Archive for the ‘running’ Category

Posted on February 20, 2012 - by Ashley Jackson

The Prodigal Blogger Returns

I didn’t mean to abandon my blog for months, but the past little while has been pretty busy. I kept telling people I wanted to update my blog regularly again, but once I got out of the habit it was kinda hard to get back into it. But I miss blogging, and a few people have told me they miss me blogging, so here we are again. Maybe it’ll stick this time?

A couple of big things have happened to me in the past couple of months, so here’s a brief recap.

On November 6, I ran my first half marathon. I’d had to defer my registration from 2010 due to issues with my foot being made of biomechanical fail, but I was determined to do the City of Oaks/Rex Healthcare Half Marathon in 2011. I got sick a few weeks before the race and wasn’t as trained as I wanted to be, and I’m also slow as all get out, but after 3 hours, 28 minutes, and 19 seconds, I managed to run across the finish line.

And promptly almost threw up on my mom, dad, and boyfriend.

After inhaling a piece of pizza, a banana, and half a bottle of water, I was recovered enough to take the obligatory medal photo.

I wish I’d written a race report after I ran the half, because apart from some issues with some runners not getting their times, it was a lot of fun. Raleigh is beautiful in the fall and we got to run through some gorgeous areas downtown. People were out cheering for us from their front yards and the balconies of their apartments, and during the last three miles, when I was really starting to struggle, the volunteers at the water stops, a nice U.S. Navy veteran, and some other bystanders encouraged me to keep going.

My goal was to finish within the time allotted for the half marathon–3 hours and 30 minutes–and I did that, but I’m definitely going to train harder for my next race. I ran as much of it as I could as fast as I could, but I run SLOW. So slow that people can pass me walking fast. My knee has been hurting off and on since then, though, so I haven’t done any running this winter.

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Another “big” thing in my life: I started the new year in a bigger office at work. The woman who worked in the full-sized office next to my tiny office left, and I got up the courage to ask my boss if I could move after she left and to my surprise, he said yes. It’s a silly thing, but I love having a bigger office–my old one was awesome given how small it was, but I didn’t have any space on which to put down papers and write. My new office doesn’t get as much sunlight as my old one even though it’s right next door, but my orchids seem to be surviving and I’m loving the extra space. Now you’ll know why the setting for future breakfast and lunch pictures has changed…

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And the biggest thing that happened in my life since I last blogged, the one I’m the most excited about: my boyfriend and I got engaged!

We got engaged on New Year’s Eve, so I’ve been referring to him as my fiance for almost two months, and it’s really weird to type the word “boyfriend” again. We’ll be getting married sometime later this year, and he’s moving to a new place that’s much closer to where I live and will BE where I live after we get married. So I’ll be getting married and moving again in 2012…plus one or two other things that I’m not ready to share yet will be happening this year. Exciting times!

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Back to regular blogging business.

After a beautiful, sunny Saturday in the 60s, it rained all day Sunday. Then it started snowing.

In case you’re not familiar with the South and how we roll when it comes to snow, this resulted in a lot of two-hour delays this morning, and even some closings. I was already off work since it’s Presidents Day. Or, as the Federal government officially refers to the holiday, Washington’s Birthday. Which is actually February 22.

Anyway, it was a Federal holiday, so I got to sleep in. I woke up mid-morning for a Diet Sunkist and some mango Chobani Greek yogurt.

For a while I tried to stop drinking caffeine completely, but I couldn’t stand the withdrawal headaches, and you know what? I like caffeine. It’s tasty and while I do have high blood pressure and insomnia, one caffeinated drink a day is unlikely to kill me anytime soon. So I decided to compromise. Most days I drink one Diet Sunkist in the morning, and after that I switch to water. Some days we’ll eat out a lot and I’ll end up getting another soda or two, but I’m surprised at how well I’ve been doing with this most days. (Days that are not most days are days like Sunday, when I drank at least three Diet Sunkists. Maybe four.)

I was in the mood for a BLT wrap for lunch, but I’ve been trying to be better about using up leftovers in the fridge lately and I didn’t want to start on a new head of lettuce while  I still had part of a bag of salad left. Instead, I made a BLT salad with spring mix lettuce, delicious oven-baked bacon, Roma tomatoes, and a package of mayonnaise from Chick-Fil-A that my fiance found in one of my kitchen drawers yesterday.

It was excellent, and now I know that there’s no mayo in my fridge.

For a post-lunch snack, I had some chocolate non-pareils that have been hanging out in my pantry since we hit up A Southern Season a couple of months ago.

These guys were super rich; they remind me why I don’t buy boxes of Sno Caps very often.

For another afternoon snack, I munched on some pistachios.

I don’t ever really remember having a pistachio until late December, when my future in-laws put a bag of them in my stocking. They are delicious. Why did no one tell me about these things? I went through the bag in my stocking, then bought another bag at Aldi, then ordered three pounds of them from Amazon. They came in two separate containers and I left one at my apartment and took the other one to work. I’d subscribe to these pistachios if they’d let me. They are good.

I spent the afternoon cleaning, reading, doing a little recumbent biking, and playing with the dog before making stirfry for dinner.

I chopped up a chicken thigh and cooked it with half a bag of Trader Joe’s Harvest Hodgepodge frozen vegetables, then let it simmer with some TJ’s General Tso’s stirfry sauce. Something about stirfry sauce always tastes a little off to me–maybe it’s the soy sauce? But this was pretty good, since I made sure not to put too much in.

Along with dinner, I had a big glass of water and a little cup of freeze-dried blueberries and walnuts.

After dinner, I went on a short hunt for the most awesome flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ever put into production.

I’ve been looking for some Coffee Heath Bar Crunch for days. Target suddenly didn’t carry it anymore when I tried to get some Saturday. My fiance was going to pick up some for me at the grocery store Saturday night, but they were low on all flavors of B&J’s. I tried again at the same store tonight with no luck, but I was determined to find some before Lent starts and everyone in the blogosphere (including me) gives up eating candy. The next store I tried had a plentiful supply of Ben & Jerry’s. I ate at least half of the pint while sitting on the couch watching first season episodes of How I Met Your Mother. Breyer’s Heath Toffee Blast doesn’t hold a candle to this stuff.

Time to go pack food for the workday tomorrow. I promise to blog again before the week is out!

Posted on October 4, 2011 - by Ashley Jackson

So I might have lied…

…when I said I’d be back with another post like two and a half weeks ago. I’m still trying to figure out this whole working-full-time-while-dating-and-training-for-a-half-marathon-and-cooking-healthy-food thing.

My half-marathon–the one I had to bow out of last year because my left foot went all pear-shaped–is on November 6, and I’m a little behind on my training, but still feeling confident that I’m going to be able to finish. I had a totally awesome walk/run last Wednesday, totaling about 4.6 miles; I ran for the majority of it and was fine afterward except for some muscle soreness.

This was largely thanks to all the athletic tape I put on my foot beforehand.

Here are some pictures that made their way onto my camera over the past couple of weeks…

Here’s one of the almond butter pumpkin brownies I made.

They were pretty tasteless, but in a non-offensive way, and the texture was fantastic. I plan to mess around with this recipe so that it involves chocolate.

The Tuesday after Contagion came out, the boyfriend and I went to the Cheesecake Factory and then to the IMAX. This was my first time at the Cheesecake Factory and I agree with everyone who said the menu was overwhelming. I finally went with some salmon and broccoli…

…and some fries. Because I couldn’t think of anything else to order.

I did only eat part of the fries. And they were delicious. As was the salmon. I’ve never had salmon with tartar sauce before and it seemed weird to me when they brought it out, but I figured I’d try it anyway. It turned out to be pretty good.

With the exception of some donut binges and the occasional meal out, I’ve been trying to eat pretty primal lately. It’s been fun to try out new dishes, such as buffalo chicken and veggies.

I’m still trying to get the sauce right for the chicken, but it’s pretty good. I’ve also been making blue cheese dip to go with it (out of cream cheese and blue cheese crumbles).

There was even a trip to Golden Corral where I pretty much stuffed myself on veggies, fajita steak, and shrimp.

I also got a piece of cheesecake for shiggles, but I didn’t eat the crust. Oh, and I had some chocolate soft serve. Because I could.

On Saturday, September 17, it was time for BugFest. I volunteered at the USDA-APHIS booth for the fourth time and sampled some of the buggy fare. My boyfriend tried some, too, which made me happy. We had the cricket and crayfish jambalaya…

…and some fried waxworms, and then some chocolate-covered mealworms. I had the orange-chocolate ones. Mmm.

I have recently discovered a love for Chargrill. (It hasn’t supplanted my love for Cook-Out; these two loves can co-exist peacefully.) I like to order their low-carb option–a 1/2 lb hamburger on a bed of lettuce–with cheese, mayo, and tomatoes. And more lettuce. And I split an order of fries with my boyfriend (which is to say, I take some of his fries).

I like Chargrill because you don’t have to talk to anyone to order.  You just check off what you want on a ticket and put it in a slot. It appeals to me in the same way that self-checkouts at the grocery and the library do.

At some point, I made more buffalo chicken, and my boyfriend made garlic Parmesan fries, and their wonder twin powers activated into a totally awesome dinner that I ate way too much of.

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I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’ve spent the last couple of years growing out my hair with the intention of one day getting it all cut off and donating it. I finally did it this Friday!

I chose to donate my hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths because their length requirement is only 8 inches, and because I’ve heard a lot of positive things about their program–the donated hair is actually used for wigs, not sold for profit (as with some other, better known charities), and the wigs are given to women who have lost their hair because of cancer treatments.  Everyone always tells me how beautiful my hair is, so I hope that my donation will help make a kick-ass wig.

I’ve cut my own hair, had friends cut my hair, and gone to some less expensive salons (i.e., Great Clips, JC Penney), but I’ve never gotten my hair cut at a nice salon. I figured that since I was doing a good deed by getting my hair cut, I could splurge a little. I bought a LivingSocial voucher back in May for a nearby salon and I finally used it on Friday. The stylist cut off my ponytail…

…and then gave me an extremely cute haircut that was exactly what I wanted.

And thanks to the LivingSocial voucher, it ended up being about as expensive as getting my hair cut at Great Clips would’ve been. LivingSocial FTW!

Posted on February 13, 2011 - by Ashley Jackson

Sunday, Sunday

Usually I refer to my Sundays as lazy Sundays, either because I ignore all the housework that’s piled up over the week in favor of being lazy, or because I do all the housework that I’d been avoiding all week because I was lazy. But so far I’ve gotten to spend my Sunday in a leisurely fashion, because I cleaned my entire apartment yesterday. So far I’ve played with the dog, gone for a short walk (for the first time in weeks–more on that in  a second), and watched A Sound of Thunder (good short story, awful movie) while riding my exercise bike for a while (also for the first time in weeks). I’m not sure what to do next…maybe catch up on all the food blogs I haven’t had time to read lately?

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It’s time for an update on both my inability to walk without hurting myself and my insomnia. Now with added Chuck Norris!

So a couple of days before the last time I posted (around January 24, I suppose…it’s been a while), my left foot, which hadn’t really hurt in the few weeks since I’d gotten my custom orthotics, started hurting again. But in a different place than before. So I started doing 800 mgs of ibuprofen and icing it and elevating it (using the recycling bin under my desk at work, because I am that classy), and when it still hurt at the end of the week (like, pretty bad) I decided to give it the weekend to stop hurting or else. I basically much did nothing all weekend, and it still hurt whenever I walked on it. Then I got to work on Monday morning and instead of having to walk around my 1100-sq-foot apartment, I had to walk halfway across a large building to do things like use the restroom and get to the fridge, so my foot started hurting more. I called my doctor’s office and was like, “Hey, have you guys gotten my sleep study results? And also, my foot hurts again. ”

Somewhere between that phone call and the 1:30PM appointment they made me I ended up in my office curled up in my ergonomic chair about to cry because my foot hurt so bad. Not bad enough that I actually did cry, but bad enough that I was seriously thinking about  it. This may have also had something to do with the three hours of sleep I’d gotten that night. On the drive to the doctor’s office I talked myself out of crying by reminding myself that I am supposed to be bad ass and that I don’t approve of people crying at work, and also, Chuck Norris would never cry (at work or anywhere else), therefore I shouldn’t either.

It turns out that I’m incapable of walking without injuring myself through unknown means, and now I have plantar fasciitis in my left foot.  So I got a prescription for some scary NSAID gel and exercises to do for three weeks, and I worked from home for the next two days and bought lots of athletic tape and now, two weeks later, my foot still hurts a tiny bit when I walk on it, but is much, much, much better.

And I did not find out the results of my sleep study that day because apparently the issue I’d had  before with getting my sleep study results from WakeSleep was not an isolated incident. Last time it took over a month for me to find out my results because they told the nurse that they’d talked to me about my sleep study being inconclusive and said I’d agreed to come back for a second study when I’d never had that conversation with them. This time, the nurse told me that she’d called WakeSleep after I’d left the message asking after my results and they faxed over my results from November. Then she tried to get them to fax over the correct results so the PA could talk to me about them that afternoon. As I was leaving she told me they hadn’t sent the results yet.

Three days later I called WakeSleep and asked if they’d sent my results and they were like, “Yeah, we did that late Wednesday afternoon.” That makes me think they hadn’t reviewed my results by the time they were supposed to. But I called my doctor’s office on Monday morning to ask about them again and the PA called me that afternoon, so they either sent them when they said they did or they sent them on Monday after someone called and yelled at them. Which is good, because I was going to call and yell at them myself if they hadn’t sent my results. Since I was once again running off three hours of sleep, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been very intimidating. But my current opinion of WakeSleep after two sleep studies is that the actual sleep study experience is okay, but they are otherwise incompetent and you should avoid them. There are plenty of other sleep labs around Raleigh.

In any case, I slept during my second sleep study for a little while until the Ambien wore off and then was up the rest of the night, so now I’m going to go see a neurologist who specializes in sleep disorders on Tuesday afternoon. I am cautiously hopeful that something will come of this.

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Puppy Interlude:

My Heathcliff is so photogenic. January 31 was the three-year anniversary of the day I brought Cliffy home from the shelter. He’s ugly, but he’s got heart, and he’s a good dog, so I’ll keep him around. <3

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Last week on a trip to Food Lion I stocked up on Progresso chicken noodle soup and Dole fruit cups, because when I’m too tired in the evening/morning to pack a lunch for work I tend to go for peanut M&Ms. I say they’re a fine mix of protein and carbs, but my friends say I need to eat better. Psh. So now the soup and fruit cups live in my desk at work, waiting for days that I need lunch. I also grabbed three boxes of Lean Pockets from Harris Teeter this week and plan to put them in the freezer at work for the same reason.

I also went to Whole Foods and bought 16 containers of Liberte Yogurt. I’d been taking a break from it for a while because it’s kind of expensive, but I don’t feel like it’s a good trade-off to eat a 25-cent container of pudding or a handful of peanut M&Ms for breakfast instead of a $1.25 container of yogurt.

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This is a lunch from way back on January 27:

China Queen! I estimate I ate about 700 calories’ worth of food–I didn’t eat everything on my plate. I love American Chinese food.

During the next week, I had a small container of ground beef with taco seasoning in my freezer, so when I went to the store and bought a bag of tortillas and some fresh veggies to go with it.

I ended up making two meals out of the taco meat, plus it freed up some freezer space (which I’ve already filled back up).

Also during that week, I decided to get creative with a bag of apples I bought. I combined a cut-up apple with some Brummel and Brown, cinnamon, and Panko bread crumbs, then threw it in the oven for a while.

Fake apple pie! It was pretty good and I think it was below 150 calories? Definitely below 200.

I took advantage of one of the days I was working from home to throw some rice in the food steamer I got for Christmas. During my lunch break, I threw together a quick meal of red beans, rice, onions, and smoked turkey sausage.

The pan of this that I made fed me for like three days. In my attempts to waste less food, I’ve been trying to not cook any new meals until I’ve eaten all of the leftovers from the last meal I made. Unlike some people, I can eat the same thing for dinner a few nights in a row with no problem, so it’s just a matter of not giving into the temptation to make something new.

This next meal I made would have fed me for dinner for several days. Except it was so awful I threw it out.

I tried to make lamb curry. I have no idea what went wrong–if it was the lamb or if my recipe was off–but I only got through half this plate before I gave up, trashed the whole pot, and ate some butterscotch pudding for dinner. Ugh. It tasted like food poisoning.

I had a mean craving for brownies, so during a trip to Target I scoped out their selection. I discovered a new offering by Pillsbury–brownie minis! The package has two packs of mix and two trays; each package of mix makes six mini brownies, so the whole box makes six. If I make brownies, I eat the entire pan, so I immediately threw a box of these in the cart. And last Saturday and yesterday I made a tray of brownies and ate them all the same day.

And you know what? They were good. I love brownies.

Earlier this week I used up some old bananas by making banana pudding.

Homemade banana pudding. Not only can I not walk without hurting myself, but I also can’t cook milk on the stove without burning it.

Friday I left some chili cooking in the slowcooker while I was at work. I’ve been eating chili for lunch and dinner ever since. I finally finished it off this afternoon.

It wasn’t as good as my mom makes, even though it’s the same recipe. But it was still good.

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The holiday calorie challenge we’ve been doing at work ended yesterday. I made back my $100 and will win part of the pot of money that other people lost. But I also lost 9.4 lbs in 10 weeks, which is pretty awesome. We’ve got a break for a week and then we’re starting another challenge with the same rules (earn back $10 every week that you make your calorie goal) and the added difficulty of exercising a certain number of times a week (cardio and strength) and eating 5 servings of fruits and veggies a day. That’s going to be difficult for me, but I am too big awesome to fail…

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Also, I have signed back up for the half marathon I had to drop out of last year. My registration was completely free because I deferred before the deadline. It’s a long way off–November 6–but it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to run. I might have to go make friends with the treadmill in my apartment’s fitness room…