Posted on January 3, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

Brr! I just took the dog out for the last time tonight…wind chill is 23 and the temperature is going to get down to 17 tonight. I’m not looking forward to my 5:30AM wake-up call!

I accidentally tagged these photos as December instead of January again…I should be careful tomorrow at work when I’m sending organization-wide e-mails containing dates!

Lunch was a BST–bacon, spinach, and tomato sandwich.

I made it with sprouted wheat bread and mixed up some mayo with Ozark seasoning to go with it. I love me some bacon sammich…on the side were kale chips and ketchup, and some grapes.

See the black dish with the ketchup in it? It’s twin died last night when I was loading the dishwasher. Goodbye, little black sauce dish!

I had the hardest time making these kale chips! I’ve done it before using the instructions provided at Kath Eats Real Food and had no problems. Today I put them in and five minutes later they’re about to burn and they set off my smoke alarm. What! I went ahead and pulled them out and they were done…strange times. Kale chips are like very thin potato chips…I foresee many kale chips (and also cauliflower) in my future…

After lunch there was a cozy nap with the dog…and then there were tacos.

I was going to try to fry the tortillas and make taco shells, but it did not work. So I ate soft tacos and dreamed they were crunchy. Little bit of sour cream, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, onions, spinach, and some more of the delicious ground beef from the farmers market that I preseasoned the other day. Yummy! I had one more super-taco after this to use up the rest of the ingredients I’d prepared.

It goes without saying, of course, that I’ve been noshing on those completely awesome chocolate peanut butter cups I made Thursday night over the past three days. Fortunately, I still have enough that I don’t need to bake anything sweet for this workweek, especially since it’s only four days long. Kinda miss baking something, though…will have to plot for next Sunday!

My upper legs are still sore from the 5K on Friday, but I’m already plotting my next move. I found a small 5K during President’s Day weekend near where my parents live that might be fun to do, so I’m watching for sign-ups for that to open. I’m also tossing around the idea of keeping at this hard enough that I can train for and run in the half marathon associated with Raleigh’s City of Oaks Marathon in late November. Right now, though, I’m trying to decide where I want to go after the Couch to 5K. I’m looking at two training programs: Gateway to 8K and One Hour Runner. Gateway to 8K is similar to Couch to 5K–it’s based on walk/run intervals and I think the final running segment is 56 minutes, which is supposedly enough to get you running 8K. One Hour Runner doesn’t involve intervals; the first three weeks involve running 30 minutes three times a week, after which there’s one 30 minute run, one run between 29-40 minutes, and one run between 35-60 minutes. I’m leaning toward One Hour Runner because the 5K/8K programs assume that you can run faster than I can run right now, so by the end of Gateway to 8K I wouldn’t be able to run 8K. One Hour Runner, though, is just building endurance until you can run one hour. Also, the idea of running for 30+ minutes rather than interval training sounds more appealing to me right now. I’ve got a couple of days to think about it…and I could always do the One Hour Runner program to build my endurance, then do Gateway to 8K to work on my speed. Nobody says you can’t do both!

Well, it’s getting to be bedtime…gotta turn the heat on and up so the doggle and I don’t freeze. Brr!