Puppy Ice Cream

We started this morning off with P90X yoga. As I mentioned before, I've been regularly going to hot yoga...not a ton, but I've managed to go once a week. Taking classes again has helped me tremendously - my form is much better, which means that, in turn, many of the poses are more difficult. I'm happy about it, because it means that I'm doing it right, but it's also freakin' BRUTAL when I'm in the middle of it.

P90X yoga is challenging in general - about 45 minutes of tough moving asanas, lots of warrior sequences and chest opening poses, followed by another 45 minutes of balance postures and abs (in Horton-speak, the "yoga belly 7"). I broke almost as much of a sweat moving through this in our OBX living room as I do in the 90-degree studio at Philly Power Yoga, and I got through the tough poses by reminding myself that the only way it would ever get easier is if I pushed through.

And then I made bacon for breakfast.

Delicious, expensive, Whole Foods bacon.

Around noon, I suggested to PhillyGuy that we take the pups for a nice long walk, since (not unlike us) they've been spending much of the vacation like this:

But, as luck would have it, as soon as we set foot out the front door, it started raining.

So instead of a nice long walk, we packed the dogs into the car and drove about a mile down the road to get some ice cream.

I had cookie dough.

(Side note: how is that a small? I could eat 47 conch fritters, but I couldn't even finish half of this ice cream. I hit my capacity with sweet stuff WAY faster than I do with salty/savory.) The pups got to share some plain vanilla.

Sophie loves ice cream, but (kind of like me) loses interest quickly.



Cosmo, on the other hand?











He never gets bored with it.

(Okay, Mom...one more little bite.)

We're back at the house, I'm snuggled in my sweats and we're getting ready to spend the rest of this rainy afternoon playing scrabble. Yeah, I'm that awesome.

Sunset Grille

I can't say it enough - the Outer Banks were SUCH a great idea.

I've been waking up between 6:45 and 7:30 each morning - no alarm, just naturally - and taking the dogs for their morning constitutional. We're probably half a mile or so away from the beach, which is just fine with my pups - it probably won't shock you to hear that the same dog who is afraid of the backyard is also afraid of the ocean.

After our walk, I pour myself a giant glass of iced coffee - I made a pot our first night here and then chilled it in the fridge, rather than my usual method of relying on starbucks Via and cold water - and then hang in bed catching up on the internets indefinitely.

Tuesday, PhillyGuy and I started the morning off with some P90X Chest & Back. As a refresher, here's what that entails:

Standard Push-ups (for me - 12-15, on knees)

Wide Front Pull-ups (8-10 on the assisted pullup machine with a 70lb counterweight, OR 15 "pullups" using a resistance band stuck on the top of a doorframe)

Military Push-ups (12, on knees)

Reverse Grip Chin-ups (narrow grip, palms facing in - 8-10 on assisted pullup machine, 70lb counterweight, OR 15 "pulls" using the band)

Wide Fly Push-Ups (12-15, on knees)

Closed Grip Overhand Pull-ups (narrow grip, palms out - same as the others, 8-10 pullups or 15 "pulls" with the band)

Decline Push-ups (I still cannot do more than one of these, so I do what I can, followed by 8 "real" pushups here)

Heavy Pants (two-armed back rows - I do 10 with 20-lb dumbbells)

Diamond Push-ups (hands spread and close together with thumbs/forefingers forming a diamond under your chest - 12, on knees)

Lawnmower (single-armed back row in a side lunge - I do 10-12 on each side with a 25-lb dumbbell)

Dive Bomber Push-ups (downward dog to upward dog and back again - the booklet describes it best, "like going back and forth underneath a fence." this is murder on my shoulders. I do about 6 before failing and finishing with 8-10 standard pushups)

Back Flies (8-10 with 10lb dumbbells)

...then repeat the entire set. Since we're traveling, we don't have access to a gym, and brought our resistance band instead. I strongly prefer doing the back exercises with the pullup bar and dumbbells, but the band is better than nothing. We followed that up with the super-toolbox-titled Ab Ripper X DVD, which involves 15 minutes or so of ab and hip flexor burning in the form of 25 reps each of the following:

In & Outs (standard crunching movement, starting in a V with legs bent and back straight, then extending legs while leaning back)

Seated Bicycle (forward and reverse for about 30 seconds each)

Crunchy Frog (hate this name - it's basically In & Outs, but with arms up, extending to the sides while you extend your legs and wrapping around to the front when you bring your knees in)

Wide Leg Sit-ups (laid out flat with legs wide, full sit-up followed by a twist over to one foot, repeat)

Fifer Scissors (lay back, one leg straight up at 90 degrees, the other hovering over the group - switch every couple seconds)

Hip Rock n’ Raise (too stupid to describe, but it burns - see video here)

Pulse Ups (laid back, legs up at 90 degrees, raise hips straight up)

V-up Roll-up (blah blah blah - full situp followed by V-up, repeat)

Oblique V-ups (side crunches)

Leg Climbs (here's the hip rock & raise dude doing leg climbs)

Mason Twist (these make me really, really dizzy, so I replace with static oblique holds - laying flat on my back, with my legs held over to one side a foot or so off the ground. I switch every 10 "mason twists")

It felt really, really good to get a decent sweat in...before I proceeded to spend the next several hours napping and watching TV. Yup, that's right.

Later that evening, we headed down Route 12 to the Sunset Grille for a couple beers and some snacks.

The view truly can't be beat...

...but I wasn't expecting too much of the food.

And I wasn't let down.

I started off with a Fat Tire while we waited for our conch fritters and jerk wings to come out.

After that, I got excited about the prospect of some nice, simple steamed seafood, so I got a raw/steamer combo of crab legs, peel & eat shrimp, oysters and clams. The shrimp were really tasty and the crab legs were decent, but please explain to me WHAT I was thinking when I ordered raw oysters from a place that serves fruity rum drinks in plastic parrots.

Ew.

Thankfully, I'm none the worse for the wear. And really...the view WAS awesome.

Saturday Brunch

PhillyGuy and I always say things to each other like "Man, there are so many great places in the city that we never try!" Because, well, there are. And we don't.

So today, we did. We headed over to the other side of Broad AND the other side of Vine (hoooooboy are we getting crazy now!) to have brunch at Prohibition Taproom this morning.

I started with coffee...

AND a bloody mary, since it came free (!!!) with our meal.

I love me some bloody mary mix. This one was a nice, tasty standard - not a ton of horseradish, not too spicy, and nothing crazy or fancy about it. Just an olive, a lime, and spicy tomatoey goodness.

We split an order of the tempura-battered green beans to start. Holy COW, these were good. The batter was crunchy and salty, the beans were crisp and the aioli was tangy...I could easily have eaten buckets and buckets of these. BUT, I needed to save room for our entrees.

We split two things. The croque madame:

Pork roll, fried eggs and beer cheese sauce over a crusty baguette, and...

the burger special - gruyere, watercress, truffle oil and yet another fried egg. SO GOOD. I saved the aioli to dip fries and smear on the last of the burger bun.

With such a heavy breakfast, I'm still not hungry now, at 7pm...which I guess is a good thing. I also guess it's a good thing that I started my day off at the gym.

I haven't lifted in what feels like ages - while I've been good about getting to the gym regularly despite my nutty work schedule, said nutty work schedule leaves me craving the best possible sweat in the shortest amount of time - which for me is always cardio.

So, this morning, I started off with a couple quick miles (five minutes at 6.5mph, six minutes starting at 7.0 and increasing by .1 every 60 seconds to 7.5mph, then reversing back down to 7.0 again and cranking it back up to 7.5mph to finish off my two miles in about 17 minutes. Anything to combat treadmill boredom!), followed by P90X back and biceps. And WOW, it's been a while since I've done that workout, and it showed...I was totally spent by the end.

That particular workout ends with a strip-set of curls - you're supposed to do four sets of 8 and decrease by 5lbs with each set, but for little ol' me that's not mathematically possible. So, I started with 15lbs, decreased to 12.5, then to 10 and then to 8 for my last set. I gotta say, there's just something I LOVE about the feeling of your biceps shaking, even with 8lb weights, and then that delicious, DELICIOUS relief when you throw those little 8lb dumbbells down at the end.

So now, Cosmo and I are chilling on the couch (shocking) waiting for PhillyGuy to get home. I'm hoping I can get him to watch a movie with me tonight...I'm thinking either something with Woody Allen or something by David Mamet. A coworker recommended "the Spanish Prisoner" earlier this week, but I can't find it on demand and now I'm on a mission. Any recommendations?

Round 2!

I'd been musing a couple of weeks ago on what I wanted to do after Round 1 of P90X wrapped up.

Here's the final decision:

PhillyGuy and I officially started Round 2 yesterday, kicking it off with a nice, tough Chest & Back workout in our "home gym," followed by the still-douchey, but incredibly challenging, Ab Ripper X.

I'll be doing a modified version of it this time around (unlike last time, where I just straight up deviated from the program with no real rhyme or reason), so my weeks will look like this:

Monday: P90X (generally chest/back or chest/shoulders/triceps, depending on the phase; Abs)
Tuesday: run workout (speedwork or tempo run)
Wednesday: P90X (shoulders/triceps/biceps or biceps/back, abs)
Thursday: Yoga X
Friday: P90X Legs & Back
Saturday: Long run
Sunday: rest

That might need some tweaking -- doing a long run the day after a quad-killing sequence of Yoga X followed by legs & back is probably not going to be much fun. But, I really want to run the Distance Run/Rock & Roll half in September...so training for that needs to be my priority.

I still haven't gotten a chance to buy a new camera cord, so I have no fun pictures to share with you all from my relaxing Fourth of July weekend, my shiny new MacBookPro, or any of that good stuff. Instead, I'll just share pictures of where I really, REALLY wish I was on this 101-degree day in Philly:







Yeah, I'd go back to Hawaii. Like now. I really can't complain about the heat, though -- if I start to sweat, all I have to do is think back a few months, when the streets looked like this:

Life After P90X?

For a change, I thought I'd have yogurt and berries for breakfast this morning.



Man, blurry BlackBerry pics just look mouthwatering, don't they? :)

I hit the gym last night for 20 minutes on the bike, followed by a super-sweaty chest/shoulders/tris workout. I was definitely feelin' it last night -- I don't know if it was the 20 minutes of cardio beforehand, or if it was my less-than-diligent weekend of eats, but I was hurting for sure. Especially as I tried to knock out my pushups. It felt like a freaking elephant was sitting on my back.

Last night's workout marked the start of week 11 of P90X. Um, yes, it HAS been more than 11 weeks since we started the program. See, both PhillyGuy and I have been less than diligent about following the schedule to the letter. P90X prescribes six workouts a week, in rotating order. Every week involved three strength workouts, hitting the major muscle groups in varying splits (this week, for example, is chest/shoulders/tris, back/bis, and back/legs); 90 freakin' minutes of yoga; plyometrics; and Kenpo.

In any given week, I'd get to the gym 4 or 5 times, reliably. Usually, I'd do all three strength workouts, plus yoga, plus a run or two. I abandoned Kenpo after the first time I tried it -- it bugged my knee and gave me a lot of trouble, since I'm the least coordinated person ever. After Broad Street, I also more or less abandoned Plyo. I've replaced those two days with alternative cardio -- preferably running, but two past two weeks have been hot dates with the recumbent bike. And since my hip injury, I haven't done yoga, either, since most of the poses irritated my poor hip and left me walking around the house like Igor.

And as for the diet? Well, I've stuck to it...sort of. I've added in more servings of carbs. And veggies. Which likely means I've increased my calories. Which is fine. And I've also thrown it out the window when it comes to eating out, which we do at least once a week. Sometimes twice. Which is also fine. But I'm definitely not losing fat at the rate I was when I first started. Overall, I'm down about 7 or 8 pounds from when we started, which is great -- but I know I'd be down a lot more (in terms of both weight and inches) if I was more diligent about the nutrition plan.

So, the end is approaching and I'm not sure what I want to do next. My hip is feeling much, much better -- and I'm pretty confident I want to train and run the Distance Run/Rock & Roll half in the fall. I'm also REALLY missing my weekly yoga practice, so at a minimum I want to keep doing that -- whether it's the P90X quad-killing DVD, or maybe a membership at the local Bikram place.

And I've REALLY been enjoying the P90X lifting routines. In fact, I kind of want to master (or mistress, I guess) some of the moves a bit more fully. It'd be badass to be able to do unassisted pullups. And one-arm pushups. (I can do like 6 or 7 with about 1/3 range of motion, which may not sound like a lot, but seriously, YOU try it!)

So, I guess what I want to do is sort of what I've been doing. Which is half-assedly following this workout plan, while flirting with injury from running.

Sounds like a completely airtight plan, doesn't it?

I Need a Pause Button

seriously! How is it already Thursday night? This vacation week is flying by WAY, WAY too fast.

I started this morning off like I have the last five -- waking up without my alarm, around 7:45 or so, with a snoring Cosmo curled in a ball up against me. I walked the pups and then came back to clean out my work e-mail while guzzling my precious Via and fending off the dogs from taking bites of my yogurt/berry concoction.





When I could stand it no more, I booked upstairs to wake up PhillyGuy. I was antsy. I wanted to hit the gym. He was still sleeping. So, I bustled around. Put away laundry. Started another load. Folded other laundry. Put that away.

Eventually, he dragged his butt out of bed and we hit the gym for some Core Synergistics with Mr. Horton.

I really enjoy Core Synergistics. As I've mentioned before, it's the type of workout where it's very, VERY easy to just go through the motions and get nothing at all out of it. But if you really focus on what you're doing, flex what should be flexed and work what should be worked, you'll be dripping with sweat. Just like I was when we were done.

It's workouts like these where I really start to notice my progress. Prison cell pushups, for example.



(Clearly that's not me. Nor is it PhillyGuy. This is just someone who's really good at banging out prison cell pushups.)

When I first did Core Synergistics, I could do three or so before I had to stop doing the pushup in the middle. Now, I can do about six full sets without cutting out any pushups. I also jump up in the air between them, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't affect anything.

A truly amazing part of this video is the all-star "cast." There's kiss-ass Dreya Weber, Adam the Cyborg, and my personal favorite, "Pam the Blam."



Tony and Blam in Plyo. Couldn't find a core synergistics picture. Couldn't find ANY pictures of Adam, which blows my mind. I need to figure out how to get a screenshot. Anyway.

Tony's nickname for her is Blam. I assumed, from the beginning, that it must be short for "Black Pam." Obviously. I mentioned this to PhillyGuy this morning while we were huffing and puffing.

"I figure in the test group, there were two Pams -- one black and one white. So Tony nicknamed them Blam and Wham."

He didn't necessarily jump on board with my theory. Apparently, he's right -- according to Pam the Blam herself, in this interview on Fitbomb, Tony just spontaneously and randomly started calling her "Blam" during filming. So lame -- so uninteresting!

(by the way, one of the first things I did after picking up P90X was googling "P90X blog." And Fitbomb was one of the first ones I found. He is flippin' hilarious -- even if you're not a P90X-er, you've GOT to read.)

We took advantage of the gorgeous weather today and got hoagies at Sarcone's. I took the pups to the dog park, and now they're comatose. Cannot believe my vacation is already so close to being over -- this week has absolutely FLOWN and it's been really, really relaxing. Definitely wish I had a pause button to stretch this out even further. I need to do this every year!

Oh, Yoga

It has been a long time since PhillyGuy and I did P90X yoga. For some reason, we manage to skip it almost every week. It's probably been three weeks or a month since we actually did this workout.

And it shows.

I didn't completely lose all of the progress that I had made over the first five weeks, but I was definitely feeling it last night. Tony Horton's particular brand of "haha look how long I can make you hold yourself in a lunge!!!!" yoga is bruuuuuuutal on my poor legs.

I've mentioned before how the first 45 minutes is a tough progression of moving asanas. You spend an awful lot of time moving from runner's pose to a series of Warrior poses which culminate in increasingly more difficult poses -- triangle, right angle, reverse warrior, twisting triangle, blah blah blah. The last series has you start in runner's pose, move into Warrior 3, and then go into a series of variations on killing your quads single-legged poses like half moon, standing splits, and twisting half moon.

So, about twisting half moon. It's SUPPOSED to look something like this:



Usually, when I do it, my back leg is SORT OF up in the air and my standing leg is bent at the knee like crazy. Yesterday, though, I'm pretty sure I looked more like this:



And I was shaking throughout. MAN, that stuff is challenging.

I'm itching to run today. I'm supposed to do legs and back. Maybe I'll do both. I don't know. All I DO know is that the office manager just came around and offered me some Phillies tickets for today. Apparently, a client returned them, so they're up for grabs. Um, it's going to be 80 and sunny today. It's an afternoon game. These are free tickets, AND good seats. WHY CAN I NOT GO???

Gah.

Detox, Party of One

***SEE PSA BELOW -- make sure I add you to my Google Reader!***

This weekend FLEW by. You'd think after spending nine and a half hours in the car on the way back from NC last night, I'd be a total zombie this morning -- but surprisingly, I'm not.

I AM, however, craving things like "veggies" and "fruit" and "sweaty sweaty exercise" with every fiber of my being.

I've been doing reasonably well on this whole "weight loss" thing. Since the end of March, when PhillyGuy and I started cleaning up our diets and getting cozy with Tony Horton, I've lost about 6 or 7 lbs and several inches off of my waist. I'm noticeably stronger. My clothes fit better and I'm getting closer to regaining that enormous portion of my wardrobe that has been unwearable for the past eight or ten months or so.

But then...we do something crazy, like packing the puppies into the car and taking a road trip to Duke to see my sister-in-law graduate with her master's.

All things considered, honestly, this wasn't that bad. We made it to the hotel gym for an arm-burning sessions of P90X biceps & back on Saturday morning, where I noticed that -- go me! -- I've mad significant improvements in my back strength. Since there wasn't an assisted pullup bar, and I still can't do a full unassisted pullup, I substituted lat pulldowns for the pullups in the workout. I was knocking out sets of 8-10 pulldowns at 90lbs, which is a good 15-20lbs more than I'd been lifting before.

And yeah, I ate more carbs than I have in a while. And yeah, I had some dessert on Friday night. And yeah, I had a few bites of an ice cream sandwich on Saturday night. And yeah, I polished off a (thankfully snack-size) bag of Jalepeno Cheddar Chex Mix on the car ride home yesterday.

But in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that bad. It certainly could have been much, much worse. I definitely have a crappy-food-hangover of sorts today. I woke up CRAVING fruit and yogurt. Unfortunately, since we didn't roll into Philly until about 10:30 last night, we didn't have time to go food shopping, and pickin's were slim. For breakfast this morning, I polished off the last of my Fage 0 with two chopped up kiwis and a handful of very, VERY sad-looking blackberries.

I was also CRAVING exercise. I was a bit slow to get moving this morning, so PhillyGuy and I took the puppies for their morning constitutional about a half hour later than usual. Just in time for me to see several people either leaving the gym or returning from an AM run. Which, naturally, made me curse myself for not waking up at 5:30 to knock out a few miles before work.

Since, you know, it's totally in my nature to do that.

So, now that I've started my morning with fruit and yogurt (and an extra cup of iced coffee -- thank you, sweet baby Jebus, for the invention of Starbucks Via and the convenience of powdered, delicious coffee that lives in my desk drawer), I'm about to spend the rest of the day knocking out work that I would have done on Friday and fantasizing about whether I want to run a few miles before my legs and back workout tonight.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: As I mentioned on Twitter, I set up Google Reader for the first time last week. (Hi, my name is PhillyGirlRuns and I live under a rock. A rock where I don't learn about things like acorn squash and Garmins and Google Reader until EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD has done it.) I'm still remembering to add new blogs every day -- PLEASE leave me a comment so I can make sure I've included yours!

Two Tickets to the Gun Show

Pretty sure back and biceps is my favorite P90X workout yet.

I mean, I'm good at this whole "lifting" thing. My biceps have always been pretty decent (you know, "for a girl" and all that) and my back is definitely strong (again with the "for a girl" disclaimer). In general, I'm a heavy-weights-are-awesome kind of person, moreso than a covered-in-pink-vinyl-dumbbells kind of person. I'm even improving -- noticeably -- on my pullups.

However, one thing I'm not so hot at is a little trick called "visualization."

See, in back & biceps, about midway through, there's this little monstrosity called "corn cob pullups."




Above, you can see what they're supposed to look like. And if I had the DVD with me at the gym, that's what mine WOULD have looked like (I mean, assuming I could even do one, which it's very possible that I can't).

But since I didn't have the DVD, thanks to PhillyGuy, who tends to leave them in his laptop and take them to class with him...well, I just read the description and did what I THOUGHT it translated to.

Which was totally wrong. I must have looked like a giant ass on the assisted pullup machine. I grabbed wide, pulled up, then LET GO OF THE BAR with my left hand, brought it next to my right, and lowered down. Pulled up, went wide again, down, up. Let go with my right hand, brought it to my left. Down. Up. Blah blah blah. Um, it was hard, sure. but also totally and completely wrong. I'm interested to see how these are next week, when I actually do them properly.

Here's the rest of the lineup:

•Wide Grip Pull-Ups
•Lawnmowers
•Twenty-Ones
•One-Arm Cross-Body Curls
•Switch Grip Pull-Ups
•Elbows-Out Lawnmowers
•Standing Bicep Curls
•One-Arm Concentration Curls
•Corn Cob Pull-Ups
•Reverse Grip Bent Over Rows
•Open-Arm Curls
•Static-Arm Curls
•Towel Pull-Ups
•Congdon Locomotives
•Crouching Cohen Curls
•One-Arm Corkscrew Curls
•Chin-Ups
•Seated Bent-Over Back Flys
•Curl-Up/Hammer-Downs
•Hammer Curls
•Max Rep Pull-Ups
•Superman
•In-Out Hammer Curls
•Strip-Set Curls (four sets of eight curls with weights decreasing from 20lbs to 5lbs each set)

By the end, my arms were smoked. I LOVE IT. If nothing else, I'm going to end up freakin' jacked.

Philly Foodie Meetup!

Delayed post numero dos!

Last Tuesday, Sabrina of RhodeyGirlTests.com and Leslie of AndHerLittleDogToo.com were fabulous enough to organize a meetup of Philly bloggers and readers.

You've probably seen everyone else's recaps, so I'll make this brief -- but I had an absolute blast meeting everyone, putting names to faces (or, well, faces to blogs) and making new friends!

We met up at Garces Trading Company, Jose Garces' newest restaurant. PhillyGuy and I are rabid Food Network fans, and I was delighted to see Garces become the newest Iron Chef.



I wasn't sure what to expect with Garces Trading Company, but I loved it. It reminded me a lot of DiBruno's at 18th and Market...if only DiBruno's had table service and (gasp!) its own wine shop.





(Sorry for the blurry pics -- I'm working with a point & shoot here!)

Our table shared a chef's selection of cheeses. The blue, paired with the lavendar honey and a thin slice of apple, was pretty much enough to make me die and go to heaven right there.



I followed that up with the lamp chops, which came prepared medium rare and paired perfectly with the glass of red wine Sabrina was kind enough to share:



I'd definitely head back for dinner with PhillyGuy, and would probably try the pizza next time -- several girls ordered that, and it looked unreal. Pretty basic, with a thin crust and simple ingredients -- it was a real toss-up between the pizza and the lamb for me, but I was happy with my choice.

All in all, it was a really great night -- I am ridiculously happy about the idea of a Philly blogging/fitness/foodie community. It was fantastic to hang out with people who share my biggest interests, and I cannot wait to do it again.

PhillyGuy and I spent this weekend up at his parents' house visiting with family. As always, we packed our gym clothes with the intention of doing our scheduled P90X workouts. And, as always, things just didn't work out that way. Friday night was yoga night -- but we didn't even eat dinner until 8pm, and at 9, headed over to his grandparents' to hang out. So, he asked me to hold off and do yoga with him when he got back from golfing with his dad. Except their tee time was at 8:30ish -- which is, no joke, a good two hours later than it usually is. And when they rolled in around 12:45, people had started to arrive for that afternoon's "picnic." I was a little cheesed, since I'd spent the morning reading trashy magazines and could have been doing precious yoga...but, whatever.

So, when we got home last night around 6:15, I was itching to work out. By the time we unloaded the car, walked the pups, and all that jazz, it was close to 7:30, and PhillyGuy decided he needed to hang out at home and get some work done. Peace out, brother -- I hauled my butt right to the gym, where I rocked out some Core Synergistics solo. Our new gym has an aerobics studio-style workout room, with wood floors and a full wall of mirrors, which was the perfect location for my various banana-superman rolls, pushup variations, and overall contortions.

Except for Dreya rolls.



That guy can do Dreya rolls. I can't. They are WAY harder than they look. I get stuck on my ass.

Oh well. One of these days.

Stuck on You

I have something of an obsessive personality.

When I like a song, I want to hear it over and over and over again and it goes on every single playlist and/or CD I make. When I get new clothes or shoes or a bag, I want to wear them immediately, and sometimes think of ways to wear an item multiple times in a week.

Where it's always been most clear is my tendency to get "stuck" on certain foods. My senior year of college, I had rice Chex for breakfast every.single.day for six or seven months straight. My first year here at the firm, I discovered Gia Pronto and ordered the same exact salad (identical ingredients, no variation at all) every day for lunch from February through September or so -- and the only reason that broke off was because I took two and a half weeks off for my wedding and honeymoon.

The P90X nutrition plan really plays to these tendencies of mine. There are a couple of ways to approach the plan -- detailed meal plans with recipes vs. a "portion" version, where you can eat whatever so long as it fits into the prescribed outline. This is what I've been doing -- I get five "portions" of protein, two of veggies, one fruit, two dairy, one carb, one condiment and one fat, plus a protein bar (they "prescribe" the Beachbody/P90X brand, but Clif Builder's bars have about the same makeup, a better ingredients list and (bonus) are actually sold in stores near me). It took some getting used to, but it's been working fabulously for me.

I've been keeping a notebook to track my eating, mainly to keep tabs on what I've eaten for the day, what I have left and where I need to catch up. And, unsurprisingly, I've found myself eating nearly identically every single day. Breakfast? Berries (about 1.25 cups of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and/or blackberries -- whatever's on sale), Fage 0 and iced coffee. Midmorning I have my bar. Lunch is almost always a salad -- I've been leaning towards the Mediterranean salad from Jake & Max's in the Comcast center, with crabmeat, shrimp, red peppers, artichokes and capers. In the afternoon, I have another yogurt (either Fage 0 or plain Chobani, whatever DiBruno's has in stock) with an ounce of dried fruit. Dinner is either two sandwiches (arnold's thin and a bunch of turkey), if I'm lazy, or grilled something (chicken, pork, fish) and a sweet potato with hot sauce and plain greek yogurt. If I'm craving something sweet, I'll have half of a bar. And then the next day...exactly the same thing.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Looking back over the past three weeks, my notebook is full of identical pages. Sometimes, I'll go crazy and switch things up -- have a sandwich (turkey on wheat with mustard, sweet peppers, lettuce and tomato) for lunch and save my veggies for dinner, so I can have a big salad then. But I really had to laugh when I saw this. Not like I'm surprised!

Are you a creature of habit?

PhillyGirlRuns (Slowly), Week 2 and a Debate

Yesterday was such a gorgeous day for a run!

Remember how I talked about how humbling P90X yoga was? Well, here's what else is humbling: running when you're out of shape and recovering from an injury.

I set out yesterday into the gorgeous, low-70's sunshine with the intent of doing about four easy miles. I've been able to tolerate about one run per week -- last week, I replaced Kenpo with four miles on the treadmill. The first two were steady at a 9:00 pace, the second two I changed it up and did some intervals at a tempo or mile-repeat pace. Except, well, I wasn't doing a tempo run, or mile repeats. I was doing 2-4 minute intervals, which I used to do easily at just under a 7:00 pace, at about an 8:00 pace -- and I was FEELIN' it. I mean, REALLY feelin' it. I squeezed my 4 miles in around 35-36 minutes and then hopped on the elliptical for a bit -- I was totally smoked. Legs were rubber, heartrate was through the roof.

Yesterday was sort of the same. My knee was a little sore for the first mile and a half or so, but nothing really painful, so I kept going. Life starting getting hard for me somewhere between 1.0 and 1.5 miles. I picked up the Schuylhill River path at 25th and Locust, and reached the top of the hill in front of the Art Museum at about 1.6 miles...and I pulled over and walked it out for a bit. My lungs were OK, but my legs were just struggling. I grabbed a lightpost and stretched. Stretched. And then took off again, for about a half mile.

At 21st and Winter, I internally squealed with joy when I saw that I would need to stop for a red light. Stretched again, and then when the traffic cleared, I walked for a couple of blocks before taking off at a run again. Unfortunately, I accidentally turned off my Garmin when I started back up (I've done this before), and didn't notice it for several minutes, when my legs were screamin' again and I looked down to decide whether it was OK to take another walking break.

All in all, my Garmin was on for a total of 29 minutes, in which I covered three miles. I'm guessing, based on my map, that I covered about 3.5 miles in about 33 minutes. When you figure in my couple of walking breaks, that's not so bad. But it wasn't too long ago that I was running "easy" 26-minute 5Ks with barely any effort, and now my legs are jello before I even hit two miles. I always go through this phase when I'm returning from an injury hiatus, and let me tell you, it sucks just as much every single time. Knowing that I'll improve with further training doesn't help it suck any less in the moment!

On the plus side, PhillyGuy and I are starting Week 3 of P90X. No further weight loss for me, but as of this morning I've maintained last week's 5-lb loss. Both of us have cleaned up our diets tremendously (except for last night's Easter dinner at my mom's, which involved kettle-cooked potato chips with melted blue cheese as an appetizer, at which point I threw Tony Horton out the window). I have some wicked scabs on my knees from doing push-ups, girly-style.

Between my running frustrations and the serious time dedication that P90X involves, I'm struggling internally with a question: do I even bother running Broad Street this year? I keep going back and forth. Part of me feels like, hey, I can do this -- even if I have to run/walk the whole time. Part of me feels like my knee will NEVER be reliably healed by then, and that there is just no chance I'll enjoy "running" a race where I have to run/walk or run much, much more slowly than I'm used to. I'm really struggling with this, and I might not even make an actual decision until, oh, 6am the morning of the race...but WHAT TO DO?

WWTBWD (What Would the BlogWorld Do)?

In the words of Britney,

OH MAH GAH, Y'ALL.

I. Am. So. Busy.

I really need to recap my first week on P90X and catch up with the blogworld, but work is just NOT letting that happen. Also, there's a small matter of our adopting a second dog (!!!!!)

Cosmo came home with us last night, and my evening was spent putting together a crate, trying to wrangle one super-excited Sophie and one sorta-skittish Cosmo on a couple of walks, and generally supervising the tornado of dog as it whirled around my house. Not conducive to even doing a nonstop 1:15 of chest, back and abs, let alone blogging about it.

The short version? P90X is full of tool-box, d-bag phrases like "BRING IT!" and "AB RIPPER X!", but also full of really effective exercises. Some of them come naturally; others will take a little work, at least for me, before I can really perform the moves effectively (ahem, Kenpo). The diet/nutrition plan has been very good -- I'm eating a lot of chicken (grilled, or poached and shredded into chicken salad), tuna, spinach and Greek yogurt. Also, my abs have been consistently OMG-if-I-sneeze-something-is-going-to-tear sore.

I've shed a LOT of water weight this week -- on Monday morning, the official one-week checkin point, I was down 5lbs. Not gonna lie, that's really, really good to see, even though I know that, at most, it's only a couple pounds of "real" weight loss and mostly water weight shedding.

I can't wait to catch up on everyone's weekend shenanigans, races, blah blah blah -- and hopefully I will be back tonight with a better review and a recap of plyometrics.