Weekly Eats: Unmasked

 

A weekly roundup: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition the masks came off and my sister-in-law and I went to a meat market.

The big news of this week is that masks are going bye-bye!  I always knew that the pandemic wouldn't last forever but all the same hooray that the end is here!  Effective immediately anyone who has been vaccinated is allowed to drop the mask in my state.  There are exceptions for health care settings and business owners are allowed to require masks if they want to...but it seems that most businesses don't want to.

My take is that wearing a mask was no big deal when it was required, and now that it isn't required, I'm happy to comply with that as well.  In theory the mask restrictions ended last weekend but everyone was still wearing masks.  This weekend I saw a 40-40-10 mix: 40% unmasked, 40% masked, and 10% "masked with your nose hanging out"...some people are just never going to get it.

Breakfasts

Same old same old...the only thing of interest is that I've increased my pre-run first breakfast to a banana plus a Trader Joe's fig bar.

Lunches

Salads are back!  Leftover rice, roasted sweet potatoes (from my freezer stash), Costco fire roasted frozen veggies, and a modified version of Two Peas and Their Pod Chickpea, Avocado, and Feta salad. "Modified" = what I happened to have on hand at the time, so no green onions and just a sprinkling of feta.  You just can't beat a 5 minute meal.

 

Dinners

Big surprise...I worked late and contributed nothing to family dinners this week.  Hubs pulled together a rotisserie chicken plus leftover rice from the freezer, Costco's orange chicken, and my favorite family meal of grilled cheese and tomato soup for our dinners this week.

On Friday the men headed off to boy scout camp and I made pizza.

For years now SIL #4 has been raving about a meat market out in the boonies.  Also for years SIL #3 and I have been thinking about checking it out.  On Saturday we finally made it happen and we were not disappointed.  It was a massive store out in the middle of nowhere and we spent quite a bit of time there.  I got a small container of ham salad for hubs (supposedly their recipe is a close second to the ham salad that my MIL used to make), lunch meat (for hubs and the boys), bacon, frozen sausage and ground chicken (better than Trader Joe's prices), and shockingly I also picked up some frozen pizza crusts to try as well.  And naturally I got steak.

For Sunday dinner I put hubs to work grilling up the steaks, portobellos, and zucchini while I made mashed potatoes.  I also snagged a gigantic square of cheesecake from their bakery which the four of us split for dessert.  You know that I am not one to shy away from dessert so when I say that this piece was enough for a family of four you know I mean it.

Safe to say that we will be going back to the meat market and I can't wait to take hubs. 

Werk

It really did help me to vent about my work situation last week.  After my show down with my boss he left me alone and...wow he seems to be stuck working on the awful project that I refused to work on so...that's interesting.   I put in some late hours during the week but this is the second weekend in a row of me shutting down the computer at 5 on Friday and not touching anything work related until Monday.  I move to 2nd interview stage with a company that I've been talking to for a few weeks and have a few other prospects out there.  This situation is not going to get better until I make it better by getting a new job and that's a fact.  Oh guys, this really did used to be such a good company and a really great job but the lightning is out of the bottle.

Workouts

Lately I haven't felt like sitting down and writing a separate post about my workouts.  This doesn't mean that running is any less important to me, it's just that there is less to say about it right now.  I'm happy with the workouts that my coach is giving me (shocker: a lot of easy running) and I'm following the plan and not asking a lot of questions.  There are only so many ways to spin "my coach gave me 29 miles and two strength workouts this week and I ran 29 miles and did two strength workouts this week." into a blog post;-)

The biggest thing in my fitness world this week was an 11 miler on Saturday.  That distance wouldn't have been my first choice AND a heat wave settled in late in the week that put me in serious doubt.  There was no way I was going to get through 11 miles in the heat...except that I decided that I was going to do it.  I got up super early on Saturday and got myself out the door in short order.  Mentally I broke the run down into a 5 mile loop + a 3 mile loop + a 3 mile loop past my house.  Once I got out there I extended the loops so that I only had to repeat the route twice.

This was my first run wearing my hydration pack with a tank top.  Since none of my tank tops fully cover the backpack straps I was nervous about chaffing but it didn't happen so that was a win.

I took a salt stick tab before I left and then took a salt stick chew every 30 minutes like it was my religion.  I had agreed with myself that once I hit the 5 mile mark that it was OK to stop or take walk breaks whenever I wanted.  Last summer I was very liberal with breaks, but right now since I'm not setting any speed records it just feels easier to walk for a minute instead of stopping the clock.  I asked my coach about this and she said that whatever I need to do to get through the easy runs is A-OK.

So what happened was...I did it!  I walked for a bit after mile 5, stopped by my house at mile 6 for a 10 minute break to let the dog out, and then took the occasional walk break.  Toward the end I was at something like a 12:58 average pace, and all of a sudden I decided to gun it and see if I could get that down to 12:55...and much to my amazement I did.

Ok, so yes this run was hard BUT doing it at all in the heat was a win.  I felt a little bit dazed at the end but my body snapped right back and I felt pretty good for the rest of the day.  So thank you hydration pack and electrolytes;-)  

Watching

Nothing decent to report.

Reading

I picked up The Last Thing That He Told me by Laura Dave, which is a book that's getting raves.  A woman's husband disappears and he leaves her a note that says "protect her", with "her" being the woman's teenaged stepdaughter who really doesn't like her stepmom. 

On the audiobook side I finished A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost and I stand by what I said last week that this one is a worthy listen.  There was one particular day this week when I was really upset about my job and it was the same day that I got to the part where he talks about a number of incontinence incidents that he's had in his adult life...can I just say that his words were exactly what I needed to listen to that day?