burger.  Anyone tend to just throw together an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink salad as a go to dinner?  Because I do it all the time!

After dinner I made the “Chickpea Blondies” which have been a-buzz around the blog world!  I stumbled on these first over at Carrots N Cake then followed the recipe (with a few tweeks) from Have Cake, Will Travel.  I added chocolate chips on the top too!  I tried one warm last night and it was just okay.  The recipe says to chill in the fridge, so I will cut them and try again today!

For now, it is time for another long run before Game Time!  Check back later today for a run down of the recipes I used for game food!

I know I shouldn’t be complaining because I no longer live in the land of blizzards, but this rainy, gray weather is getting me down!  And seriously hurting my training schedule.

BUT, last night after 12 hours at school the hubby motivated me to get in some running.  Although I had really wanted to do my 2 hour run that got moved from Sunday-I was just too tired.  We did an hour and it was better than nothing.  I came home, ate a huge bowl of cereal and fell asleep!

Flashforward to this morning:  (I have a 60 min temp run planned) It was already raining so I hit the gym for 3 miles of hill/speed intervals incase the weather doesn’t improve.

I then came home and ate this baby!  I had made overnight oats then heated them up in the microwave because crappy weather=warm food!

PB & J Oats

1/4 cup oats

1/8th cup oat bran

1/4th cup Fiber One

I used Splenda to sweeten because it was on the counter

1 scoop Palmer’s Blackberry

1 scoop Almond butter (nut butter of choice)

(of course I added cinnamon)

Stir together for a peanut butter and jelly in a bowl!

I also had this vanilla iced coffee to get me going!

I am also posting this blog with one leg up on my desk in order to ice my chin area.  For some reason the muscle/tendon, whatever it is, to the left of my chin bone is irritated.  So I look semi-ridiculous as I post.  And yes, I am wearing a bright green Juicy suit.  I got a great deal on it so I bought it even though it is green.

Want some new Oats ideas?  Check out Love Veggies and Yoga for a huge post on oats! She gives vegan recipes for oatmeal, cookies, bars, etc-all using oats!

• I definitely need to try making the raw cookie balls and raw oatmeal raisin cookies! I should really just try everything!

Stay tuned later today when I will announce my next physical challenge!

How do you get over the crappy weather funk?

It is 40ish, raining, and windy.  Isn’t this supposed to be Houston?  I am counting on mid to upper 60s with sun today!  Today is supposed to be my 2 hour run for the week (since I slept through it yesterday!) but if this rain doesn’t let up I am going to have to move it until tomorrow!  I really dislike moving my runs about, it makes me feel like I am avoiding or failing.

After my very brisk walk home from school (my hands were frozen!) I made a GIANT bowl of pumpkin oats.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you.  My bowls of oats keeping getting bigger.  This one is at the brim of my bowl.

1/4 cup oat bran

1/4 cup oats

1 cup water

1/2 cup pumpkin

cereal and almond butter on top (Special K does make a great oats topper!)

This was sooo much food!  I probably should have divided it into two servings, but it was too yummy!  I have just recently started adding the oat bran and it just really produces a large volume of food!

This giant bowl of oats warmed me up.  On the game plan for the rest of the day:

• Homework, briefing
• Need to run (want 2 hours, with rain I will do speed intervals at gym)
• Homework
• Dinner time with my two boys.

Does getting off your workout schedule bug the heck out of anyone else?

Although I didn’t sleep well, I was up and ready for the Rockets run this morning.  Wouldn’t you know one of the very few days it gets cold here in Houston would fall today!  Ugh!  It was maybe 35 degrees when we headed to the start line.

We sucked it up and I ended up finishing about 24:20.  I set a goal of 25 minutes:  mission accomplished.  I placed 13th in my age division.    Sunday is my long run day, so on my training schedule I have a 2 hour run.  I might move it until tomorrow so I can get some homework done before the Rockets game tonight.  (You get tickets to game with entry to race).  We shall see.  I realize it is crunch time, but it is cold-ish outside and I haven’t even cracked a book this weekend.

Anyway dinner last night was yummy!

I roasted up this HUGE spaghetti squash.

I then added some cheese and little bit of pasta sauce!

On the side some “fake garlic bread”.  I toasted a sandwich thin, spread on some Laughing Cow, then sprinkled on Italian seasoning.  I let it warm in the oven for just a minute.  Yummy!

I could only eat about half this bowl of squash, it was so filling!

Dessert #1 was banana soft serve topped with fresh blackberries (on sale now at Central Market), and two kinds of baking chips.

Dessert # 2 was an unpictured Cliff Z Bar-chocolate brownie!

I almost forgot:  Pre-fun fuel:

Time to be productive or take a nap.  Yet to be decided which is the better option!