Water Update

So it's been a whole week since I decided to cut down on my personal black hole of spending: diet soda.

My full disclosure: as I stated originally, I don't intend to -- and haven't -- stopped drinking soda at home. I still have a couple glasses of it at night after work, with dinner and during my precious TV watching-and-internetting time.

BUT, I'm proud to say I haven't purchased or drank a single soda at work since last Thursday. And it hasn't been so bad!

The first morning was great. "Lookitmeeee! I'm drinking water! Who needs soda?? Not meeeeee!" and then I finished my first bottle, around lunchtime. And promptly got slammed with a craving for fizzy deliciousness. "Stupid water. This is stupid. I want diet coke, dammit." But, lucky for me, I didn't have any cash for the vending machine, and I didn't have the time to run downstairs, and besides -- I can't just give up that easily, right?

And I'm happy to say that since then, I've averaged two full 800mL/28oz bottles of water a day. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. Plus, of course, my iced coffee in the morning, and occasionally a second iced coffee in the afternoon. By "occasionally," I mean "once."



So, I'm doing pretty well, I'd say. I honestly haven't missed my daily 40-60 ounces of Diet Coke/Coke Zero/whatever, but that's probably aided by the fact that I'm still having about 16-20 ounces at night. I don't know that I've noticed any changes -- but to be fair, I haven't been paying much attention. Herding a pack of dogs has taken up most of my time this week.

Last night, I herded said dogs into their respective crates for some dinner while I hit the gym. And what an interesting evening at the gym it was. Now, I use my condo complex's gym. It's actually pretty decent, with a good variety of equipment, enough cardio machines that I've never had to wait, and a nice set of dumbbells in every weight I need. Best of all, it's free (or, well, not "free," but "included in the HOA fee"). But one of the drawbacks of a free gym is that anyone who lives there can use it. This occasionally means, say, having someone bring their child with them and having said child wander aimlessly about, randomly messing around with the machines. Or people who don't regularly attend the gym, and thus have no sense of etiquette (i.e. sitting on a machine to rest, not wiping their sweat off, doing strange calisthenetics in the middle of the floor and blocking access to the weights).

But last night, I think there may have been a certifiably crazy woman there. There I was, pedaling away on the bike and cursing the burn in my quads, when I started hearing a sort of wailing coming from behind me. It was loud enough that I could hear it over my music, but not loud enough so that I could tell what was going on. After maybe ten minutes of this, I managed to nonchalantly turn around.

There was a woman wearing a long, light blue jersey dress (I'd call it a maxi dress, but it had short sleeves) and Ugg slippers, hair down, singing along -- and LOUDLY -- to "Stayin' Alive," which I presume was playing on her ipod. She was hopping sort of wildly from machine to machine -- she'd do a few crunches on that ab-weight-machine, wail "stayin aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive," jump up, run over to the leg adduction machine, bust out three or four thigh moves, "ah ah ah ah stayin alive, stayin alive," run over to the lat pulldown, knock out a couple of reps, continue singing and dash across the room to another random machine.

I'm wondering if we were being punked or something. Everyone in the gym was doing the same thing I was: trying to stare in disbelief while letting it appear as though you didn't even notice the bizarre turn of events going on in front of you.

Yeah. I cut my workout short last night.

Weird gym sightings?

Three Dogs

is a lot of dogs.

Instead of going to the gym last night, I headed home from work to walk my pups and then herd them into the car to head over to my mom's to pick up HER dog.

Because I am stupid, obviously.

Mr. Guinness is a good dude. I picked him out as a baby, just under eight years ago -- it was the end of the summer 2002. The guy told me the litter was born on the Fourth of July. No clue if he was telling the truth, but I brought Guinness home to my mom and that was that.

He's enormous now. I had actually forgotten how big he was -- either that or he really has grown a bunch in the few months since I've seen him. He's close to 100 pounds, I'd estimate. And his head is the size of my head.

Now, my guys are a LIIIIITTLE smaller than that. Just a little. Sophie is about 13 pounds.

Cosmo is exactly 23.8 pounds.

So, combined, they are about 1/3 of Guinness.

How do I know Cosmo's exact weight, you might ask?

Ugh. Well, last night at about 10pm, as I was sitting somewhat exhausted, sweat dripping down my face from herding about 150lbs of dog up and down the stairs and lugging Guinness's absolutely enormous crate into the living room. And setting it up. And bringing up his food. blah blah blah.

So I'm sitting there, having given Cosmo and Guinness each a bully stick. Sophie was nowhere to be found, and I was pretty happy that the three of them seemed to be willing to coexist peacefully.

DUN DUN DUN.

Suddenly, I hear a scuffle and a sharp yelp and a deep growl. I jumped up just as Cosmo came and tucked himself behind my legs. I realized that Cosmo must have gotten curious about what it was that Mr. Guinness was chewing on...bad move, little buddy. I didn't notice at first, but it became clear within a few minutes that Guinness bit Cosmo -- three puncture wounds. Bordering HIS EYE.

I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and dialed the emergency vet. After speaking with her for a few minutes, she assured me that, "unless there's something hanging out of it," there was no need to bring him in that night for the bite, and that the next morning would be fine.

Ugh, ugh, ugh. Guinness, of course, was happily munching his bully stick. Cosmo glued himself to my side and wouldn't leave. Everyone took one last trip outside and we headed to bed. And duh, of COURSE Guinness woke up and started barking at least once an hour.

Things are starting to settle down a bit. I worked from home today, took Cosmo to the vet, and we're back at home with a round of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. It was a "lucky" bite, in that it's around his eye, where there isn't a lot of subcutaneous tissue and less chance for infection, but that it missed the eye itself. Blech. Guinness is starting to figure the place out and chill a bit, although there is no WAY I'm going to be leaving him with either of my babies unattended. He's blown through two bully sticks but hasn't touched tonight's kibble...which he likes to dump out, just like Sophie does.

On the plus side, I'll be waking up at 5am since Guinness doesn't sleep that well in strange places...which allows me to work out in the morning and leaves my evenings free to do things like watch a marathon of Pretty Little Liars and drink some wine.

How's your week going?

Holla

You guys, I had the BEST RUN yesterday.

Not the fastest or the furthest or anything remotely like that. I mean, I ran 4 miles in 37:01 -- as my "long run" for the week. At this time last year I'd have been sort of embarassed about that time. But not this year -- definitely not yesterday.

I've switched from my "usual" Runner's World training program (one short easy run, one tempo or speedwork run, and one long run) to Hal Higdon's novice plan.

That kind of thing isn't easy for me, since I've been running regularly for about 7 years now -- I'm not elite or anything, but I wouldn't consider myself a novice. But after a couple of weeks of my RW plan, I started noticing a pattern -- I was NOT looking forward to my runs. I was never sure if I'd be able to handle them, I was worried about injury, training was feeling like a job, and worst of all, I was really starting to regret registering for the Distance Run.

I really didn't want to admit it, but I had to: between my knee and hip injuries and my spring of basically zero training, I really wasn't at the level I was "pretending" to be at. I had made the mistake of plugging into the RW calculator some stats that I WANTED to be at (a recent race time of 2:00 for a half, for example, when I barely (BARELY!) finished Broad Street this year in the 1:47 range, and 11-15 mile weeks when I hadn't even cleared double digits for months) instead of where I REALLY was.

So I swallowed my pride, printed out Hal Higdon's twelve-week novice plan, and went with it.

And um, wow. You know, I had started to think of "just cover mileage" as kind of garbage runs. Just getting in miles for the sake of miles? What's that going to do? Certainly not make me faster. But duh...I don't need SPEED right now. It's OK if I run the same pace for every mile, because holy crap, I can barely get the miles in right now.

So anyway. This week called for a couple of two and three-milers throughout the week, plus a "long run" of four miles. My two and three-milers were as one would expect. Perfunctory, let's get it done and move on to lifting. But Sunday, I went for my "long run." I opted for the treadmill since it was pretty late in the morning (since I stayed in bed watching the Hills for two hours). First mile was nothing special. Second mile, I started to get a little bored and, as usual, found myself thinking about dropping out of training. After the third mile, I stopped very briefly to stretch my IT band and hip flexors, and then hopped back on.

I did my first three miles at 6.5mph, so I bumped it up to 6.7mph for mile 4. A couple of minutes into that mile, the magic started to happen. Oh my god -- ENDORPHINS! I had forgotten about those! I started smiling, and BIG -- I'm sure I looked like I had lost my mind. I was feeling invincible and I bumped the speed up to 7.0 at 3.5 miles, and did the final quarter mile at 7.5mph. I seriously felt like I was flying and I didn't want to stop...but hey, I'm listening to my training plan. So I stopped and stretched and smiled my big dumb grin and rocked out to my music.

I don't want to get too excited, since there's obviously a great chance that I'll have another exhausting crappy run or two this week...but it had been a LONG time since I remember feeling as amazing as I did on Sunday.

In other news, I STILL don't have my camera cord replaced. I went to Best Buy on Saturday and bought a card reader...for the wrong card format. DOH. I'm going to try to get out and get it exchanged this week, because I've got a ton of pictures to share and no way to get them uploaded!

How was everyone's weekend?

Magic Drawer

I'm having a particularly "meh" day at work today. See, I'm working on something that's not in any way, shape or form challenging. It's also not in any way, shape or form interesting. I have something else on my list that will be far more engaging, but I just HAVE to get this other, far more boring thing done first.

So what do I do? Take a break. A break to take blackberry pictures of the inside of my middle desk drawer and share them with you.



Isn't she gorgeous, folks?

This is also a peek into my average (and by "average," I actually mean "completely representative because I eat the same exact thing every single day until I get so sick of it I can't even look at it") daily eats.

Missing from this picture (because I was eating the last one as I got the inspiration to do a little smartphone photography) is approximately half a pound of baby carrots. Believe it or not, I eat these as much for stress relief as I do for taste. I cannot tell you how good it feels to just CRUNCH into one of those suckers. Sort of like, I don't know, punching a wall, or something. Very satisfying. I get so into the CRUNCH that I usually eat about 2/3 of the bag before I remember that I also have almond butter to dip them in! So, that tiny tupperware of AB -- I usually fill it about 1/3 of the way -- tends to last two days.

There on top we have a chocolate Clif Builders' Bar. In reality, I FAR prefer regular ol' Clif Bars. However, in reality, I am making a concerted effort to eat a lower-carb, higher-protein diet, because, in reality, for me, carbs = maintenance, and, in reality, I still do not fit in the percentage of my wardrobe that I'd like to fit in.

As far as high-protein bars go, the Builders' Bars are my favorite so far. Most other high-protein bars take the form of either this:



(AHHHHHHHH) or this:



(the size of a brick, the texture of clay, and "only" 437 calories)

Don't get me wrong, they're still not the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. But when it's 4:30pm, my stomach's starting to growel and I need to work out after I get home in a couple hours? They're perfect. And (for the most part) don't pretend to be a candy bar.

Inside the other tupperware? My daily dose of berries. I strongly prefer that they be room temperature rather than refrigerated, so they also live in my desk drawer.



I don't know what I'm going to do when berries are all out of season again. They're not TOO pricey at Costco during the winter, but they're nowhere near as good. And no other fruit comes close to being so perfect with plain yogurt.

Honorable mentions go to my collection of random extra napkins (they came in incredibly handy when I knocked over a cup of coffee a few weeks ago), the packet of Starbucks Via (soooo nice to be able to get iced coffee without leaving the office) and the extra hairbands (um, duh).

Hmm. Well, this has been a great diversion. Maybe my work will suddenly seem more fascinating when I get back to it! Happy almost-to-the-weekend!

Water?

Today's challenge?

This might not seem like a big deal to most of you. It's hardly news that you're supposed to stay hydrated, and it's hardly news that drinking water is generally the best way to do it.

But...ugh. Guys, I have a REAL PROBLEM with drinking water. I love it while I'm working out, but that's it. Period. Unless I'm sweating buckets, I just. Don't. Like. Water.



There, I said it. It's pretty much blasphemy, right? In a world where everyone just LOOOOOOOOOVES their water! OMG, it's SOOOOO healthy and refreshing and I make sure I drink three full Nalgenes a day! (Actually, it's probably not Nalgenes anymore, since they cause cancer or whatever -- what's the new fancy bottle? Sigg? Am I still living in the past? Whatever.)

Here's my second confession: I definitely stay hydrated. Constantly drinking. Um, no, not really THAT kind of drinking. But in the eyes of some (probably most, at least in this healthy-living blogworld), what I'm about to say might be just as bad.

I drink diet soda. All. Day. Long.

Yup. Pepsi Max is my favorite, followed by Coke Zero, followed by Diet Pepsi, followed by Diet Coke. And I'm not talking "oh, I have one can each day as a treat!" Nope. I'd estimate that I drink at least two liters of diet soda every day. By myself. I average one 20-ounce bottle in the morning and another in the afternoon. When I get home, I'm constantly refilling my glass. I probably take in enough artificial sweeter to kill a lab rat.

I think I'm going to try to change this habit. I have a pink Nalgene that lives on my desk. It's lived with me here at work for three years now. For a while, it got annihilated twice a day -- but not with yucky plain water. No, I would blow through those Crystal Light iced tea packets like nobody's business. Eventually, I ran out and for whatever reason, just stopped buying them. Not sure why.

And this brings us to confession number three. I'm going to try to force myself to drink water instead of soda at work...but not really because I buy the whole "diet coke will leach calcium from your bones and give you cancer and make you fat" argument. Um, no. I'm trying to change my habits because SODA IS EXPENSIVE. I'm averaging TEN 20-ounce bottles every week -- probably more like twelve, because there are definitely days where I go through three a day. Even assuming I buy all of them from the soda machine at work (cheapest around at $1.25 each -- they are $1.75 at the convenience store downstairs, and more like $2.25 if I get them at DiBruno's), that's fifteen bucks a week on soda. I also kill about three two-liter bottles at home each week - so at a minimum, that's TWENTY DOLLARS every single week on fizzy, carbonated deliciousness. When I have a perfectly good water cooler at my disposal!

So, we'll see. I figure my palate will adjust if I just keep making it a point to drink water. I'm interested to see if I see any health benefits from what I'm sure will be a drastic cut in aspartame intake, but frankly...I'm skeptical. And I certainly don't plan to give the stuff up cold turkey -- I'm going to keep drinking it at home.

In other news, we got our baby Sophie just about one year ago:



I can't get over how tiny and cuddly she was. Now she's got a big ol' diva attitude, and I can't imagine our lives without both of our dogs.

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:

Fish and a Mac

Last night, PhillyGuy and I went to dinner at Fish.

I've been wanting to head here for a while, and was so glad when PhillyGuy told me he had randomly made us a reservation. It was a gorgeous night, so we sat outside on Lombard:

Started with some beverages - glass of red zin for me, Small Craft beer for PhillyGuy.

We split a plate of seared scallops to start, served with roasted beets, mustard seeds and Nueske bacon. I also had a couple of oysters. Unfortunately for YOU, I'm a bad blogger and completely spaced on taking a picture until after we had annihilated everything...

As you can see, they were obviously just terrible. :)

When we were ordering, I told the waitress that I wanted a couple of oysters, but that I knew very little about them, except that I liked them. She was patient and informative and described each of the six varieties to me, WITHOUT making me feel like an idiot. Huge points for that. And the oysters did not disappoint - the Wawenauks, in particular, left me feeling like I'd just gotten hit in the face by a wave. I can deal with that.

For an entree, I selected the wahoo, which was served with a roasted onion, mushroom and fava bean presentation, over a lobster puree.

PhillyGuy went with the grouper, which was served with a cream sauce, peas, thinly sliced ham, and a pierogie. It sounded random - but holy cow, it was unreal.

The portion sizes of everything were perfect -- we finished our dinner (punctuating with "OMG" and general moaning) satisfied, but looking forward to dessert. And thank god for that.

We went with the key lime tart:

and the chocolate torte:

OH. MY. GOD. Now, I'm a HUGE sweet-and-salty person. Once I saw the words "dark chocolate," "pretzel crust," and "salted caramel" in one dish, I knew it was for me. And yes, it was everything I'd dreamed of and more. I had a small taste of the key lime tart, and it was delicious -- but it didn't stand a chance next to the torte.

Annihilation:

I kept telling PhillyGuy on our way home that I could die happy. Seriously, if we were crushed by an errant meteor or something, I'd have absolutely no regrets whatsoever. Suffice to say that we'll be heading back to Fish for sure.

Our other big purchase of the day was a brand-new MacBookPro for me. I spent a bunch of time this morning setting it up before I headed out for my run...but unfortunately, I forgot about my camera cord. And sometime between when I left for my run and when I returned, sweaty and smiling? Little Miss Sophie had gotten bored and chewed up my cord. She was nice enough to leave the USB piece untouched, but she completely destroyed the piece that hooks into my camera. So, before I can share pictures of my new toy, I need to head out and pick up a new cord. Which I will remember to keep in a dog-safe place.

"What, mama? I'm just an innocent lil' puppy."

Happy holiday weekend all!