Weekly Eats: 4 seconds edition

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  First 10k of the year edition, which was just 4 seconds slower than my PR time.


Breakfasts
Monday: avocado toast

Tuesday: nothing.  By which I mean I had UCAN pre run and a protein drink after and just didn't feel like eating anything after that.  Which lasted through lunch and then I ate everything in the office that wasn't moving.

Wednesday & Thursday: breakfast burritos

Friday: cereal bar, string cheese, and fruit

Saturday: pre race waffles

Sunday: breakfast potatoes topped with Trader Joe's pepita salsa and a drippy egg.

Lunches
Weekdays: How Sweet Eats Korean Chicken Bowls all five days and would have been happy to keep eating it if there had been more.  As I mentioned last week, I used soy curls in place of the chicken and a slaw mix in place of the recipe veggies for convenience.

The only thing that I will do differently when (not if) I make this again is to cut back on the coconut oil in the rice.  The portion that I tasted right after I made it was a little oily for my taste and for the leftovers the excess oil just solidified at the bottom of the container.

Saturday and Sunday: makeshift fish tacos with leftover fish from Friday's dinner and coleslaw mix with easy coleslaw dressing.  Heads up, this has sparked an obsession with coleslaw.

More spontaneous coleslaw on the side.

Dinners
Monday (family meal): leftover pasta from Saturday.

Tuesday (family meal): quesadillas for kidz, hubs had soup, I had a chicken sausage, rice, and peas.

Wednesday: Grumph.  Should have been date night, ended up being work super late night.  Raided the office snack stand.

Thursday: More grumph and working late but did better on the food front.  Veggie burrito at home.  Hubs had the last of the pasta.

Friday (family meal): fish fry!  I don't think you will find any running authority who would recommend this as a pre race dinner, but it hit the spot and served me well.

Saturday (date night): out on the town to the fancy hamburger place.

Sunday (date night): the boys had a date with their mom and hubs and I had dinner for two.  A chicken shwarma recipe caught my eye but it was kinda meh - nothing wrong with it but nothing that I want to link to and recommend.

Meal Prep
Roasted up a bunch of sweet potatoes to go along with BBQ Shimp and Sweet Potatoes.

Workouts
22 miles of running for the week.  A necessary cutback for my first race of the year.
Monday: four miles outside.  As I mentioned last week, I am sick to death of the treadmill and am determined to run outside whenever possible.  I knew that Monday would be a struggle because it snowed the day before and the temps were in the low 20's.  I got myself out of the door by telling myself that although it would be tough every day going forward would be that much better on the weather and daylight front.
Tuesday: 6 miles, I was off the charts happy when I saw that it was over 30 degrees.
Wednesday: off
Thursday: 6 miles.  Felt a million times better than Tuesday and thanks for asking was slower.
Friday: off to rest up for the race.
Saturday: 10k!

• This race is in my town and the course includes the two mile trail in my favorite park on earth.  It was like someone designed my dream 10k.  I'd never run the first/last mile before but I knew every other step of the course intimately.
• Uh oh.  The night before the race I put two and two together and realized that miles 3 and 4 are super hilly and that mile 5 is straight uphill.  This may be my dream course but it's not an easy one.  I was still going to do my best but I knew it wasn't realistic to expect a PR.
• Last year I paced myself in races by pairing up with other runners, which was fine those times that I magically picked people who were my speed or just a bit faster, but backfired those times that I picked slower runners.  For this race, I paced myself by checking in with my Garmin at every mile.  Because I wasn't sure how the three uphill miles would play out, I didn't use the virtual pacer, but I will for my next race.
• Yes I slowed down for the three uphill miles but not as badly as I thought.  I was thrilled when I saw my pace for mile 3 and I ain't mad about miles 4 and 5.  And I am super happy that once the hills were done I was able to pick back up and make mile 6 the fastest of the race.  The last .2 miles (or .17 miles according to Garmin) passed like a dream.

• For most of the trails, I was alone and feared that I was in last place.  But toward the end of mile 4 two other runners passed me.  Folks, I was not having that.  I passed both of them toward the end of mile 5 and left them in the dirt (I kid...they both finished about 30 seconds after me and I high fived one of them as she finished).  I have never been so determined
• I was 65th of 86 overall, official time 68:18 which is just 4 seconds slower than my PR last fall, so I will take that as a great start to this year's racing season.

Watching

• From the treadmill: nothing!  I haven't been on a treadmill all week;-)
• From the couch: hubs and I saw a few more episodes of Love, Death, and Robots which led to us seeing the Coppola version of Dracula.  Which makes me want to see the original.  And I fell asleep about 10 minutes before the end - it's been a while since I've crashed during a movie (I've always told hubs that if we're staying up past 10 that I'm not guaranteed to stay awake).  On my own I'm chugging through Manifest.

Reading
Becoming by Michelle Obama.