Realization

I miss regular blogging, but once you get out of a habit, it's tough to get back into.

I've been in a nice little routine recently. Standard eats:

Fage 0, berries, peanut butter, side of loan documents.

My new favorite delivery food: chicken kabob salad (chicken, red peppers, sweet onions and tomatoes, grilled on a skewer, over a standard salad with romaine, cucumbers, peppers and fresh tomatoes), add feta cheese, with a side of hummus. Old Town Pizza/Sanna's has unexpectedly good hummus...plus, online ordering lets me be supremely antisocial, and not have to actually speak to a human being in order to obtain my hummus and salad.

Salmon burgers, crumbled feta, champagne dill mustard, side of roasted broccoli, pile of olives. I'm almost out of salmon burgers - time for a Costco run.

I've come to a realization: I don't really LIKE running longer distances. I had a lot of fun training for the Philly Half with Stephanie, but I dreaded any long runs that I had to do alone. They dragged, I was miserable, and I spent half the run wondering exactly WHY I was doing this.

I've also long since come to the realization that I don't like running shorter races, either. I hate 5Ks. You go balls to the wall for 25 solid minutes or so, and by the time you get warmed up, it's over, so it's never really fun.

But I do like RUNNING. I love, love, LOVE running shorter intervals. Mile repeats are fun. 800 repeats are fun. Fartlek-style "hmm what do I feel like running this time" workouts are fun. I dig speedwork, not so much tempo runs (though they're more palatable than long, easy distances).

But, like so many people, I got sucked into the idea that I had to race to be a "real" runner, and that I had to race double-digit distances. Um, not so much. I've been much less injured and much, much happier for the past couple of months, where I've been running once or twice a week, 3-4 miles of intervals at a time. I'm happier during the workout, I'm happier outside of the workout. I don't have any real times to speak of, and I can't hang a race bib from those workouts in my office...but...SO?

Not to say I won't ever run another long race. PhillyGuy has mentioned a few times recently that he'd like to run Broad Street one year, and I'd certainly run it with him. But I'm shifting my focus, I think. Running will just be fun and recreational, the way it was when I first started running in college. I'm hemming and hawing about forking over the chunk of cash to join one of the CrossFit gyms in the city - I dig lifting, and I'm starting to get bored with the same P90X routines I've been doing for the past year.

I'm hoping to visit a gym this weekend to see what the story is. For now, it's time to head out to Philly Power Yoga for class with my favorite instructor (Steve - I really dig his teaching style. it's the right mix of normal talk and "yoga talk" that helps me focus on my practice without rolling my eyes).

Happy weekend!

Hi, I am a Salmon Addict

Yesterday was a kind of insane day -- tons of errands, dog park, blah blah blah. Before we got moving, PhillyGuy and I took the pups down to Cafe Lutecia for a quick breakfast.

I LOVE this place. Tiny and very French, with a simple menu and plenty of daily features -- two or three quiches and a variety of fresh-baked scones. SO GOOD. I had my usual smoked salmon on a bagel with tomato:



and a few bites of PhillyGuy's amazing cinnamon chip scone:



(Pardon the lousy blackberry pictures!) We chilled and read the paper over breakfast before heading out to exhaust the dogs at the dog park.

Today flew by -- I had an "emergency" motion to respond to, you know? :-P By the time I got home I was exhausted and starving. I marinated some chopped onion, red and yellow pepper, mushroom and zucchini in Lupo's Chicken BBQ Marinade while I walked the pups, and then threw it on the grill with -- you guessed it -- a Costco salmon burger.



Sophie is PETRIFIED of the sound that the sliding glass door to the balcony makes. And the sound of the window opening or closing. Poor puppy.



Dinner was fantastic:



I brought a file home with me, but I've just been kind of staring at it while I screw around online and watch Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami. I do this a lot -- bring something home with the intention of billing a couple more hours, and then suddenly it's 9pm and the last thing I feel like doing is reviewing loan documents. Billable Hours Fail.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

WHEW. Um, so where was I??

Oh yeah -- Friday's Phils game!



PhillyGuy's birthday was last week. As part of his present, I picked up tickets for the game. But not just ANY tickets...



Diamond Club, baby!

Yeah, our seats didn't suck. Right behind home plate, 14 rows back. Worth EVERY penny!



Any baseball game requires a hot dog. Period.



I also had a few of PhillyGuy's nachos, and we shared a bag of roasted peanuts later in the game. Any time I eat roasted peanuts, I chew the whole thing up -- shell and all. PhillyGuy was horrified at this -- in fact, he called me a "dinosaur." (Right, because that's what dinosaurs ate. Peanut shells. WTF.)

The Phanatic started the game off by acting out "Casey at the Bat" while it was being read aloud as part of a "Phanatic About Reading" promotion they were doing that night.





It was ROASTING and super-humid, but we had an awesome time. The seats were incredible -- you could see each pitch move, which was fascinating for me. I have such terrible hand-eye coordination that I considered it amazing if I could even throw a ball directly at someone's glove, let alone force the ball to spin and move in different directions to screw with someone's head in the meantime.

Massive exodus to the subway after the game:



The rest of my weekend was pretty uneventful. My hip is still really bothering me -- but I haven't even had time to make a doctor's appointment, because naturally, my week has been insane since I got back to work. Such is life -- at least the days are flying by and it's almost the weekend again!

PhillyGuy somehow managed to snag a FREE TICKET for tonight's Flyers game -- so he's down at the Wachovia Center in a huge luxury box with food and open bar. Must be nice, right?? Honestly though, I didn't make it home until after 7 tonight, and by the time I walked the pups (who LOVE to play in the rain!) and got changed, it was almost 8. I'm so, so happy to be sitting on my couch watching the game from the comfort of my sweats, while my puppies wrestle on the floor in front of me. Dinner was a salmon burger over a salad made with baby spinach, blackberries, blueberries and crumbled feta:



I whisked together balsamic vinegar, a tiny bit of olive oil, mustard and some honey for the dressing. It's good, but I definitely got a little pour-happy with the vinegar. Still delicious, but super-tart.



Salmon burgers, much like Chobani and acorn squash, are another blogworld discovery of mine. I had a coupon, so I picked up a package at Costco. Um, WHY did I forget how much I love salmon?? And how did I manage to go for so long without the convenience of something you can pull out of the freezer and cook in less than 10 minutes? THANK YOU, BLOGWORLD. I would clearly be lost without you.

How's your week going? Do you eat the shells of peanuts or am I a dinosaur?