What I Would Eat Wednesday

I saw this post over at Janetha's blog awhile ago (lovelovelove this blog!) and it totally inspired me to write this post.  She used to eat all sorts of crap but changed her eating habits...but still likes the nasty stuff and lists her top ten faves.  As you all know, I love me my food...but it doesn't all have to be highbrow stuff.  In fact, sometimes the more ghetto the better.  I totally subscribe to the 80/20 formula - if I eat properly 80% of the time, 20% of the time I can enjoy myself and not be thinking about the fat/carb/protein ratios!  It's all about balance, right?  Food is one of the biggest passions and joys in my life so to deprive myself of the things I love is unthinkable.

So...what are my top ten foods I would still eat if calories and health weren't an issue?  In no particular order...

1.  Pizza

Out of all the things on this list, pizza is the one that I could eat most often.  Cheesy hot deliciousness.  The place Hubs and I frequent has a really good pizza called the Barcelona which is spinach, feta, garlic, onions and chorizo sausage...to die for, and my absolute fave.  Hubs' favourite is a good ol' Hawaiian...I'm not a fan of pineapple on pizza but in a pinch, it'll do. Ha!

2.  Sushi/Sashimi

I love sushi.  LOVE IT.   Probably top of my list of foods that I love to eat.  The unfortunate thing is that Victoria doesn't have any really great sushi restaurants.  There's some OK ones, but I've been a bit spoiled by the great, great Japanese restaurants in Vancouver...and because Hubs is a trained Japanese cook, he knows his way around Japanese food.  We always make sure we hit up at least one sushi place when we hit Vancouver.  My personal favourites are either chirashi sushi (bowl of sushi rice with assorted seafood on top) or negitoro roll (tuna with green onion). 

3.  Chips, Cheezies...Basically Any Salty Snack Food

Did I ever tell you guys about our bad food box?  It's a banker box that we stash all our naughty foods, and on any given day that puppy is filled to the top with all sorts of chips and sweet sin.  Every week we peruse the chip aisle at the grocery store, looking for our next hit of crunchy goodness.  The only time we ever bust out the bad food box is Saturdays (we store it in the garage), and then sadly on Sundays, it goes back to it's rightful place.  Hubs used to have to hide it on me, but it's like some kind of unwritten rule that on non-cheat days, you can't go into the box.  Personal favourites - Smartfood and sour cream and onion chips.

4.  Cheese - Any and All

Ahhh.  The downfall of many a diet.  And it totally sucks that I'm intolerant to dairy, because cheese is definitely a weakness of mine.  It's funny...because I used to despise cheese as a kid.  Couldn't stand the smell or taste, but we didn't eat a lot of cheese as a kid.  This may be a sweeping generalization, but because my parents were immigrants, they weren't brought up on cheese in China and didn't like it...thought it smelled like old socks.  I remember eating MILD cheddar and thinking it was too much.  Luckily I've seen the error of my ways and love all cheeses now including the strong stuff, but particularly havarti, goat cheese and port salut.

5.  Fries

Who doesn't love a good fry?  Seriously.  And even if you hate McDonald's, you gotta admit that their fries are pretty awesome.  I used to be strictly a ketchup kinda girl, but I've come around and like some thick brown gravy on my fries as well.  Vinegar is good too.  Actually, all three at once is even better.  OK, drooling now.


6.  White Rice

As a proper Chinese girl, I grew up on massive doses of white rice.  Rice at lunch, rice at dinner...no meal was complete without a scoop of the white stuff.  When I was about 15, I read that white rice wasn't the best thing to eat since it was refined carbs so decided to tell my mom that it was bad for us.  I was bold as brass, and threw it out there one day during dinner...and boy, did I get told off.  How could I, a silly teenager, question the food that sustained generations and generations of Chinese people before me?  The gall!  Well, now that I'm grown up, we eat only brown rice but a secret part of my heart still longs for white rice.  My dad feels a meal isn't complete without it, so when we have our Xmas family dinners I have to make a pot of it for him...and well...I maybe add in an extra cup so I can have leftovers.  My favourite white rice concoction is soy sauce, sesame oil with a splash of rice vinegar all mixed into a big bowl of white rice.  Sodium, fat and refined carbs...YES!

7.  Instant Noodles

Speaking of refined carbs...instant noodles are another one of my favourite bad foods.  So totally bereft of any nutritional value, but oh so good.  I don't even boil them...I like to put the noodles and seasoning package into a bowl, throw some hot water on it and let it sit for an hour or so until the noodles have absorbed all the liquid and are kinda mushy and super salty.  Don't judge me.

8.  KFC

Our favourite treat as children...after a long day of working out in the garden, the last thing my parents would want to do on weekends is cook.  Call up the Colonel!  We always loved eating our KFC with a big bowl of white rice to counteract the saltiness.  And I do really like their macaroni salad too.

9.  Hot Dogs

Mmmmm...meat in a tube.  Hubs and I regularly crave hot dogs, and they make the cheat day rotation on a fairly regular basis.  Harvest All Beef dogs are the best.  We even chose hot dogs as our meal of choice on the night of the Stanley Cup Final game.  I know, I know...it wasn't a cheat day, but we wanted to celebrate with the Canucks if they won or commiserate with them if they lost.  OK, I'm still not over it so I'll just stop now.


10.  Tim Tams

Have any of you guys tried these things?  These are a new addiction...I bought a pack on a whim a few months ago and these things are to die for.  They're kind of like Twix, but you can get regular, caramel filled or dark chocolate.  I love the caramel one as it's kinda chewy.  Hubs has fallen for them too, after resisting the call of the Tim Tam and laughing at me that I was so in love with these things.

Marathon Quest 2011 - Week Three Recap

I feel sooooo much better this week I can't even tell you.  I was so insanely tired last week I could barely function, but I've been feeling pretty good this week.  As I mentioned earlier, I probably wasn't eating enough and that extra day of getting up at 5am was catching up to me.  I have to admit - it's really hard balancing the food because I need enough to keep fueled and feeling good, but not so much that I end up with the dreaded marathon weight gain which I packed on last year.  I'll have to keep tweaking things until I find a good balance between keeping my energy up and keeping my weight down!

Sunday - rest day

Ahhhh, yes.  Love the rest day.  Is it wrong that I still get the itch to work out though? 

Monday - bootcamp

Sarge taught bootcamp again and it was kick ass as usual.  We did a lot of hills and leg work, and unfortunately on one of the exercises I could feel my right hamstring scream back at me to stop the eff what I was doing.  Argh!  We'd just done a whole whack of lunges and then we were doing this exercise where you have to balance on what leg while bending and touching your toes.  It's feeling better, but I can tell it's still not super happy with me.

Tuesday - 6k run treadmill

Same old, same old.

Wednesday - 10K 6K run

I shortened up the run as my right foot was kinda bugging me and the hamstring still felt sore.  Hubs joined me again.  I'm considering switching out the days and doing a 10K run on the treadmill on Tuesdays and 6K runs on Wednesdays as I like running with Hubs in the morning and we can just head home together afterwards. 

Thursday - rest day

Friday - bootcamp

Oy vey.  We had an instructor that usually doesn't teach our classes, and he was tough.  Tough.  We did a short run, then had us do a few sets of hundreds - each set was one hundred pushups, one hundred tricep dips and one hundred side lunges...and needless to say, my upper body is super sore today.  Sore in a good way though...I actually like the feeling of being sore because I know I've pushed my body and it's going to get stronger.  I know, I'm a freak. 

Saturday - 13K run

Hubs and I headed out onto our favourite trail - tons of people out today running, walking and cycling.  It was weird, we were a bit out of sorts because we kept forgetting stuff.  Hubs forgot a towel and I forgot to put on my Garmin.  Crazy!  And I even noticed that my arms felt naked, but I couldn't figure out what it was.  Sooo brain dead...think we need a vacation!  Anyways, overall run was good...poor Hubs though, he played hockey last night so he was a bit gassed.

Third week over!  I'm a little worried...my leg/foot isn't happy and I can feel it when I'm running.  I've got a physio appointment booked on Monday, so we'll see what she says.   Got in all my stretches and exercises sessions, and am going to amp up my stretching even more now.  We ran into an old coworker of Hubs' that is also a runner, and she asked if she could offer one piece of advice, and that was to stretchstretchstretch.  She didn't and apparently her muscles were in this big lump because they were so tight, and she hasn't been able to run for quite awhile.  I have it on my schedule to stretch every day, but will definitely spend more time getting it in there...love running and can't imagine what I'd do if I couldn't do it, so want to prevent any injuries I can!

Three Things Thursday

1.  More Cookbooks

I know.  I have a serious problem.  I can't stop buying cookbooks lately!  I went to Chapters today to pick up one cookbook and walked out with four.  I justified it because they were having a buy three get the fourth free and I just had to do it, right?  Spend to save, right?  Hubs was waiting in the car for me after my little shopping spree and just shook his head when he saw the bag from Chapters.  Hee hee.

2.  Feeling Spritely

I'm feeling much, much more lively this week...thank goodness!  I think I just had to get used to all the new exercise regime, and I've been eating a bit more this week which seems to be helping my tiredness.  I seriously felt like dropping dead last week, but this week have been feeling pretty good.  Yay!

3.  New Rules of Lifting for Women

Ahhhh, yes.  I've got my next fitness challenge in my sights!  After the marathon training is all over and done with, I was thinking that I'd like to focus on weights for awhile.  I bought this book awhile ago as I heard some really good things about it:

Overall I'm happy with where my cardio is at, and because of all the running my legs are fairly muscular and strong...but my upper body?  Seriously...I need a lot of work on my noodle arms and flabby back.  I have no tone on my arms and shoulders and would really like to build up my upper body strength so come November, I'm going to do the lifting routine in this book.  Can't wait! 

Summer is Here!

Whoa...I was just checking out the last time I blogged about food and recipes that I've tried, and it's been awhile.  Not sure what's up with that...I think the last few months I've been so distracted with hockey, that I haven't had time to blog as much.   And homework...darn course also took up tons of my time.  Now you guys have me all to yourselves - aren't you guys lucky?!  Ha!

I've been feeding my cookbook addiction like crazy lately...I think I've added about a dozen new ones recently, including this one which I've completely fallen in love with:

I saw her promoting this cookbook on TV, and the recipe that she was demo-ing looked so good - granola, which normally isn't my thing...but it looked deelish.  I had to have this cookbook and I'm so glad I bought it - the recipes look fairly easy, tasty and pretty healthy (I know this isn't a "health" cookbook per se, but the only complaint is that I would have liked nutritional info...small thing though).  I've marked off a ton of recipes to try, and tried this awesome recipe for a fresh tomato basil soup that is amazing.  AMAZING.  Crazy easy and with the bounty of delicious tomatoes and fresh basil available at this time of year, it's definitely going to make our food rotation a lot this summer.

Farm Fresh Tomato Soup with Basil - from In My Mother's Kitchen by Trish Magwood

Serves 4 - 6

3 tbsp butter
1 large onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, chopped
4 large ripe tomatoes, peeled and cut into chunks (about 4 cups)
1/2 cup packed fresh basil leaves
1 tbsp sugar
salt and pepper to taste
3 cups good quality vegetable or chicken stock
Chopped chives or parsley for garnish

In a 3 quarter saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.  Add onion and carrot, cok, stirring until onion is soft, about 10 minutes.  Stir in tomatoes, basil, sugar, salt and pepper and stock.  Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.  Using a hand blender, puree until smooth.  Serve garnished with fresh herbs. 

As Ina says - how easy is that?  Ha!  My notes - I used Kitchen Basics low sodium chicken stock, which we really like as I can adjust the salt.  I'm sure you could sub the butter with olive oil and it would still taste good, but I think the butter really added another level to this soup.  I don't cook with butter often, but I think because there's so few ingredients in this dish, that the extra flavour and sweetness really comes through and adds a lot to the soup.

Yum.

Marathon Quest 2011 - Week Two Recap

Week Two recap - this week has been a particularly tough one.  I'm not sure what it is, but I'm incredibly tired and so is Hubs.  I'm sure my body is trying to get used to the extra running and early mornings - I'm up at 5am four weekdays now to get the runs in, whereas before I was getting up only three.  Allergies are also acting up and making me crazy and tired. I'm also going to take a look at my food intake to make sure that I'm eating enough  - I checked out my food logs and I think I might not actually be eating enough to keep my body fueled for the workouts.  What?!  I get to actually eat more?!  Bring it on!

Sunday - 10K run

Hubs and I got up and headed out on our favourite trail - gorgeous morning, and a good run overall.  I'm having a hard time keeping my target pace...I've been so used to trying to maintain a faster pace that trying to stay at around 6:15 to 6:30 (recommended LSD pace for a 4:30 marathon) is hard. 

Monday - bootcamp

One of my favourite trainers taught on Monday, and as a nickname for her we call her "Sarge", as in sargeant...I'm sure that gives you a bit of an idea that she's pretty tough!  We ran around Thetis Lake, which is not my favourite...mostly because it's pretty hilly and a tough run...ha!  I tell ya...I'm really lazy at heart.  I kept a pretty fast pace so felt pretty tuckered out after. 

Tuesday - 6K treadmill run

Argh...SO hard to get up...I was still feeling pretty tired from Monday bootcamp.  Meh.

Wednesday - 10K 6K outdoor run

The tiredness was building up now...I didn't have the energy to do a full 10K, so shortened it up to 6K.  Hubs got up and came with me, which was nice.

Thursday - rest

Thank goodness...I actually got to sleep in until 6:15am!!

Friday - bootcamp

My other favourite trainer taught and she also kicked our butts...we didn't run far, but we did intervals on hills - five one minute sprints, five really fast 30 second sprints, two one minute sprints, then one long 2 minute sprint.  I felt like dying.

Saturday - 13K run treadmill

Both Hubs and I were so exhausted by the end of this week that we decided to do our runs on the treadmill...nice, slow and easy.  I know, boring right?  But we were both so bloody tired that the thought of running outside just made us want to curl up into the fetal position.  Oh well...we didn't run outside but at least we did it.

Whew!  So tiring week.  Food-wise, I did pretty good overall...snuck in a bit more dairy than I'd like, but otherwise kept things clean.  Definitely will re-look at food intake to make sure I'm eating enough.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The Good:

Well....as many of you know by now...the Canucks didn't win the Stanley Cup on Wednesday. I fully admit - I shed a few tears into my playoff towel, and I get verklempt when I see replays of the players on the ice when the game was over, shoulders slumped in what must be agonizing disappointment over being so close to the one thing you've dreamed about winning your whole life. Yes, I know...it's "just a game"...but I felt like I'd gone through all the ups and downs with them during the last two and a half months. We screamed like banshees when Burrows scored in overtime in Game 7 of the Chicago series, my innards turned to ice when Kesler limped off the ice in the San Jose series, and we groaned collectively when we received a drubbing in Game 3 of the Boston series. The Canucks gave us one of our best seasons ever and what a totally fantastic time it was.  This video is a thank you from the Canucks organization to all their fans, and it captures perfectly the feeling of this playoff season.  Thank you boys for a great run, and for taking us on this wild and crazy ride.





The Bad:

The Ugly:

As many of you also know, beautiful downtown Vancouver was besieged by rioters after the game.  To be honest...I'm still in shock that this happened.  Maybe it was because I had been a part of the magic that was the Olympics, and had assumed that we'd come a long way since the ugly incident in 1994.  Maybe it was because I'd seen all the coverage of the other Canuck games where tens of thousands had amassed with very little issues.  Maybe it's because I believe that people are inherently not idiots.  I saw this picture on Facebook, and it captured perfectly the absolutely insanity of these riots:

I'm sad and disappointed that this is what this great hockey season will be remembered for - a bunch of no good hooligans who trashed one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  As the saying goes...you can't fix stupid.

It's not all ugly though...even though this isn't a happy time for Vancouver, the response to this unfortunate incident shows the true character of the city:

Volunteers coming to clean up the next morning:

The impromptu Wall of Pride, where people wrote messages of support on the boarded up windows at the Hudson's Bay:

A police car with post its, thanking them for the work they did to help protect the people and the stores:

Thank you, Vancouver...you're a classy city.

Final Shout Out

OK boys...this is it...my final shout out to the Canucks!  I know it's not running or food or health or anything my blog is normally about, but I need to show my support for them somehow...so now it's out there, immortalized on the interwebz.

So guys - let's do it for Hamhuis, Rome, and Raymond...let's go make some history.

GO CANUCKS GO!!!!

Go Canucks Go!

If you live anywhere in BC, you know what's been going on with the Canucks.  Our boys are facing the Bruins for Game 7, and it's going to be a crazy night tomorrow no matter what happens.  I will fully admit - I'm totally and utterly invested in these playoffs, and have been riding all the ups and downs with the Canucks.  I have a love/hate relationship with these games - I want to watch and support them, but my heart bleeds when they don't do well and I hate how dejected they look after a bad loss.   After they lost two horrible games in Boston, it was like I had lost.

I was cruising around on Facebook this evening and A posted this great post from ededition.com - it gave me a lot of perspective, and that no matter what happens tomorrow, our boys gave us an awesome playoff ride that I won't forget anytime soon.  Now don't get me wrong - I'm not giving up - WE WANT THE CUP!!!  I'll be cheering our boys on like crazy tomorrow and will be wearing my jersey all day and waving my playoff towel like a fiend.  In short, our boys rock and I'm proud to be a Canuck fan!

GO CANUCKS GO!

Reminiscing

Yay!  A few ladies at work are being bitten by the bug and starting up exercise programs - another gal who works in our building has had some amazing results working with a personal trainer (that combined with Weight Watchers) so I think inspired these ladies to start their own fitness journeys.  Love seeing people getting into exercise!   As I was thinking how awesome this is, I started thinking back to when I first started bootcamp, and what that was like.  One my oldest friends D, who I met way back from elementary school, had been going for a long time, lost a bunch of weight and looked absolutely fantastic so she inspired me to give 'er a go.  I thought she was crazy to get up at 5:30am in the morning to exercise, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try it out and give myself a kickstart.  Obviously working out on my own wasn't working for me, since I'd always come up with some kind of excuse.  I was tired of being tired, out of shape and unhealthy but I needed something more regimented and to be honest, I need to be told what to do when I exercise.  Leave it up to me and meh...whatever.  I'm a people pleaser at heart, so having a trainer yell (and encourage) me works.  I signed my little self up and met with the owner of the bootcamp who weighed me (ack!), took my measurements (double ack!!) and gave me a food log where I was to write down everything I ate and bring it to class for the trainer to review (triple ack!!!).  After that, it was just a case of waiting for impending doom - otherwise known as the first class.

I still remember that first class clearly - I got my out-of-shape carcass up bright and early and trundled off to class.  I started in February, so the weather was still pretty chilly...in fact, the first day of class it was snowing, and we ended up working out in an underground parkade to stay out of the snow.  Big class too, and I will totally admit that I was completely intimidated.  Scared shitless in fact - thank goodness D was there to nudge me in the right direction - what are lines?  Stinkbugs?!  Those sound painful.  You want me to do pushups???!  I was completely out of shape so any type of exercise was tough.

Well...the next day was even tougher.  Actually, the next week.  Getting up and walking was sheer and absolute torture.  I could barely walk, I was so incredibly sore.  Every part of my body ached...my legs, my abs, my arms, my back...every single muscle that had sat unused for the better part of a decade was saying "WTF, Wong?"  Friends at work had a good laugh because I walked like I'd just gotten off a horse - there was no delayed onset muscle soreness, it was instant!  I won't lie - it was hard and some days I didn't love it, but I kept at it because I met some really cool people there, and the trainers are tough but fun.  Three years later I'm still going and glad that I made that first move to start, as frightening as it was.

So to anyone who is reading this that might be thinking of starting an exercise program?  I won't lie - it's not easy to start.  It's real scary.  And I remember clearly worrying about being the last one in the class, being scared, and having flashbacks of my pathetic athletic life in school and the ineptitude that I exemplified.  What if I can't do it?  I'm so slow, what if everyone leaves me eating their dust?  Or what if everyone looks at me and are thinking that I totally suck?  As the famous slogan goes, just do it.  I saw this motivational poster the other day and it sums up perfectly the reason to just get yourself out there...

True dat.

Marathon Quest 2011 - Week One Recap

Yahooo!  Week One is over and done, and so far so good.  I'm lovin' my little schedule, and crossing stuff off...why didn't I do this sooner?!  Yes, I am a geek.  So to recap Week One:

Sunday - 20 mins HIIT - stationery bike

This was scheduled in as a rest day, but because I had an IMS session on Thursday, I couldn't go to bootcamp on Friday (can't exercise for 48 hours afterwards) so decided to do a quick HIIT session.  I always try to target five days for workouts per week...now whether or not that happens is a whole other question!

Monday - bootcamp

Oy vey...our instructor had us run up and down the beach with a tire held with straight arms above our heads...seriously, that almost killed me!  It was an awesome work out though and anytime I get to try and bulk up my spindly chicken arms is a good thing.

Tuesday - 6K run - treadmill

Tuesday tempo run - the treadmill is a bit dullsville, so I might try to alternate one week inside, one week out.

Wednesday - 10K run - outside

Hubs and I got up at the crack of dawn to get out there and done before we had to get to work...gorgeous morning!  My coworker M suggested that to mix it up, I could stash everything I needed to get ready at work on Tuesdays and then run to work on the Galloping Goose Trail.  This trail links the Western Communities to downtown, and it's about 11K from where I'd be starting.  We have a shower at work so I could get ready there.  Brilliant!  I love morning workouts as it gives me so much more energy during the day.

Thursday/Friday/Sat - rest days

Le sigh.  This whole Canucks Stanley Cup gig is really messin' with my training schedule.  KIDDING!  Mess away, as I can give a little on the training if I can see my boys hoist the cup (Hamuis - have your people call people - heh).  I scheduled my physio appointment for Thursday after work whereas normally I would go on Wednesday, but the Canucks were playing that night and, and...well you know.  After IMS I'm not supposed to exercise, run, stretch or pretty much do anything for 48 hours, so I'm moving my long run to tomorrow...normally I might have pushed it and run anyways, but I still have some residual soreness from those darn needles.  This means I'll have to do six workouts next week to make up for my three days off, but worth it to give my muscles a chance to recoup after an absolutely killer IMS session.

So overall - Stretches done every day, missed one day of physio exercises (oopsie). Food-wise, I did pretty good - I kept it clean throughout the week and will have a little debauchery today, but nothing crazy.  One week down, 17 more to go!

Three Things Thursday

1.  Canucks

Yes...I know.  All I have to say is, they're just taking the hard way to get there, kinda like the Canadian Men's Hockey team did at the Olympics, right?  And look how that turned out!  You can do it boys, hang in there!  Go Canucks Go!

2.  Physio

I went to see my physio for a check in since now I'm officially starting marathon training again...my foot is bugging me, but it's now the inside of my foot.  My physio says it is still to do with how I'm striking and all related to a weak core which is making me roll my body all over the place.  We went through all the exercises again and refined them even more to really strengthen specific muscles and then she killed me with the needles again.  I definitely have a love/hate relationship with IMS...it works like a hot damn, but I always feel so bad as I can't stop myself from wincing or gasping in pain.  Poor physio, she's so nice that she always apologizes!  I haven't gone through childbirth, but there were a few spots last night that I can imagine could be similar...ouch.

3.  My Secret Garden

Along with food and running, gardening is absolutely one of my passions.  I love it!  I love the satisfaction of seeing things grow, I love the feeling of seeing how the garden changes from week to week and day to day, I love being able to use fresh herbs from the pots that we have on our deck.  Last summer Hubs and I put in a new garden bed in our backyard - it was absolutely backbreaking work as we had to wheelbarrow five yards of dirt from the front of our house to the back - but we're reaping the rewards this year for sure.  This is strictly an ornamental bed...we have an area behind our house where we're going to put in a veggie garden but that's next year's project...we figured we'd give our backs a rest this year.  First year the plants grew a bit but not too much, but this year they're really filling in and things are just starting to bloom.   I had a landscape designer  help me with the design, and overall I'm pretty happy!  Things are blooming at different times so there'll hopefully always be something of interest in the garden.  There's a few things I'll have to move around - apparently I picked a very tall and vigorous brand of shasta daisy and placed it right at the front of the bed - whoops!  Anyways, just had to brag a bit about the garden as I'm admiring it from the couch as I blog.  Happy sigh.

Marathon Quest 2011 - First Day

Finally, finally, finally...summer seems to have hit Victoria!  The weather has warmed up for the first time this year into the 20s...can you believe that?  It's June, right?  Normally I'm solidly in my shorts and flip flops by now, so this little bit of sunshine is very welcome.  So because I'm not used to the warm weather, Hubs and I went out for our first run of this training cycle late - normally we like to be running by around 7 or 8-ish, but yesterday we ventured out at around 11am...what a mistake!  Even though it was gorgeous out, it was also really hot and not an easy run.  Note to self - get out before 8am next week!

So as you guys probably know by now, I'm a stickler for lists and schedules - must be the Taurus in me.  I didn't want to have to think too much so did a full training schedule for the next four months listing all my runs, what days I need to stretch (every day), my physio exercise days (every other day), bootcamp/yoga days, rest days, and when I need to schedule physio and massage appointments.  As the days run along, I'm going to cross off what I've done so I can keep track because now that I'm old, my memory is failing me!  And I'm all about the visual and loooove to cross things off a list.  I'm going to post it up in the kitchen right next to my "Go Wong" card that A made for me last year - sounds like the perfect place to me.

PS.  GO CANUCKS!