britta//unfiltered

Hola! Wednesday is over and it’s just a couple more days until a nice, long Memorial Day weekend – woohoo!

This week is going fast – work is always busy and I was in all-day training today. A change of routine like that always seems to make the day fly by and bonus! you get catered snacks and free lunch on training days. Niiiice. I had a complimentary orange and a delicious chicken taco for lunch. I’m in training tomorrow, too, and I’m actually looking forward to it – my session today was not dry (aka too much sitting down and staring at a Powerpoint) like training sometimes can be.

Anywaysssss work talk is boring, sorry. Here are some tips for tasty recipes I’ve tried lately:

This health-ified spinach artichoke dip doesn’t taste like it’s lacking any flavor. I tried it out because Brandino <3’s restaurant-style appetizers, and sometimes it’s a good idea to try  "healthy” versions of recipes at home before releasing them on unsuspecting civilians, if ya know what I mean. I will definitely be making this in the future for a dish to share!

I impulse-bought a 6-cup Texas muffin tin at the grocery store the other day. It turned out to be an awesome impulse buy! I made this recipe for whole wheat strawberry banana muffins to take to work for a longer meeting I was holding and I am SO MAD AT MYSELF for not taking any pictures of how awesomely giant-sized and delicious these muffins looked. I only have this one random picture of a yummy bite –

What a tease, I’m sorry. Just make that recipe using whole wheat pastry flour in a giant muffin tin and  I promise, YOU WON’T REGRET IT! They were satisfying and just the right amount of sweet, and the whole wheat and light ingredients make it less of a gut-bomb than a normal muffin would be for breakfast.

Finally, my dinner tonight might weird you out if you don’t like vegetarian-ish food, but I am obsessed with it. Grilled sandwich with crispy tempeh, guacamole, green pepper and melty mozzarella. To. Die. For. And watermelon dessert. YUM!

What did Brandon eat, you ask? Two brats with ketchup, mustard and onions. That’s how we roll.

Now that I’m finished indulging my inner fat kid, I need to share my decision regarding my next fitness goal/race…. dun dun dunnnn.

I kept a secret from the blog… I actually signed up for the Lake Waconia Half Marathon almost immediately after finishing the Lake Minnetonka half on May 6. I was so excited that I had reached my goal of running a half and was loving the fact that I can run further than I have ever been able to before. Of course, I started wondering if I could run further and faster and in a wave of endorphins and moment of temporary insanity, I signed up for another half taking place a month after my first ever half marathon. Lola’s Lake Waconia Half is on June 9.

Part of my excitement to sign up for another race was that I thought my recovery was coming along faster than I had expected. My legs started feeling better while just walking around almost immediately, so I figured I would feel fine taking off on longer runs again. ERRRRRR wrong.

I was trying to go out for 8 miles on Sunday and this is what happened – I made it about 4 miles before I got the stabbing knee pain that has been the end of my progress every time I’ve started to make decent running progress in the past 4 years. UGH! I can’t even tell you how frustrated I am. So I walked/limped the rest of the way home. The same exact thing happened the other day when I went out for 5 miles on a hilly route – made it a little over 2 miles before I started feeling limp-inducing knee pain. I’m pretty sure it’s my IT band and that my body is a wuss about any sudden increase in mileage/intensity… even just increasing from a 10 mile long run to 13.1 miles on race day.

I’ve been foam rolling/yoga-ing/stretching a lot, but the moral of this story is that running is really, really not fun for me right now and I was dreading the thought of forcing myself to run another half marathon. I finally emailed the race promoters this week and got my registration switched to the 5k that day. As soon as I got the email back confirming the switch, I felt like a (small) weight was off my shoulders.

I definitely want to run another half marathon, but it might not be until this fall or even until next year. For now, my goal is to run the 5k on June 9 in 27 minutes – a 8:43 mile/min pace. I’m going to try to stick to my usual routine of two strength workouts a week plus 3 days of cardio/running and try to run fast and HAVE FUN.

Bleh. I’m excited to switch up the types of workouts I’ve been doing but mostly right now I’m just disappointed I don’t feel ready to do another half marathon and do it faster. But that day will come and the 5k will be a lot of fun. A less demanding training schedule will give me lots of time to hang out in the oncoming summer sun, too, and that’s never a bad thing.

Hope your week is going awesome – what do you have going on for Memorial Day this weekend? Do you get a long weekend or are you working some/all of the days?