Just came back from Ohio and wouldn’t you know it, I missed all the good snow (and the opportunity to snowshoe with Chris)! My timing sucks lately. Did you know that the day after I arrived in Cleveland, sans snowshoes of course, we got a huge storm with over a foot of snow? Then, the day after I get back, it’s creeping up to 50º here and it’s all melting. Jeez! If I had driven to Ohio, I would have had the snowshoes in my car. Grrrr.

Anyway, I’m back, 2.5 lbs heavier, thanks to all the yummy goodness of the holidays. Actually, I don’t mind so much, because 2.5 lbs is really not bad in the grand scheme of things. It just means I know have 8.5 lbs instead of 6 lbs to lose before spring.

That said, I made a little pre-NYR (New Year’s Resolution) regarding food. I’m resolving to be less… lazy, I guess… about my eating. For example, I was bringing my lunch to work every day for a while there, but then I got busy with grad school apps and freelance and  whatnot, and started grabbing something at one of the local deli’s, or the chinese place. Not good. Anyway, I always drop a few pounds when I start bringing my lunch every day, so that’s a definite for the new year.

The other aspect to the food issue is to not eat as much, as Rob puts it, "cheesy goodness."  In general, I think I eat a pretty healthy diet. But on the weekends, I blow it a little. I rarely eat salad, and I’m lucky to get even 40 oz of water in me. We go out to eat with our friends. I drink beer, wine, and even the occasional manhattan (Maker’s Mark, of course). We eat pizza or order steak & cheese subs from Fio’s. It is not a pretty sight. That said, I am officially limiting my consumption of bad-for-you-food to once per week.

I have other goals for the coming year. I would like to run Tufts again and get my time down. I’d like to complete my first Triathlon this summer. I’d like to stay injury free and keep up the 4-5x per week workouts. I’d like to run with Rob more. I would also like to weigh a compact 135lbs. That’s it, I think.

So now I’m off to remove the caulk in my kitchen, finish unpacking, do my laundry, and a littany of other things. Hope to blog more with you in the coming year!

xoxo,
Annalisa

After Spinning last night… which was awesome again, thanks for asking… I had my omlette, and then a yogurt (the one I was supposed to have for a snack, but instead had graham crackers & 1 clementine). I put some frozen mango in the yogurt, and that was good & all, but I was still starving 1 hour later. So I had a fun size Baby Ruth, leftover from Halloween. Ah well. Nobody is perfect.

Anyway, even after all that, my calories were only at around 1550. Wow.

Today my eating hasn’t been great. Coffee, oatmeal & PB for breakfast, Spicy Tuna & vegetable sushi for lunch, and again, a small piece of chocolate. *sigh* Why can’t I stop eating that stuff? Granted, it’s just one piece at a time, but still.

I have to take down my show tonight, but after that I want to whip up a quick puttanesca sauce and have some pasta. As long as I can control that post-dinner snacking, it will be fine. I guess there is always cottage cheese & pineapple in an emergency.

It’s funny, but the last week I have been so focused on how I’m eating. Maybe it’s from taking up spinning or thinking about triathlons again, but whatever the reason, I’m cleaning that shiz up, yo! I feel pretty good, too. It’s comforting to be fairly in control about what I’m eating, at least most of the time. I don’t even feel anxious about going to Ohio and being surrounded by holiday foods. What I’m really worried about is my trip to the North End this weekend to buy Italian torrone and marzipan to bring home with me. :)

I’m going to swim or run tomorrow night, and then switch it up on Thursday. We’ll see what the weekend brings, but Rob wants to run at least one day. He’s been having a tough time at hockey since we’re not running as much, and wants to get out there again on a more regular basis. I feel kind of guilty about that since I’ve been hurt and all, but there’s not much I can do.

Anyway, that’s what is going on here. Blah, blah, blah…

Last week went pretty well. My workouts looked like this:

Monday – 45:00 spin class
Tuesday – 1850 yard swim
Wednesday – Drinking with my running peeps
Thursday – 45:00 run
Friday – rest
Saturday – 45:00 Elliptical + 20:00 weights
Sunday – coupla yoga poses, crunches, stretching

That’s like… a lot! I feel much, much happier after getting back into a regular workout pattern, and I’m sleeping better, as well. The only thing that kind of sucks is my eating is all out of whack. All of a sudden I’m starving all the time. I am definitely trying to drop a few pounds, so I’m altering my diet a bit, but I’m not drastically reducing my calories, I don’t think.

Or maybe I am. I dunno. One thing that I’ve noticed is that when I’m working out a lot, I eat a lot healthier, so perhaps the volume of food I’m eating is deceptive in its calorie content. Hmmm. Time for FitDay tracking, something I do from time to time just to see what I’m actually getting in here.

So today I ate:
Breakfast - 12oz coffee w/fat free half & half, 2 Splenda, 1c MultiGrain Cheerios (not the best choice, but I really like them once in a while) w/1c organic skim milk, 1 medium sliced banana.
Lunch – 2c greens w/half of a red pepper, 1T sesame dressing (Annie’s brand. Very good!); 1/2 sandwich made with organic 12 grain bread, 2 slices of turkey, mustard, lettuce, onion; 1 Babybel Light cheese round.

At 4:30 I’ll probably have a yogurt and 2 clementines, maybe another piece of that multigrain bread with natural PB on it. Then Spinning +  weights. Then a late dinner – either leftover sirloin chili w/jalepeno cornbread + green beans, or a 3 egg white/1 yolk omlette with spinach, a little low fat swiss, and a vegetarian breakfast sausage patty.

If I’m still hungry later, which is unlikely today, given my late dinner, I’m often seen reaching for a small apple with a little PB or Nutella on it, or some other sweet thing, like no-sugar added hot cocoa and a graham cracker. Sometimes I’ll have hot tea with honey as a cocoa substitute. If I’m really going to have dessert, I’ll have some coffee ice cream or a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich. But like I said, I probably won’t have that today. Maybe the hot tea. Maybe.

Doesn’t that sound like quite a lot of food? Even without the post-dinner snack, that seems like a lot to me. *sigh* Stupid eating. Be less confusing.

I seriously think that I am just readjusting to the jump start here, going from 2+ to 4+ days of activity, and that this will settle out in a week or so. I definitely don’t want to feel constantly hungry when I go to my parents’ place in a coupla weeks. There are cookies galore there! The good kind! With Icing!

HO-LY.

I’m not supposed to be running, but I went to the Y last night and the ‘mill called out to me, if you can believe that! Seriously, I hate that friggin’ thing, but I hate not running even more, so I gave in. I couldn’t help it.

So, having not run in… almost 3 weeks I guess, I hopped on and knocked out a steady 45:00, which felt pretty good, until about an hour after I got home. Needless to say, my back was NOT happy.

I put some ice on that sacro-iliac joint, drank a crapload of water, and went to bed. It wasn’t painful, but it felt weird and a little sore. Today, I’m still sore, but everything seems to be working okay, so I don’t think I did any damage. I guess that I won’t be running for at least another week, however.

Anyway, the cool thing about the run was that it felt pretty effortless. Part of it was that I was running super slow, but hey, I’m just coming back. The other part was that I was just relaxed and zoning out (another reason I was running slow). It just felt good, you know?

I’ve been looking at some tri training programs and realized that I won’t be running nearly as much as I was last spring. I have mixed emotions about that, honestly. I guess if I could do one shorter run at race pace and one LSD run, in addition to the bike workouts and all the swim drills, that would be enough for training AND enough to satisfy me. :)

That said, here’s a sample schedule that I put together for a peak week, based on 8 or so different tri programs:

M – Bike (spin class or 1:30 ride)
T – Swim (drills – 1750 yards)
W – rest, optional Bike
R – 4 mile run (race pace)
F – rest
S – LSD run (1:00 – 1:30)
Sun – Swim (distance, easy pace, 2500 – 3000 yards)

I’d like to get some swimming in this weekend, and go to spinning on Monday night. This weather is so craptastic anyway, it’s not like I can even get out for the next coupla days.

Hope the RBF has a nice weekend and that you’ll give me something to read about while I’m resting after that gigantor swim I’m planning :)

xoxo

My swim workout last night was awesome. Awesome, I tell you!

I didn’t have any real expectation other than to do more laps than the pitiful 50 I did the other day. I warmed up with an easy 300, then picked it up a little and started focusing on my stroke mechanics for the next 700 yards.

When I started swimming again on a more regular basis, my stroke count per 25 yards was about 22. I was lazy about my reaching, and keeping my head down and my hips up. So I started thinking back (way back) to high school swim team. I thought about my hips, how they swung (or didn’t) in the water, and where my weight was. Weight on your chest, keep your head down, reach, reach, reach, then follow through with thumb to thigh.

Gradually, by working this way, my stroke count has come down. It’s at a consistant 18 now, until I get really tired and it creeps back up to 19. 20, if I’m exhausted. It’s not where I want it to be, however, so I’m going to keep working on that.

So anyway, one of the things that will help is to work more with the pull-buoy to get that hip swing back, and to build more upper body strength, because swimming is all about being efficient in the water. The #1 goal is to move the greatest distance with the minimal amount of effort. Running is the same way, but I think it just comes more naturally.

I intended to swim a 200 pull set, but ended up at 350 by saying “what’s another 50″ each time I’d return to the deep end of the pool. By then I was starting to feel it in my arms, and while I felt like I could have pushed it to 500, I didn’t want to do anything crazy. Instead I switched to a kick set of 250, rested a few, then did another 200 kick, and wound down with some easy swimming. Total yards 1850, although I think I may have done 1900, since I lost count in the early part of the workout. Duh.

Next time I think I’m going to do some shorter yardage and more timed drills (i.e. 10 x 50′s on the 1:00 or whatever), and work on my flip turns, which I have sort of given up for the time being. The Trinewbies site has some decent swim workouts on there, and Amazon sells this book of laminated swim workouts that I am thinking about getting.

But the two best things… actually, 3 best things… about last night’s swim were:
- The high school-aged lifeguard who said to me afterwards, “Damn, you were in there for a long time. That’s wicked tough!”
- The amazing scrambled eggs with spinach & feta I had once I got home, which I tried to savor but ended up devouring. :)
- The feeling of being utterly spent and knowing you worked hard to get there.

And then I slept like a friggin’ rock, with the faint smell of chlorine coming off my skin as a reminder of where I’d been, and the love that I have for swimming.

My ass is sore. Dianna just remarked over IM, “Wow, the things I could say right now.” Hehehehe.

Spinning was great, and I will definitely do it again, provided I can make it to class on time. I really enjoyed the instructor, who was nice enough to stay a few minutes after class and answer all my questions, and the music was fun. He had a whole CD of Christmas & Irish songs that were up-tempo and easy to ride to. We did a lot of these stand up-sit down intervals on a 4-count, and DAMN, they were hard. My quads kept saying, “what the hell?” but it was all good.

Then I came home, showered, and made up a new concoction for dinner that was so good, I’ll post it here.

I sauteed some garlic in a little olive oil, added 1/2 a can of white tuna (drained) and cooked that until it was no longer pink. Then I added about a cup of pasta sauce (basic tomato basil sauce), a spoonful of capers, some salt, and some crushed red pepper, and let that simmer while I was cooking my whole wheat pasta. At the end, I cooked 3/4c of frozen peas in with the pasta, drained it, then put it back in the pot and poured the sauce over top. Sprinkled it all with a little parmesan before serving. It made 2 decent sized bowls full of pasta, so I made salad and saved the 2nd serving for dinner tonight, post swim. Without salad, I would have eaten both servings of pasta, and would have been really sorry for it later. *sigh*

Anyway, I went to bed tired and blissfully happy about spinning class, thinking about triathlons for next year, because I am definitely doing one. :)

So my opening was Friday and I am so happy it’s over. Everything went really well, and I sold $700 worth of work, consisting of 3 small paintings and 3 drawings. Good crowd, had plenty of food, and got lots of feedback on my work, some of it really suprising, but that’s usually what happens at these things.

The one comment that I kept hearing was "make everything bigger." Well, that’s all well & good, and I’d like to make bigger paintings, but I don’t have the studio space for it. And it’s not what I’m doing right now, that’s all. I’m making little, intimate paintings. They’re petite, and you have to get up real close to them, which is the whole point. And hello! If I made really huge paintings, as some of these people were suggesting (I heard lots of "I’d buy one if they were bigger."), they wouldn’t be $200. They would be upwards of $2,000. So I dunno. Maybe one day I’ll make bigger art. Until then, we’ll see.

It’s not that I can’t accept criticism, believe me. I just get tired of hearing "make bigger art" all the time. Sometimes you have to do what feels right to you, and this is what my art is right now. Tiny art. Get over it, people.

Other than that, I did a little swimming, some freelance, and ordered my transcripts this weekend. At five o’clock, I’m heading over to the museum to get Jerry to finish up my reference letters.

Tomorrow I have work, a chiro appt, then a spinning class (my first!)… Oh, and I’ll be dropping off my slides at lunch.

So far, everything with grad school applications is going okay. I’m mostly on schedule, and should have everything ready to be sent off on the 20th, if all goes as planned.

Oh, and this has been edited to add the link to my paintings, since you asked. :)
Click here to see the work.

50 laps. 50. Lousy. Laps.

That is all I could do yesterday, and that was a huge disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy I went, but my normal swims are usually around 80 – 90 laps, unless I’m doing drills. But no! This was easy swimming. Really easy, in fact. I suppose that I will have to get used to the idea that I’m a little injured right now and shouldn’t expect too much.

On the plus side, my back doesn’t hurt any worse than it did yesterday, and last night it was actually feeling pretty good, post-swim. I go to the chiropractor again today at 5:00, so hopefully he will be of some help.

I did find out some good news about my health insurance today, however. Not only is chiropractic covered, with only a $10 co-pay, but I don’t need a referral for it (even though I already got one), and I am covered for unlimited visits. Not that I expect to need visits in the 10s and 100s, but it’s just nice to know that there’s no cap on it, and I can go whenever I want at minimal cost. I also get a 20% discount on select massage therapist visits if they are in-network. Good to know.

My chiropractor is interesting. He’s a triathlete, and he is BIG, like Ian Thorpe big. He has some photos of his Ironman race hanging up in the office, and we talked about swimming quite a bit when I was there. Someone on CoolRunning recommended him and I am so thankful for that. The last thing I need is some “don’t run, you’ll ruin your knees” diatribe right now. This guy has me doing a couple of psoas stretches, too. And it fucking hurt when he stuck his fingers into my psoas, I can tell you that. But hey, at least you know it’s working. :)