Oh yeah…it’s Freedom Friday!!!

Another chilly start to a Bay Area morning.  Brrrr.  38° at 8:10am?  Bleah!

So a Janathon update is in order!  If you don’t know what Janathon is, click on that handy hyperlink up there and check it out.  It’s a super fun way to keep you moving and help with the accountability part (yeah the sucky part).    What you do is you blog (or FB post or Tweet) within 24 hours of completing your daily exercise.  So like I said yesterday I kinda bombed on the 24 hour update on January 1st…but then caught right back up with yesterday’s update.  So I’m here again to be accountable for not sucking.  😀

Last night I headed to XploreYoga for my normal 5-6pm Muscle & Flow class…unfortunately my instructor was out sick so I did another 5-6pm Vinyasa Flex with Elise.  I love the flex class but was hoping for some core and super sweating.  So Elise nicely added in some power yoga sequences to her normal flow.  I’m getting much more confident in my Wheel poses – not as worried I’m going to snap my neck because of my weak arms.  So bonus for me.  😀

Then this morning I dragged myself out of my warm bed…for which I shall thank my overheating body.  I don’t know what’s the deal but I get so hot when I sleep so it’s either on with the covers or off with the covers.  Drives HunBun absolutely nuts.  So I was too hot to stay in bed – which means I got dressed in my warm work out clothes to go freeze in the garage.  At least freeze until I got all warmed up from jumping around.  I did my 30 minute circuit (12 cycles of 1 min on and 10 sec rest for 2 circuits.  I did a bunch of old school calisthenics for the first circuit and focused on arms and squats (lift that butt up!) in the second circuit.  I held my forearm plank for the very last minute – WHOO WHEE!  That was a nice finish!

So Janathon report – Complete!

Thursday, January 3: 1 hour Vinyasa Flex class with Elise

Friday, January 4: 30 minute circuit in the garage!

For breakfast I ate some gluten free overnight oats I made up yesterday.  Super simple: 1/4 cup Oikos greek yogurt, 1/4 cup GF steel cut oats, chopped up apple, chopped up pecans and some pumpkin pie spice.  Stir it up and put in the fridge until you’re ready to eat.  I put it in canning jars with the screw lid to make it easy.   I prefer the GF steel cut oats – gives it more chew.

So that’s it for my Friday morning.  I must say I’m off to a great start!

See ya later!

Cathy

 

Back…with a new word!

I know right?!?  That’s what my 10yo would say and I find most appropriate here.  Long break again where I just didn’t find a moment to log in and jot stuff down.  So let’s catch up shall we?

It wasn’t a Staycation it was a Projecation

So last week HunBun and I took time off from work to do a bunch of stuff that we had procrastinated long enough on.  You know how you do “around the house projects” and then look back and say “why didn’t we do that last year (or 2 years ago)?”  Yeah, that’s us.  So with the wonky weather in the Bay Area, CA last week we decided that it was going to be filled with long awaited projects – Whee!  Bleah!

The weather was a major decider in what we dd every day.  So with Monday being projected as rain-free, we decided to tackle the dirt square by the front door.  Now it hasn’t always been a dirt square, but over time the plants got all janky and we moved the big tree that was the focal point…so that gradually it became that uneven dirt/rock spot RIGHT WHERE EVERYONE CAN SEE!  It irritated HunBun to his last nerve…so we decided to do this.

Now that’s a welcome

We planted 3 palms and then covered the dirt with some landscaping river rocks.  We have to get taller pots for the 3 plants we’ll have in the back right under the window.  The current plants are in shorter pots and we need some height change for effect.  Thanks HGTV!

We should have kept going on the other side of the door where we have a rectangle planting area under the other window.  But this project took us about 4.5 hours and we were hecka tired from lugging rocks and placing them.

Then the rain came….

So when it was cold and wet outside we spent the days inside doing everyone’s favorite maintenance activity – touch up painting – YAH!  You know those projects where you can’t tell you did anything?  That’s what touch up painting is.  I mean I guess the crown and base looks shinier…and we don’t have those random pencil/scuff/chip spots in the hallway, office, master bedroom, master bathroom, front bathroom, laundry room.  But really you can’t tell that we spent 2.5 days doing touch up painting.  Well except in the laundry room where the door and casing went from a yellowish straight from Home Depot color to a crisp clean white.  And in the hallway where we unfortunately, for us, used a different paint finish on the touch ups and can now see blops of color here and there.  UGH.  We’ll have to re-touch the hall when we do the front room where the Christmas tree is since both rooms are the same gray color.  I don’t have any pictures for you…since it’d look like I was just showing you pictures of every room in our house.  🙂

So my new word, projecation is really because we did a whole bunch of projects while on our “vacation” or “staycation” as they call it now since we didn’t go anywhere.  Well projecation can cause some provocation of mini arguments and irritations.  Too much together time?  No more like two people who like to do things a certain way and expect the other to be a mind reader to know exactly what we’re going to do as soon as we decide to do it.  Nothing major…just a bunch of long loud breathing and forced quiet to calm down.  🙂  I’m sure any of us in a relationship totally gets it.

Sweats

I did a couple of runs and circuits during the projecation.  Nothing too jazzy or exciting.  Just used my interval clock and did a bunch of random things until sweat started dripping all over. 

I did get to 2 yoga classes during the week.  My favorite Monday night Vinyasa Flow class from 5-6pm then did a new class Xplore Yoga just added – Wednesday night Vinyasa Flex from 5-6pm.  I liked the new class a lot.  Building up some flexibility and the instructor was fantastic.  Xplore also added a new class on Friday night – Crossflow, a blend of cross fit and yoga.  I wasn’t able to get to the class because 12yo had his first band concert.

Yes.  That is my 12yo.  Currently taller than me and I’m 5’10”!  They had the church sanctuary decorated with white christmas trees in groups of 3.  It was really beautiful and the concert was lovely too.  HA!

Eats

On Saturday I did the Dr. Oz 3 day cleanse, where all you do is drink 4 smoothies a day.  It’s pretty easy to stick to and the smoothies did fill me up and kept me satisfied.  I didn’t do the epsom salt bath every night though, not sure what impact that would have on the detoxifying.  It must have worked because by the 3rd day my tongue felt perpetually coated with guck.  It was probably the easiest “cleanse” or “deprivation” style diet I’ve ever tried.  I call it a deprivation diet because you deprive yourself of certain types of food.  So on the last smoothie of the last day – I quit.  I know right!  Well the reason I quit was because I made this tasty delight:

Easy Dinner

4 ingredients (+ salt & pepper): Red potatoes, Hilshire Farms Hardwood Smoked Chicken Sausage, Leeks, Fuji Apple.  Instructions:  1) Slice everything up – the potatoes, leeks and apple into thin slices for quick cooking.  2) Add 1 Tbsp olive oil to pan and saute the red potatoes until almost cooked through.  3) Add the chicken sausage to get a nice brown color and warmed through as the sausage is pre-cooked.  4) Add the leeks and apples at the same time and cook for another 5-6 minutes until the apples and leeks start to soften.  EAT!

It smelled so good and I really wanted something warm and hearty to eat instead of another cold veggie smoothie.  So I said goodbye to Dr. Oz and hello to warm delicious food that I could chew.  🙂  This dish was a big hit and as soon as I posted it to my FB I got a bunch of questions from family about what I made and how to cook it up.  Winning!

My other eats since Monday have been my norm, protein pancakes and wraps.

I forgot the banana

Cukes & Carrots for snack

Roast Beef wrap

Then last night 12yo and I headed to the Westfield mall down in Santa Clara for this:

Oh yeah!

Althleta opened up a new store and I got an invite to the grand opening.  .  So I asked HunBun if he wanted to go.  He said “uh, no”.  So I asked 12yo and he said “Sure”.  Don’t you love kids?  I appreciated it because that meant we could blaze down in the car pool lane since we’d be heading toward San Jose at 5pm – smack in the middle of commute traffic.  Sweet!

We got a parking in the first row we turned down – Winning!  Then did a quick search for the store, since we got there at 530 and the invite said the opening was from 6-8pm.  Well once we found the store we saw that they were letting the invitees in the doors.  So instead of heading to the food court 12yo agreed to go in to the store.  😉  It’s like a healthier candy store!  They offered some little bites and wine/sparking water as you roamed the racks…which made it difficult to try things on.  Good thing I had an extra pair of hands….which meant that he drank up my sparking water.  LOL

I found some cute new winter running gear that I can’t wait to sweat on:

Sweet new gear

Goody bag with purchase

After enduring my shopping activity – which included 12yo holding my purse, belt and sweater at different points as I tried on 3 tops; we headed up to the food court to find something to eat for dinner.  He got a sushi platter and I got Chicken Pad Thai.  It was so much food that he and I shared my Pad Thai with some left over for his school lunch today.  It was really tasty…but next time I’d order without the protein.

Food court Pad Thai

We grabbed a hot drink from Starbucks and headed home.

It was a great week off from work and hopefully I’m back in the routine – early wake ups to exercise, blog, work, yoga, cook, chill, sleep – Repeat.  🙂

See ya later

Cathy

Weekend Update

What up Ladies!

Saturday was “race” day…remember the air quotes around “running” on the last post?  Well they were extremely appropriate.  I would say I averaged 10 minutes of total run/jogging time on this trail.  The rest would be better labeled as a power hike through the rolling hills of Danville, California.

We parked far away from the park and caught the shuttle the lovely folks at Brazen Racing provided for us.  (No photo – fail)  It took about 10 minutes to ride up the windy road to the race location.  I sat next to a gal that was running the half-marathon; hope she did really well.  It was super misty and chilly up at the top and it wasn’t your typical crush of people, which was nice.

 

Waiting for race start

This little one was so cute!  He did the 5K and was like a jack rabbit…running then walking then running then walking.  The funniest was when he would pass people he’d smile at them and say “Boo!”.  I can say, with confidence since this was my second race with Brazen, you have the nicest people setting these races up and the sweetest people running these races.  Everyone’s super chill and you can just start talking to random folks and potentially find your new race pal (Hi Belinda and hubby!).

We were the last group, as the 5K’ers so we said we were going to run until the first set of hills…well that was probably 4 of the 10 run time minutes.  So you know what we were facing here’s a little photo montage (pardon the blurries, I was actually trying to race here 🙂  ).

On the trail…single file now

I’m running here!

Winding, winding, winding up up up

Like climbing Everest

New friend Belinda!

It’s all downhill from here!

The one thing we wanted was to not finish last…not to be jerks – but you know…we’re jerks.  HA!  Another thing was that we didn’t want the half-marathoners to finish before us either.  So as we are heading down the hill for the last 0.5 miles of our 5K who do we see huffing it up the hill????  Dang HF’ers!   Wholly Guacamole!!!!  We were like, whu?!?  These dudes were like zoned in – breathe was loud and their eyes were just blazing forward.  We were in awe…like these 2 guys

We made sure to run around the last corner before crossing the finish line and picked up this Flavor Flav ready race bling!

Bling Bling

Flames and everything, right?!?  So now that’s hanging up next to my tough Trail Hog medal from last month.  It’s like a zoo in here!  🙂

Then we erased all the calories we just burned by pigging out at the post-race buffet.  (Why did I not photo that again, Argh!)  Smeared PB on half a bagel, grabbed some pineapple slices, a little cup of pretzel M&Ms AND the awesome cappucino It’s It ice cream sandwich!   EEEEEEEEE!!!!  That thing is so good!

If you’re in the Bay Area totally do the Brazen Racing series of local races.  They are the best folks, both putting it on and participating in them.  I’ve got a couple more through the end of the year…next one’s a 10K.  Whee!

After the race LiLo and I headed to Downtown Danville for a street fair type of deal – food and crafter booths.  (Of course no photos…although it’s more because my phone was ready to die on me but also because I forgot, DER).  We stopped and ate a grilled chicken caesar wrap – so YUM.  It also must have looked so Yum because we had 2 folks stop and ask us where we bought ours from.

Oh, I did get one photo.  The kids were doing safe trick’or’treating at the fair and I saw this coolio kid…

I’m a Minecrafter

10yo totally wants to make a Minecraft costume this year so we’ve been saving boxes like mad fools (you don’t realize how hard these are to come by until you need them).  So when I saw this kiddo walking by I had to ask his parents if I could snap a photo (and make sure they knew I wasn’t some perv skeeving out on their boy) so 10yo and I could use as a template.  The mom said she bought both of the things on Amazon!  Man, the things we spend money on now a days!

So that’s my weekend…and now it’s the week – so we’ll see how today goes.  It’s starting off cold and rainy – so howdy do Fall!

See ya later!

Cathy