Hello everybody. Long time no see, but that does not mean I am not training and doing all fun stuff running, being crazy hot pink runner and loving great mostly paleo foods. Few weeks before this one have been tough as we are spicing up my training with more speed and that hurts, makes me tired and makes me kind of emotionally volnurable. I hate when I cannot stick to the paces The Coach plans out for me and I am slowly becoming an emotinal wrack if that happens in several workouts one after another.
Luckily this week is super low in comparison to all the previous ones as I am racing a 10 km today (actually it is 10 550 m) and we are taking this as a test. I don't like that the start is late in the afternoon and it's super hot, but it is same for everyone. With the super hot weather beating us up, I felt maxed out on Tuesday evening when I went for my session with The Coach. I was supposed to do untraditional progression run of 4-3-2 km at 5:15-5:00-4:45 min/km paces (8:26-8:02-7:38 min/mile). I was literally dreading "another" session where it would be difficult for me to attain the goal.
Fortunately, our bodies are magical black boxes and they tend to surprise us :) I clocked the first km at 4:45 even though my legs felt really heavy. When I was clocking third km still at around 4:45, The Coach stopped me and adjusted the next parts, now shooting for 2 km at 4:30 each and the last rep with 1 km at 4:15. And as you can see, I knocked out the last rep at 4:08 which felt reasonably hard whereas the week before I wasn't able to go faster than 4:10 even when pushing very hard with much longer rests. YAY!!!
Back to randomness. I got a new haircut on Friday. Not at all my idea, my hairdresser has my total trust, even though I honestly did not know whether he was joking when he started talking about shaving part of my head! I LOVE it :o) We can be boring when we are old, righ? Or not!
I don't know how about you guys, but I tend to be super hungry on Friday evening as I am tired after all the week and the body just screams for energy. I know the best is sleep, but still my body wants huge amounts of food. I am trying to be little wiser about this, so to be actually able to eat huge amount of food means to include ton of veggies, so I make the huge pile relatively low calorie meal :o)
I am trying out little carb cycling to tone up for the autumn racing season. Saturday was high carb day - YAY. These pancakes would be eligible for low carb day as well as they are made of an egg, whey protein isolate and home made almond mil (using this recipe from Against All Grain). The capuccino is also made with the almond milk. Bowl of rice and fruits followed for the carbing up :)
Then I was off to farmers' market to get some fresh produce for the next week. Meal prepping really helps you to keep your diet in check. I find myself slipping off always when I am stressed out, tired and do not have the healthy "right" options ready at hand.
Made minced beef-veggie stir fry that is good for three meals, cauliflower mash for two or three meals and pulled beef. Here bellow are rosemary-cranberry crackers from the almond pulp that is left after doing the almond milk (cracker recipe here).
I had a piece of beef in freezer that had to be prepped and didn't feel like doing another stew and am seeing all those slow cooker "pulled" meats around Instagram. So I googled slow cooker pulled beef, super easy recipe - rub the meat in the spices you choose, add few spoons of bone broth, spoon of fish sauce and set in slow cooker on low for about 4-6 hours depending on the size of meat. Then pull apart with fork and let cook and absorb the sauce for about one more hour. Finally enjoy the yumminess :))) That is my trouble, my food is sometimes sooo good, I want to eat it all :D
I woke up earlier than I wanted today, so took the advantage of not being that warm yet (don't want my energy going out to the heat before the race) and took the dogs for a long walk. It was so beautiful and quiet just after 8 am. Had a nice breakfast and long sleep after I came home :) Hopefully, now I am ready to rock'n'roll and get those legs of mine moving really fast!
How was your running this weekend? Challenging races or workouts? Or taking it low?
