Hi everyone! How was your Halloween weekend?
We had frigid, rainy, and windy weather here on Halloween. The wind was so bad that almost all the leaves blew off the trees—now it looks sort of like early winter, not fall. We barely got any trick-or-treaters because of the bad weather, only about three groups came to our door. We did set up an awesome “camp” fire in our grill to stay warm, and that ended up being more fun than handing out candy. We also have tons of candy left, but I’m not complaining about our surplus of my favorite peanut butter M&Ms.
We attempted to dress Charlie up as Dobby from Harry Potter. We took an old pillow case and cut holes in it. Charlie was not a fan of his costume and found ways to weasel out of it. In fact, Halloween as a whole confused the little puggle. He didn’t witness it last year because I was out late on a PhD visit, so he was super confused about why his mommy and daddy were handing candy to creepy zombies and little princesses.
We made this pizza twice over the past two weeks, and I will definitely have to share the recipe on the blog. It’s a black bean, corn, and steak pizza with spinach and just a touch of olive oil as a base. Both times I used a beer crust—whole wheat last week and plain this week—because it’s a quick and easy alternative to traditional yeast crust. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good pizza crust made from yeast (my personal favorite is this one from Smitten Kitchen), but beer crust is great when you’re feeling lazy or making a quick meal. Simply combine flour, baking powder, salt, and beer, parbake, and you have a super thick pizza crust!
We watched the New York City Marathon online this morning. I would be so miserable running in all that wind, especially along those hills! After that we watched this week’s Dr. Who—can we just talk about it for a moment? I was not seeing the twists, not the one that started the episode and not the revelation in the last minute. On the other hand, I was kinda hoping for a new antagonist rather than a repeat of a previous one. Charlie enjoyed the lazy Sunday.
The sleet and wind throughout the week kept me inside for a few of my training runs this week. Overall, my training this week went really well. My speed workand last tempo run left me feeling confident about my goals. This upcoming week is serious tapering, as the race is on Sunday! The forecast is predicting 30-39 degree temps; fingers crossed it either warms up a bit or there’s no wind.
Here’s a look at last week’s training:
Monday: 8 miles with 4 x 8 minutes hard. I kept roughly a 7:30-7:35/mile pace during the intervals and averaged a 8:15/mile pace overall.
Tuesday: 5 miles easy on the treadmill (48:30), plus core and leg strength training.
Wednesday: 5 miles with 3 miles at goal race pace. I ended up going faster than goal pace, as my mile splits were 7:48, 7:58, and 7:53 for the race pace miles.
Thursday: Yoga and core strength plus a long walk with Charlie.
Friday: 5 miles easy on the treadmill in 46 minutes.
Saturday: 8 miles on the treadmill in at an easy 8:50/mile pace.
Weekly total: 31 miles.
I’ve found that mixing up the incline on the treadmill helps mimic how running outside feels and prevents boredom. For example, on my long run, I changed the incline with each song on my playlist, ranging from 0% (which feels like a slight downhill) to 3% (or a gentle hill).
Still, I’d rather be running outside, especially when the weather is like this:
Questions of the Day:
How was your Halloween?
How was your running last week?
1 Response
I am not a runner, but I can agree that this is perfect weather for running, or just walking, those leaves are gorgeous.