It’s that time of year. You know, when you have the heater on in the morning and the air conditioner on in the afternoon. It’s spring!!! It finally sprung here in coastal North Carolina, and you can simply tell by all the pollen all over the place. It’s kind of gross.
The kids are out of school this week, and although I desperately miss having a career of my own, I really enjoy this time with them. We stay up later than normal, we sleep in, we watch TV in the morning, we go to the beach, we cook, we clean, we eat ice cream, we play games. Last night, my boys had two friends over and tonight, they’re going to stay at my sister’s house. All of us are off on Friday, so who the heck knows what we will do.
I still consider myself in post-marathon recovery mode, but I’ve only taken two full days off where I didn’t do any workout at all. It would have been three days, but yesterday, I convinced my kids to go run a few miles with me. I’m just about going a little nutty. I think part of it is not meeting my goal in the marathon, part of it is just to move on from that to the triathlon. Part of it is just being used to having workouts almost every day. Since I’m not running 50 miles per week, I have a ton more energy.
Saturday, I ran 5 with my husband at an 8:30 pace. I felt great and had to hold back, and he went faster than his normal pace – so it was good for both of us.
Sunday morning was cold (29), so when the hubster went for his 10 miler, I got my new (to me) bike out and rode 90 easy minutes on the trainer, or just over to make 30 miles. This was my first ride on a tri bike. Felt about the same, but then again, it’s been a few months since I’ve been on a bike. My legs were slightly tired, but I figured it was from the marathon just a week before. Ironic the movie “Without Limits” was on. I’d never seen a movie about Pre, and honestly, I don’t know much about him. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t learn too much more because I found myself really bored and turned the channel. Later that day, we took the kids to see the Harlem Globetrotters. I think they’ve been doing the same thing for generations, but the really enjoyed it and it was cool to see them play ball.
Dunk!
On Monday, I took my kids to the YWCA pool and swam an 800, stopping after each 100 to catch my breath. Crazy, I can run a marathon, but swimming just sucks the energy right from me. Then we played in the deep end for half an hour until I was too raisiny to stay in any longer. I’m really working on form, and I have to say, my right side is catching on, my left, not so much. I know it will just take persistence and work and patience, but as much as I dislike swimming as compared to how much I love running, I do look forward to more workouts and especially some open water swimming. I can’t believe I actually just typed that.
Playing around in the pool.
On Tuesday, I rode for an easy hour, 20 miles, on the trainer and then went for a 3 mile run. I LOVE the post-bike run feeling and I ended up doing my 3 miles in a 7:47 pace. I was BEAT when I finished, but I had a pretty big smile on my face. I met a friend of mine at the beach and we walked the 2.5 mile loop with our dogs while the kids trotted behind, beside, and in front of us. We then took our lunch to eat on the beach and had ice cream when we were ready to head home. It was a fabulous afternoon with almost perfect weather. Ok, for March, it WAS perfect weather!
The beach.
Wednesday was the few miles with my kids, and then this morning, I rode my bike easy for an hour. The boys slept in later than they probably have, almost EVER, so I didn’t have to share the TV as I rode. Bonus. I usually check their breath with a mirror when they sleep past 8:00, but I checked in on them and did NOT want to disturb the bears, so left it alone.
My tri bike, “KitKat”
Tonight, my husband and I are going to a social run for 4 miles, something we haven’t done in a really long time. Part of me is looking forward to it (Running AND social? HELLO!) but part of me wants to just go to dinner or something since we don’t get out very often just the two of us.
The Cooking Part
The cooking frenzy started last week. I’ve always liked cooking, but this is probably the most I’ve spontaneously cooked, like real food with recipes, since, EVER. It was the new show’s (I CANNOT, for the life of me, remember, what the name of it is!) fault, totally. Well, Chopped too. A lady had made gnocchi, which I’ve never made but have eaten before only from the pre-made packages, so I decided on a whim on Saturday afternoon that I was going to make gnocchi. Plain gnocchi was a no-no, so I decided to make some garlic butter cream sauce to go with it. Once I had that going, I realized that I needed to make some pesto with my huge basil plant that I’ve been loving on ever since I got it. Did you know that two cups of basil is pretty much every leaf from a medium sized basil plant? Poor bald thing. Ok, I LOVE pesto. I REALLY LOVE pesto, like eat it out of a jar with a spoon, and I love garlic, but I learned a very important lesson when I made my homemade pesto with home grown basil. You CAN have too much garlic, or shall I say, gahhhhhhlic, in your pesto. I may have “accidentally” put in twice as much as what the recipe called for, but I’ve never been a real stickler for following recipes, except in baking. It almost garlic-burned my mouth. It was pretty bad. There’s no way in h-e-double-hockey sticks I was going to waste my lovely basil plant I’ve been lovingly caring for, so I just stuck it in the fridge. And that was just Saturday afternoon.
Gnocchi with garlic butter cream sauce and pesto
Sunday was Lemon and tarragon-poached chicken with mashed potatoes. The terragon recipe required white wine, and when I have leftover white wine, I immediately think of risotto. So the next day, I made some delicious risotto with our leftover grilled chicken. The risotto was perfect for toning down my fire hot garlic pesto sauce, so I mixed some of the rice into the pesto and BAM, you have a four-star meal.
Risotto with gahhhlic pesto
THEN I decided to make some cheese filled shells with turkey spaghetti sauce. I made a batch with shredded spinach in the shells and one without. It was good.
Cheese shells. Mmmm. Good.
The kids have been asking me to make jambalaya for about a month, so yesterday, I made that for the crew since I can just add more rice to make it go further. Thankfully, I didn’t get crazy with the cayenne pepper as I’ve been known to do, so it was the perfect spice heat for us. Because the kids had friends over, I decided to make some knockoff Cinnabon cinnamon rolls. My house actually smelled like the mall when you walk by the Cinnabon store. Fabulous. I’ll have to make a double batch next time as one regular batch only makes SIX!
Check out that bun!
So with my girth a little thicker than a week ago, thanks to my current cooking phase, I’m looking forward to some warmer weather, getting my bike out on the road, and running for speed, maybe even looking for a 5k PR (21:13).
Do you like to cook? Do you go crazy right after a marathon?
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