Exercise Diary: Friday 3-miler

Dragged my butt to the gym today despite getting up super early this morning with very little sleep.  I had the wonderful plan this morning of getting home at 5pm, eat dinner, go to the gym, and go watch the CSSA Chinese New Year Celebration show.  Well, when I came home at 5:30 I felt nothing but exhaustion and just wanted to sleep and not wake up.  So being an antisocial soul after getting up at 8:20pm I decided to skip the celebration (I would've gone to both if the gym doesn't close early on Fridays).

The gym was nice and empty today, but my usual treadmill was still occupied.  I didn't mind it that much, but did find a treadmill that I am now determined to avoid.  It had crappy TV reception.  Did 3 miles, again while constantly staring at the monitor for time and distance elapsed.  It was very torturous.  My Nike+ was being weird again and had to be calibrated once more.  Watched an episode of CSI: Criminal Intent with the sexy Mr. Big Chris Noth.  Still don't really care about CI.

My feet didn't bother me the way I had feared.  I wore my sneakers outside yesterday in anticipation for a run that never happened, and I found that if I walk on concrete in them my left heel bone hurt, a lot.  Like a stress fracture if I ever know what a stress fracture would feel like.  And I was worried.  About my foot and about whether the shoes would be good enough when I will finally be running outside.  I love my Saucony shoes!  Oh well.

But today wasn't so bad.  When I sped up for my last mile my right foot again felt the pressure but otherwise I felt fine.  I think I should take better care of my knees and my left hip though, as I could feel them when I run.

Not sure if I'm going to run tomorrow.  Instincts tell me that I shouldn't, but my pride wants to put another run on my Nike+.  Perhaps I should finally have a date with the ellipticals like I said I would. For the past week I've been fond of artisan cheese and beer, and for two weeks before that had not been doing a lot of running.  And now my scale is telling me that I'm paying for my indulgence and lapse in exercise.  Going to Boston this weekend for some great Asian food so I doubt I will be refraining from excessive eating, but starting next week I'm going back to a light, more normal diet.  I'm thinking of making some sort of beer and beef stew, so I don't have to cook every day and have potatoes as a source of carb instead of rice.  All the beer stew recipes look similar so I'm just going to buy whatever I like and throw everything in the slow cooker with a bottle of whatever beer I have in my fridge.  Hey, it's veggies, beef, and beer right, I don't think much can go wrong with this combo.

Happy Weekend!

Exercise Diary/Food Diary: the Yoga-doing hungry hippo

Yay for actually going to yoga today~  Every time I go I always feel reluctant beforehand, exhausted during class, and euphoric afterwards, until hunger sets in for real and I just want to eat everything under the (already set) sun.

Today's class went really well.  I felt that my legs and core became stronger.  I could hold out for most of the standing poses, and the core stuff we did (~10 secs of plank and ~25 crunches) was a piece of cake.  But there was one part, where we went from the chair pose to a chair twist and back, made my thighs sweat at an incredible speed that the area of my yoga capris became drenched instantly.  And the crescent lunge-- knee lunge-- worrier III pose killed my thighs even more.  But other than that (or maybe because of it) it was a very good class.

Despite eating lunch at almost 2pm, I began fantasizing about food about 15 minutes before class.  I think it went from fried chicken to Thai noodles to burgers to the actual dinner I was going to make to cake and some other random stuff.  I think chocolate made an appearance at some point.  The fact that I had to go back to lab for a bit after class really killed me.  I was ravished to the point of going crazy when I got home, but still somehow made myself do all the dished I left behind in the morning, and cooking rice and another dish.

I ended up cooking rice with a few new ingredients: tomato, corn, and salted beef (or is it pork?  I couldn't tell and didn't care).  It was a bizarre recipe that was circulating on Chinese social media for quite a bit a few months back, and I had been procrastinating on trying it out.  It's amusingly named "whole tomato rice," and the most basic version is adding an entire (uncut) tomato, along with salt and pepper, to a pot of washed rice and cook in a rice cooker as if you are justing cooking regular rice, and the result was supposed to be heavenly good.  I took the liberty of adding the extra stuff.

And it ended up looking like this:


Which is a lot of rice.  I think I over did it.  I had to add more hot water in afterwards and let it sit in "warm" for another while to ensure that all the rice is fully cooked.  But it tasted great!  Not too sour as I had feared, and the rice is softer and mushier than regular rice.  Very filling too.  I couldn't eat too much of it, which is good since I always over eat after exercising.

Also stir fried some broccoli tips.  Don't remember if I've ever had them before but it's certainly the first time I cook them myself.  Slightly bitter, but good nonetheless.

Happy Tuesday~~

Exercise Diary: Best Treadmill Run

By which I was very surprised.

I was going to go yesterday since it would give me a day to rest before my Monday runs, and there was an NCIS marathon on TV.  But I didn't.  I made spicy fried chicken and ate too much for lunch, and although I finished lunch by 2pm I still felt like throwing up by 6.

Which was pretty much what happened today as well, this time with creamed potatoes and spinach.  It was a variation on the creamed parsnips and spinach I made for Thanksgiving, but I realized that I don't really care for the slightly sweet root vegetable.  The result today was too much cream and too big a portion, I'm sorry to say.

My stomach felt like lead for most of the afternoon and I took a nap before my 6pm run.  I felt dizzy just lying still in bed and that was kind of terrifying, and I wasn't sure if I should go, but when I got up I felt most of the food had passed on to the lower intestines and I felt better.  I did a one-minute plank and walked around for half an hour before changing into the my gym clothes and left for the gym.

The run went really, really well.  Despite my big lunch I did drop a few pounds this week (yes even with the Thanksgiving feast and my fried chicken lunch yesterday) through dieting.  It wasn't a real diet, I just didn't feel like eating and when I did eat I didn't care for big portions or meat or a lot of fat.  I can't explain the origin of this lack of interest in eating a lot but I'm glad I did and didn't question it much.  And as a result I went back down to the weight I was before I stopped running regularly, and that was way back in June.

Anyways, probably because of my light body I felt extra energetic today.  I preempted my run with a 9 minute warm-up walk while searching for something suitable to watch (Brave that was playing on ABC family), and did 2 miles on my initial, faster speed (4.6 mi/hr, not very fast, but still).  This almost never happens to me, as I usually poop out after a mile.  Then it got hard for my breathing and my heart, but instead of stopping to walk I slowed down to a even slower jog and kept at that for another half mile before walking for ~2 minutes.  But I started to jog again until I finished an approximate 5K.  Then I walked for a bit more to cool down before stopping.  The treadmill read 53 minutes but my Nike+ said 46, and apparently I achieved my fastest 5K yet.  The time was similar to my last and only 5K race, at about 40 minutes (I ran that 5K with my Nike+ app running as well but the distance didn't quite match so it didn't register as a 5K, oh well).  I know I'm not very fast by any standards but I felt really good afterwards.  My foot didn't hurt, my ankle didn't hurt, and I didn't even feel that much fatigue in my muscles, which means that next time I can run a bit longer if the my time allows.  And if I drop a few more pounds maybe I'll even try to run a bit faster at some point.  Small victories~

Exercise Diary: Castle Mondays, Yoga Tuesdays

I did go running last week.  Not yoga though, my lab mate was very good at talking me out of it.

But I went yesterday.  And it was a good class, unlike last time. Which was two weeks ago and it was terrible.  I think the key here is focus.  I wasn't last time.  I had lots of things on my mind, like lab experiments, and airplane tickets for trips back home. I was distracted by the bright light above me, I was unfocused by the new location I was forced to be in at that class.

But this time I was focused.  The class was only half occupied since most people have gone home for winter break, and we had a new teacher who introduced to us some new variations of poses. I felt stronger within each pose, but weaker in between.  The room was extra hot and humid that day and I had to take child's pose multiple times, for the first time ever.  But I didn't have a lot of other things in mind and was focused for the most part.  And it was a very good class.

Thanksgiving this week and my friend and I are trying to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  She's brave enough to tackle the turkey and I'm just making the side dished, and the gravy. I'm making a mashed potatoes casserole, a vegetable dish, stuffings, and an ice cream pumpkin pie. The mashed potatoes is already too salty, and that is before I added any bacon or cheese... the pumpkin pie  looks okay, if my freezer will work as it should.  Stuffing is in the slow cooker, and hopefully it will taste fine. I'm excited to see how everything comes together tomorrow, although it is kind of ridiculous to do so much work just for a dinner.

Will post pictures and they usually look better than they taste.

Exercise Diary: Short run, then some badminton

• Yesterday was beautiful!  But since it was still too warm when I left work, and that I wanted to play badminton, and I wanted to do a short run, I decided to run on the treadmill.  
• The fitness room was air conditioned and felt so nice!
• I was surprised to see that most of the treadmills were occupied.  
• There was a sad spinning class with one very enthusiastic instructor and what looked like 2 students.
• Running on the treadmill was SO boring!  It definitely takes more effort to keep yourself motivated while running on the treadmill.  1.26 miles never felt so painfully long, even with an entertaining podcast in your ears.  
• Then again, I ran almost a whole mile at a faster pace than one I would normally have done (even with the 1% incline to mimic real roads).
• My workout was cut short (only 16 min) because I was overall running late, and badminton had begun for almost an hour.  So I left the air conditioned room and went downstairs..
• Which is hotter and more humid than outside!  The basketball courts are one of the places in the building that's not air conditioned, and it felt terrible.  What's worse, because of the lightness of the shuttlecock we can't even blast the super giant fans on.  So essentially we were playing in a sauna.
• I thoroughly had my butt kicked by a friend.  I felt so angry and stupid: she's 7 years older than me and a mother, and she's got better figure and played better.  
• I upset my foot again during the play and had to stop and massage my foot a bit.
• After taking a shower upon getting home I iced my foot with my frozen water bottle and it felt slightly better.  Still debating whether I should go see someone.
• Finally cooked.  The peppers, after sitting in the fridge for a week, were surprisingly still edible.  My dried tofu, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky.  It got moldy and I was quite upset.  What a waste of food.