I had a great November--I reached my goal weight and I started 10K training. I can't remember what my November goal was (if I even set one!) so chances are, I didn't reach it. But now that I'm at my goal weight, I need new goals to focus on periodically. I like doing monthly goals because it's only for a short time.
For December, I'd really like to focus on being more active on a daily basis. After having such a busy September and October, I was pretty lazy in November, and slacked on my steps each day. Instead of aiming to get in a certain number of steps this month, I decided to make it a goal to go for a walk every single day. It's hard to do when it's cold outside, but that is no excuse not to bundle up and go for a walk--even if it's just for a mile or so.
We had some very dreary weather today. It was drizzling all day, and very overcast. I'm kind of surprised how warm it's been lately, though. Last night after dinner, Jerry, the kids, and I went for a walk around the neighborhood (with Joey, of course), and it was so nice outside. Usually, it's pretty cold this time of year.
I probably could have run outside today, despite the drizzle, but I had intervals on the schedule. I like doing intervals on the treadmill, so after I got the kids off to school, I headed out to the garage. Last week, I wore running tights and a long sleeved shirt because of the cold; today, I wore capris and a tank!
Today's run was similar to what I did last week, only with one additional interval: 5 x 400 with 1:00 rest between intervals. Last week, I only did 4 intervals, and I kept the speed on 8.0 mph. I thought it felt a little too easy (it was hard, but not as hard as it should have felt for a speed workout). So today, I decided to try out 8.2 mph and see how it worked out. I set the incline at 1% (something I forgot to do last week), so I figured that would make it a little harder, too.
I started with a half mile warm-up at 6.0 mph, then just before my first interval started, I switched it to 8.2 mph (7:19/mi pace). My favorite part about doing intervals on the treadmill is that once the interval is over, I can just hop off the belt and catch my breath for a minute, instead of jogging. I keep the rest short (1:00) so that my heart rate doesn't have time to get back down to the resting rate, but it's nice to have those little breaks to look forward to. A quarter mile at that pace goes by pretty quickly!
The whole run went by quickly, actually. It was definitely much harder than last week; although I still feel like I could probably push the pace a bit more. I'm going to aim for 8.3 next week. Today's splits:
Warm-up: 0.5 mi in 4:58
Interval 1: 0.25 mi in 1:49 HR 173 bpm
Interval 2: 0.25 mi in 1:52 HR 157 bpm
Interval 3: 0.25 mi in 1:52 HR 166 bpm
Interval 4: 0.25 mi in 1:52 HR 168 bpm
Interval 5: 0.25 mi in 1:52 HR 171 bpm
I was very sweaty when I was done, which made me happy! I missed feeling like that, where I really pushed myself hard.
I'm sure that in a few more weeks, I probably won't be loving it so much ;)
Today is also Taste Test Tuesday...
This week, I decided to try a vegetarian recipe that I found on Pinterest. It's called Creamy Tomato and Spinach Pasta. I'm a sucker for any sort of blush sauces on pasta (white + red sauce). Usually, I change things up in a recipe when cooking, but for this one, I actually stuck to it as-written.
The recipe uses cream cheese to make the sauce creamy, instead of heavy cream. When I started counting calories, I decided not to use low fat dairy products anymore--I even started buying whole milk again, which I haven't bought in years! So, I used full fat cream cheese in this. It was really good! My kids liked it, and they didn't even pick out the spinach (well, not all of it anyway... baby steps, haha). I always get a little freaked out when I use spinach in recipes, because it seems like you're adding WAY too much... but then it shrinks down to about a tenth of the size, so it all works out.
Anyway, one serving of the pasta (what you see in the bowl above) was 358 calories... not bad at all! I will definitely be making this again.
In other news, I finally got the book Big Little Lies from the library. I was on the wait list for months. When I asked for book suggestions on Facebook, several people suggested Big Little Lies. I'm only about a quarter of the way through it, but I really like it so far. There are so many books in my queue that I'll probably never get through them all!
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