[don't wake me up]

Hello, Tuesday.

This first full week back to work is definitely making itself known - I came home, had a quick snack and promptly napped on the couch! Ridiculous. I could swear it's Thursday, which means I'm in for a looooong haul. Sigh.

However, my return to training has been successful thus far, as well as my clean eating. Some notes about my menu:

The Runner's World Black Forest Blizzard Smoothies are indeed divine, however, they are also expensive. Michigan's cherry crop was a big flop this year, so unfortunately cherries are hard to find and are pricey! My local grocery store did not have frozen cherries on hand, so I bought a 2-lb bag of fresh cherries. 

It took me a hot second to realize that, in order to make those cherries usable for my smoothie, I would have to pit and freeze every. single. one. of. them. Needless to say, I got REAL good at pitting cherries.

Though the cherries were a huge investment of time and money, the smoothies are worth it in the end! Yummy!

The crunchy veggie wraps are quite good, make sure to layer on the hummus!

Finally, the piece de resistance: the Cajun Shrimp and Polenta (which turned out to be fairly pricey as well - shrimp is $$). But I've got a major beef with this recipe, and it's all in the first line:

Whisk 1/4 cup yellow cornmeal into 3/4 cup boiling water. Cook over low heat 10 minutes, whisking frequently; remove from heat, stir in 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan and set polenta aside. Heat 2 teaspoons olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Sauté 1/2 cup chopped onion, 1 minced garlic clove, 1/2 teaspoon chili powder, and 1/2 teaspoon paprika 2 minutes. Add 1 cup chopped green bell pepper, 1/2 cup frozen corn, and 1/2 cup black beans; cook 6 minutes more. Add 12 large cooked shrimp and sauté until warmed through. Serve over polenta.

Seriously, what idiot wrote this recipe? They couldn't have known too much about polenta, that's for sure. 3/4 of a cup of water is not nearly enough water for 1/4 cup polenta! As soon as that yellow cornmeal hit the boiling water, it promptly {schwooooop} sucked up all the moisture and became a giant yellow, lumpy ball. Woof. Using my better judgement tonight, I boiled nearly two cups of water, including a chicken bouillon cube for more flavor. Then, slowly, I poured in the cornmeal (I just went by sight and kept slowly adding as much as I thought I needed) and stirred it with a wooden spoon so that I could scrape the polenta from the bottom and prevent it from burning. This worked out much more effectively, thank goodness!

Not only have I had culinary adventures that would have turned Julia Child over in her grave, but I have also had some pretty grueling workouts!

Monday was the Feisty 50 and then the bike for an hour. Let me just tell you, this workout is NO JOKE.

50 air squats - those were okay, I just took them slow and concentrated on my form.

50 burpee push ups - DEATH!!!!! AAAAHHH!!! After laboring intensely through the first ten, I promptly decided to divide them into sets of ten and do them after every other set of moves. Yeah, that didn't work out so well. I think I only did 3 sets. They're fridiculous.

50 butterfly situps - decently hard (and I can definitely feel the burn today). Again, I had to break them up in sets of 10, as I'm so out of shape!

50 stairs - yeah right. Working out at the YMCA, I wasn't about to go bounding up and down the one set of stairs FIFTY TIMES while the good patronizing folk tried to climb around me to get to and from their workouts.

50 in and outs - again, burning. While I had to content myself with slow sets of ten, the mother who brought her kid with her to the Y was ripping these out next to me like they were a summer frolic. Awesome.

50 tuck jumps - so. much. cardio! woof.

This is where it starts to get really ridiculous:

50 hand release push ups - Seriously now, 50 more push ups after doing (almost) 50 burpee pushups? And you can't half-ass it with these pushups, they are full up and down. On the plus side, my triceps and biceps will be ripped like crazy if I keep these up!

50 Russian twists - more core here. These aren't too hard, so I may add a medicine ball or weights after a few sessions of this.

50 reverse prisoner lunges - They would not be hard if they were the first thing on the list - but unfortunately they're the very last thing. And every muscle in my body was trembling while I completed these lunges.

After nearly collapsing in a sweaty, spandexy heap on the floor of the Y, I somehow managed to drag myself down to the cardio room and put in 14 miles on the hilliest setting of the bike in an hour. Not too shabby for my first time on the bike in two weeks, especially after such a grueling floor exercise.

Looking back, I'm surprised I'm not more sore today! I managed to drag my sorry butt out of bed at 6 to go for the 3.5 miles as dictated by my dearly beloved Hal Higdon schedule.  I pulled off a 9:17, which I am pretty pleased with, considering all the working out I did the night before! Tomorrow's a speed day, and I'm trying to psych myself up for that 35 minute tempo run (never my favorite thing to do, but essential when building speed over longer distances.)

Wish me luck!

Happy trails.