Water WATER Everywhere

Before I get into too much... I GOT TO SEE 129 ON MY SCALE!!!!! For two whole days before I ate nothing but garbage and gained a bunch of fake weight...

This weekend I ran my very first race that was longer than a 5k. I just went crazy and skipped 10k and went straight for 12k! Honestly, it had to do with the fact that it was right before my half marathon training is scheduled to start and that I knew someone in the Rotary Club putting it on, so I got a $5 off coupon! Whoo!

Anyway, I'm coming off of another very stressful week and this week I didn't have as much resolve as I did the week before. I think that maybe I didn't buy enough groceries either, which always leads me to eat out. Tuesday I went with my handsome gentleman to his daughter's softball game and then to his softball game and we split some takeout. Wednesday I stopped and got a pizza on my way home. Then of course I had to eat on said pizza for the rest of the week. Got takeout on Thursday... you see what's happening here. I also didn't work out like I should. I ran 2 miles Tuesday morning and then didn't do anything since. I'm one workout behind in ChaLEAN. Yesterday and today I have really shaped up. Dropped 2 pounds of the 5 I ballooned with :P

So this 12k. I had been eating like crap and being generally lazy, so my energy and my endurance were pretty awful. This 7.465 mile race had every mile marked and it's sad that once I hit the first mile marker, I was ready to turn around. I felt like garbage. Mile 2 and 3 went by with some belly aches. My right ankle felt a little funny. I was just not in the mood, but I kept going. I got passed by a few people and that never feels good.

But once I hit mile 5, my energy started to pick up. When I turned the corner toward the 6 mile marker I noticed that they had hung a clock on a nearby stop sign. It was exactly 10:00 AM. The race started at 9:00 AM. NOT BAD! That really energized me. So I started passing a few of the people that I had watched their backs for a while. Finally I saw the 7 mile marker and it was a beautiful thing. The end of the race was on the high school track, so that was a nice, comfy rest for my knees. I crossed the finish line at 1:17:33 and I was 3^rd place in my age division. Weird though, they split my females down into 25-29 years old. The third place female overall was 25 years old, so that bumped me up to 3^rd in the F2529. A 28 year old beat me and then two 29 year olds were slower than me.

Something cool! To get your results for this race, you stand near this television screen that KNOWS your bib number is there... and it displays it on the screen! Amazing!!

Onto the title of this blog post: Water, water, everywhere...

You'd think we were running 100 miles on the surface of the sun for the amount of water that was around. The first water station was at mile 2, which is understandable because that's where it normally is on a 5k. Then, around mile 3, some old ladies thought it would be a good idea to set up their own little water station in their driveway, with gigantic plastic cups and a garden hose. I saw visions of every episode of Criminal Minds I've ever seen and would only take water from a table that had a “water station” sign next to it in the same style of the mile markers. Then a couple other people had water outside of their houses. The race was 7 ½ miles and there HAD to be 6-7 water stations. RIDICULOUS!!! You seriously don't need that much water. I could also tell that not a single person filling those GIGANTIC plastic cups had ever ran a mile in their life because they filled them to the brim... sort of asking me to get soaked... which felt good, sort of, because I was sweating enough to have a crusty, salty layer over my skin on the drive home.

Yesterday I tried to eat well. I went to the grocery and stocked up on tasty and healthy foods (and Ben & Jerry's) and this morning I did my second lifting workout for the week. Could definitely tell it had been a while.

This coming week is going to be action packed too... Gotta keep it all together.

I have one recipe to share and I created it this morning to keep me from going to my favorite cafe and eating out AGAIN this week. I made an individual serving of French Toast Casserole, which arose from me wanting the grocery to sell bread by the slice so I could make 2 slices of french toast and call it good...

You'll need:

1 egg

¼ c. almond milk (I used original, unsweetened today)

shake of salt

shake of cinnamon

drop of vanilla extract

1 wheat roll (I used the kaiser roll from the bakery section at the grocery)

Whisk together all of the ingredients before the bread in a bowl. Cut your roll up into squares and add to egg mixture, letting the bread soak up the ingredients.

Butter a small casserole dish and add the mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. I did mine for 23 minutes and it was firm. Probably would have liked it more at 20 minutes.

I had mine with a side of strawberries and a half tablespoon of powdered sugar. The casserole was 250 calories before the berries and sugar.

The cinnamon was great, but I bet I could do the same with peanut butter and bananas or something exciting like that!

Sorry these are so short nowadays, but I spend way too much time typing in my life now. Just finishing up week 7 of 11 of my first term of Grad school (which is driving me crazy and driving me to eat whole orders of cinnamon sticks from Domino's). I just need a few more hours in the days that already have a ton of hours in them.