December 15, 2015

Treadmill Tuesday

It felt so good to get caught up on stuff yesterday! I did a ton of laundry, went grocery shopping, responded to email, and cleaned up around the house. It's been really nice to spend some time with Jerry, too--after the kids left for school, we curled up on the couch with the electric blanket and watched Bad Santa. With all that was going on with Jerry, it was nice to laugh and just relax. I wasn't even thinking about Christmas all this past week; and now Christmas is just 10 days away!

The kids spent a lot of time with my parents over the last week, since Jerry and I were at the hospital, so we wanted to do something fun (yet low-key) with them last night. We decided to make fudge (I rarely bake or make sweets, because it's hard not to go overboard and eat the whole batch; but the kids love baking, so they get very excited when we do it). We made Rocky Road Fudge (with walnuts and marshmallows) and it was delicious!


After we each ate a piece of fudge, we all went for a one-mile walk around the neighborhood in the dark. The kids thought walking the dark was a lot of fun ;)



This morning, I woke up with ZERO energy. I have no idea why I was feeling so tired, but I really wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep some more. Usually, I'm wide awake in the mornings. I had intervals on the schedule, and I was really considering rescheduling them because of my lack of energy. Interval workouts are tough! But I don't want to get behind on my 10K training, so I got dressed to run and went out to the garage to run on the treadmill.

We had another warm morning--I think it was about 45 degrees. I actually wore capris and a tank! I am loving this odd December weather. Last week, I did my intervals outside; two weeks ago, I did 5 x 400's at 8.2 mph and 1% incline on the treadmill. Today, my plan was to do 6 x 400 at 8.3 mph and 1% incline.

First, I jogged for half a mile, and then I set the speed to 8.3 mph. Once I started running hard, I felt my energy level rise a bit, thank goodness. The first two intervals went by just fine. On the third, I was starting to get tired, and I wished I had more rest between intervals (one minute is ideal for me to take a break and recover, but not so long to where my heart rate goes back to the resting rate). I was really tempted to pause my Garmin and take longer during the recoveries, but I had done five intervals last week, so I knew I could keep going.

The last interval was extremely difficult to get through. I felt like I might not make it, and I would have to either drop the pace or quit. But, I just started counting (anything to take my mind off the running) and I pushed through. Six intervals, done!


The last couple of interval runs on the treadmill, I felt like I probably could have pushed myself a little harder; today, however, I definitely pushed to the max and I was totally spent when I was done. My legs felt pleasantly sore all day after that.


For Taste Test Tuesday this week, I made a pasta dish called One Pot Roasted Red Pepper and Sausage Alfredo (another recipe I found on Pinterest). This one was interesting, because it took three days to actually make it ;) I was in the middle of cooking it on Wednesday when Jerry's original headache started. I turned off the burner and took him to the emergency room, just leaving the pot on the stove.

I called my mom when we were waiting for the doctor, and she came to the ER to get the kids, while my dad went over to my house to get Joey. While he was there, he put the pot in the fridge so it wouldn't go bad. I figured I may be able to salvage it, because the residual heat had probably finished cooking the pasta. The next day, we wound up in the emergency room again; so, once again, we didn't get to eat it for dinner. Finally, on Friday, I took the pot out of the fridge and heated it back up on the stove. I threw in the spinach and parmesan cheese, and called it done.

It ended up being really tasty, and Jerry even said that it's his favorite dinner I've ever made!


I made a couple of modifications to the original recipe--I eliminated the goat cheese entirely, because I don't like goat cheese (I had planned to use cream cheese instead, but totally forgot to put it in there); I used turkey Italian sausage; I also added more pasta (16 oz total), which made it less calories (because I was able to get 8 servings out of it instead of 6). For one serving, it was 394 calories. It was very good! Jerry requested that I make this again often. Hopefully it won't take three days to cook it next time ;)

4 comments:

  1. I like your modifications to the recipe. I'll certainly give it a try.

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  2. Your drive and determination is so amazing!!

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  3. I just caught up on the last 3 posts! Poor Jerry that sounds so painful! I had 3 c sections but luckily didn't get any bad headaches from the spinals.

    Congrats on your 3 years! I'm way up right now which is finally starting to motivate me a bit more to get my shit together. It's so weird how just one thing can kind of knock you off your track and then it takes forever to get back on with both feet.

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  4. That recipe sounds like right up my alley, anything with sausage is for me!

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