caution tape and chicken with a kick

Recently, the Capital Area Greenway Trail has been extended to our neck of the woods, which is super exciting. Mike and I normally have to drive to an area where we can run since it gets pretty boring running through the neighborhood all the time. But now, we can get to an awesome trail from our front door!


Weeeeellllll, technically.... the trail hasn't opened yet. The access to the trail is still all muddy (remember my muddy Nikes?) and there is a lot of caution tape everywhere that has clearly been knocked down by others just like us. So far, we love the trail. It runs behind our house and right along the Neuse River. There are some parts where the water is very visible, but any type of running in nature makes me really happy.

We can get about 4 miles by going to each of the trails end points and back to our house, which is perfect for quick evening runs. There are lots of bridges, which are fun, and the trail is actually super wide. I can't wait until it is complete and we can actually get to other sections of the greenway from our house. I also think (hope) this is going to be a great selling point for our house, when the time comes. 

It is pretty amazing how quickly they are adding on to it. One day, we came to a bridge that literally just dropped off in the middle and now it is complete. I know we are kinda breaking the rules by going out on the trail before it has actually opened, but we have seen a lot of others back there, riding bikes and walking, so I think it is OK. :) We are really careful and don't go where it looks dangerous or unfinished.

I even got to see a beaver back there! I have never seen a beaver in real life before, so it was a pretty cool sight. You can't really tell in this picture, but he hiding up in the tree.

We haven't taken the dogs for a walk back there yet, but I am really looking forward to doing that this fall. I think it is a great thing that Raleigh is doing and I am really excited we are going to have such easy access to an amazing trail. I am sure once it is complete there will be many more miles to explore, so we are just enjoying it piece by piece.

I have another great, quick recipe for you!

Usually, by the time I get home, I am starving and that makes it hard to make decisions on the type of recipe I want to use. I told Mike we would need to use up the following items from our kitchen, before they went bad; green cabbage, butternut squash, an avocado, and chicken. He jokingly said, "avacodo-lime chicken with the cabbage and squash on the side." I kind of laughed, thinking that didn't really sound like a real recipe... but then I decided it was a pretty good idea. He gets one every once in a while. ;)

grilled chicken with a kick

boneless, skinless, chicken breasts (I made 3 so we had leftovers)
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Mrs. Dash Fiesta Lime Seasoning
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 avocado, sliced

Mix all of the seasonings into a small bowl and rub the mixture onto the chicken breasts. I barely coated each side of the chicken breasts. Pan fry the chicken in the olive oil until the chicken is cooked through (juices run clear). Once the chicken is cooked, serve with fresh avocado slices on top.

Seriously, that easy. And soooo delicious with just the right amount of kick! For the butternut squash, I always make it the same way. Cut vertically, clean out seeds, poke holes in the skin, brush with olive oil, place cut side down in a baking dish with just a little water at the bottom. Cook on 350 F for about 40 minutes until tender. For the cabbage, chop into bite size pieces, saute with olive oil, sea salt, and pepper until tender.

Have an awesome weekend everyone!

kale salad, chicken salad, and chopped salad

Let's jump past the hurdle of where I have been and just get into it, shall we? I won't waste your time with all of my boring runs and meals, I will just hit the highlights.

I have been doing really well with my weekday runs. The cooler weather has helped my motivation and gotten both Mike and I out for evening runs and out of bed for morning ones. My long runs are where I have suffered. Since I ran those 7 miles a few weeks ago, I haven't done another long one. I have been out of town or had people in town, so I just haven't had any interest in getting them done. I am getting back into it this weekend though, no excuses.

My half marathon training has me doing 3 miles on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 5 miles on Wednesdays. I usually play with my days a little bit and this week, I ran 3 miles on Wednesday and 5 miles this morning with the plan to run 3 miles tomorrow morning. But that will depend on which day this weekend that I plan on running 9 miles, because I definitely want a rest day before that. Either way, I am feeling pretty good about my runs and hoping that I can get back on track with the longer ones.

In some other fun running news, I have gotten a new pair of shoes! I loooved my Nike Relentless shoes and was really sad that it was time to let them go, but they were really worn out and actually started to give me major blisters from the worn material. I actually think that the blisters were the cause of my knee injury that I had talked about. I am pretty sure they made me shift my stride a bit, which misaligned my legs, so it was definitely time for a new pair of sneaks.

I took them out on a little mud trail for their last hoorah. :)

Mike and I decided to take advantage of a going out of business sale at one of the local running stores. They had running shoes for 50% off their original price, so we each got a pair for the price of one. I also scored a pair of thick running leggings for under $20, which will be perfect for winter running.

TWINSIES! :)

I am still getting used to my shoes since they are waaay more cushioned than my Nike's were. They are breaking in nicely, but I have noticed that the thick running socks that I needed to wear before, are almost too much for these shoes. Which is good since I have a ton of thin running socks that I couldn't wear before if I didn't want to get blisters.

Let's move on to the good stuff.... FOOD! Last weekend we spent our time with my favorite family, my sister and her hubby and kids. We had a great weekend just hanging out and playing with the kiddos and were sad to leave on Sunday. Before we left, my sister talked about prepping all of her lunches and dinners for the week to make life a little easier. When I got home, I decided to do the same by prepping a kale salad and some chicken salad for quick and easy lunches. I am so happy that I did!

Here are the recipes along with an extra recipe that I made a few weeks ago.


First up...  

 
Massaged Kale Salad! Seriously, I love kale. And I am not just saying that because it is really, really good for you, I loooove this stuff. The flavor is unlike any other lettuce and it is sooo filling!

Clean the kale using a salad spinner or paper towels
Cut off any bulky stems
Massage for a few minutes with just a little bit of olive oil. Start off with just a tablespoon and then add more as needed. You want the leaves to soften up, but not become soggy (which is what happened to mine).
Add a little bit of lime or orange juice to give it a citrus-y taste
Add in a handful of dried cranberries and shaved carrots
Top it off with just a sprinkle of sea salt and you are ready to go!

Health(ier) Chicken Salad

Buy a rotisserie chicken (like I did) or cook 2 large chicken breasts until fully cooked
Chop the chicken and add to a large bowl, then add:
1/3 cup plain greek yogurt
1/3 cup mayonnaise made with olive oil
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1 apple, cleaned and chopped
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
Sea Salt and Pepper to taste

Mix together and enjoy! We have been using whole wheat pitas and it has been fantastic!

Chopped Salad 

Mike wanted a chopped salad recently, so instead of buying all the ingredients separately, I just went to Harris Teeter and grabbed a few things from their salad bar. It made this meal super easy to make and saved me a lot of money by only getting what I needed for a few salads.

1 head of romaine lettuce, cleaned and chopped


1 tomato, chopped
2 tablespoons blue cheese crumbles
2 tablespoons real bacon crumbles
2 hard boiled eggs, sliced
2 tablespoons honey dijon mustard dressing
2 thinly sliced steaks (1 extra for the pups)
Sea Salt and Pepper

Season your steaks with a little sea salt and pepper. Grill in a pan until desired temperature (I tried to do medium rare, but it was pretty difficult with these thin steaks). I added my romaine to a bowl and tossed with the dressing before adding the rest of the ingredients. Then just pile everything on top of your lettuce, leaving the steaks for last.

Since the steak was cheap and they boys were good, I made them their own steak to share. It is amazing how they just seemed to know that I had made them one.

Well, I hope this was a nice long post to catch you up on things. I hope to be able to post again tomorrow! Have a great end of your week!

Long run success!

I was super worried that my knee wouldn't allow me to get in my long run on Sunday, but, I had no problems! I ended up feeling great the entire 7 miles and only started to feel my knee a little towards the end. Since it never really hurt, I was able to keep on going. I was pretty impressed with my speed as well. :)

Work is super busy right now so sorry for the quick and late post. G'night!

i cooked!

Things are kind of hectic around here again, which leaves little time for blogging. :(

I ran 4 miles yesterday and felt great all the way until about the 3.3 mile mark and then my knee started hurting again. I was able to make it to 4, but my knee was definitely flaring up and feeling pretty uncomfortable. I am going to keep icing it and I had planned on taking it easy this morning so I would be ready for a long run this weekend. I am really hoping this doesn't cause any real problems.

I didn't want to skip my run this morning, even though I probably should have just rested my knee, so I went for a quick 2 mile run. I tried to just jog comfortably and get in a good stretch run, which actually felt really great. My knee didn't hurt at all and I felt pretty awesome the entire run. The weather lately has been really wonderful for morning runs, I hope it stays this way.

I am going to ice my knee today, as well as maybe a little tomorrow, before trying to run 7 miles on Sunday. I have offered to help out with some things this weekend which are putting me in the office for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday, so I will plan to do my icing then. I guess Sunday will be the test. If I can't do it, then I need to start looking at some other options for treatment, but I am pretty optimistic that I will be able to get through this.

So, yeah, I cooked this week! We will get to that in just a second, since I did anything but cook last night. I am feeling stuffy and allergyish this week, and feel like I am coming down with some type of cold. I have been going to bed pretty early, which I think has helped a lot, but I still feel pretty crummy. I guess that is what 6 airports, 6 airplanes, 2 train stations, 1 train, 3 hotel rooms, and being around 6 children with runny noses will do to you. That, on top of not eating my best and slacking on the exercise has landed me with a run down feeling and a perfect host for sickness. No worries, I am taking zinc (yuck) like a champ with vitamin c and drinking lots of fluids. Because I wasn't feeling great, I was really craving some soup for lunch on Wednesday. Soup in August? Sometimes you just want what you want.

Last night's dinner came in a box...

For some reason, cereal sounded like the perfect dinner last night, so that is what I had. I walked in the house with a box of cereal and told Mike dinner was ready. He is such a trooper. :)

But, on Wednesday night, I actually did cook, and it turned out really tasty. It has inspired me to make a similar type meal but more of the Mexican variety... stay tuned for that.

BBQ Chicken Roll Ups

olive oil spray
2 chicken breasts, sliced thin (I bought our chicken already sliced very thin)
1/4 cup BBQ sauce of your choice
1/4 cup shredded pepper jack cheese

Preheat oven to 350 F and spray a baking dish with olive oil spray.  Lay chicken pieces flat and add a pinch of cheese to the center along with a small amount of BBQ sauce. Roll the chicken up, top with remaining BBQ sauce and cheese. Bake for 30-35 minutes covered.

I also roasted some broccoli and made a baked potato for Mike and I to share. It was a great dinner.

Doesn't the chicken look like a mini enchilada? I think I will try to make it with enchilada sauce and beans next time.

This weekend, besides working, we don't have too much planned. Tonight I think we will get a movie and some take out Thai for dinner, for a night on the couch. Tomorrow I have a bridal shower to go to and then a few hours at work if I am feeling better. Sunday we have church, more work, and then some more couch time. It is not going to be a productive weekend for the Blacks.... but I am perfectly fine with that.

Have a great weekend!

pb&j oats

Today is Week 4, Day 1 of my half marathon training. Mike joined me for 3 miles this morning and it was actually a really good run. Tomorrow I will need to get up a tad earlier so I can squeeze in 4 miles, but I will worry about that tomorrow.

I made it the entire 3 miles without having to stop for my knee. Towards the end, I definitely started to feel it flare up a bit, but it didn't really ever slow me down. I went ahead and iced it down this morning anyway, just to be safe. Actually, I am currently sitting here with my leg elevated under my desk and an ice pack on my knee, I am such a good patient. :)

A while ago, my friend Layne (hi!), told me about peanut butter and jelly oatmeal. She raved about this combination and although it doesn't sound too far off from my normal oatmeal concoctions, I resisted making it because I am not the biggest fan of pb&j. I eat it when I am hungry and there is nothing else, but it is never my first choice in a sandwich combination. Well, last night as I was packing my lunch, I realized we are literally out of everything in our kitchen. I had no fresh fruit or yogurt to add to my oatmeal, so I decided to make things easy and try pb&j oats. I combined chocolate protein powder, oatmeal, a scoop of peanut butter, and a small teaspoon of homemade raspberry jam in a bowl and covered it with skim milk.

It was amazing. Probably one of the best oatmeal combos I have ever had and you better believe that it will be making a regular appearance in my breakfasts.

I am trying to get more food back into my posts, but it has been very difficult with the amount of eating out and quick meals we have been throwing together lately. Now that things have settled down a bit, I hope to get back in the kitchen and making some full dinners again!

Mexico, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island... in that order.

I'm back! I won't be doing a full re-cap on my trip because it was very involved and would seriously take me 8 posts to cover it all. Instead, I will give you just a little snippet as to what I have been up to for the last week and a half. First half of the trip - Mexico, for a close friend's wedding.

While I was in Mexico, I only needed to get in 5 miles on Saturday and then a 3 mile run on Tuesday. Since there was really no where to run, unless I did so on the beach or left the resort (a big scary no for me), we did a bunch of kilometers on the treadmill. Their treadmills are set up way differently than ours are, because I had no idea how far I actually ran. I pretty much just ran for 45 minutes or so at a speed of 10 (clearly not the same) and figured it was about 4 -5 miles. I ended up skipping my Tuesday run since that was the day we left Mexico and we had 12 hours of travel time ahead of us. I needed all the sleep I could get.

Wednesday we woke up in Boston and headed out for a 3 mile run around a nearby park. We really had no idea where we were going, so we ended up just going round and round and then through and around the park over and over. We just ran until we got to 3 miles and called it quits. The route looks quite funny on the Nike app.

I spent the entire rest of Wednesday exploring Boston, so I wish I had gone running after that. We could have gone on a much more fun run around the city than what we did, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway.

Thursday was another really busy day. After doing some touristy Boston things with my sister in laws, we literally had 20 minutes to get to our hotel, grab our bags, and be on a train towards Providence. I thought I would have time later in the day to go for a run, but it just didn't happen. As soon as we got off the train we were in full wedding planning mode for my sister in law and spending some quality time with family.

On Friday morning, Mike and I woke up with a plan to run 6 miles around his cousin's house. She lives near a park along the water in Rhode Island, so we headed out by 8 am to begin our run. The run started out great on pretty flat land and then we hit the park. For some reason, my knee started bothering me around mile 2 and just wouldn't let up. I had to stop 3 or more times to stretch it out but each time I began running again, it felt awful. I could tell it was very swollen and it hurt the most to stretch it out or bend it completely. With each step I winced in pain. Finally, at 4 miles, Mike made me stop. He told me I was going to end up injuring myself worse, and though he was probably right, I didn't want to listen. I was feeling great and felt like my energy was really high for a 6 mile run. We walked the remaining 2 miles back to his cousin's house.

I was really worried about my knee. I still am a little worried that it is going to interfere with my training. After we ran, I alternated ice on and off for the next few hours which really helped with the pain. I was able to wear heels the next 2 nights without any issues and now my knee feels completely normal. Granted, I haven't ran since that day, so we will see how it goes when I am back at it tomorrow.

We had every intention of running this morning but to be perfectly honest, we are exhausted. We got back into town at 10 pm on Sunday night after a very busy few days with Mike's family and then both of us headed in to work on Monday morning. Right after work last night, we met my mom and her boyfriend half way between our houses to get our dogs and didn't get home until almost 10 pm again, getting us to bed much later than we wanted. There are suitcases and laundry piles all over our bedroom and it took us almost 30 minutes to pack up our gym bags this morning before finally realizing that even if we left at that second, we wouldn't be able to squeeze in a 3 mile run. Instead, Mike jumped in the shower while I cuddled up for 30 more minutes with the pups. I think we are all feeling a very early bedtime tonight. Right after we get some laundry started.

 
My plan is to get my 3 short runs in tomorrow, Thursday and Friday, rest on Saturday, and then get my long (7 mile) run in on Sunday. Then next week I am going to try to get back on my normal Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sat schedule. After talking with a few people about what my knee is feeling like, I think I just have to treat the symptoms by icing after runs and doing some really good stretches before and after each run. Luckily, I can ice my knee at work after my weekday runs, I just worry about allowing myself the icing time on the weekends. I tend to go, go, go on the weekends, but hopefully I can get in some good rest and relaxation for the remaining weeks of my training.

Have a great day! 

200 miles, W2D2 and W2D3

I forgot to post yesterday's run! You guys are supposed to call me out when I don't post a run. Thanks a lot... :)


Yesterday, I was able to get outside for my run, which was pretty great. I actually felt really good and tried to pace myself the entire run. I still ended up going faster in the last mile, but overall, the run felt pretty steady and smooth.

W2D2:

If there was ever a day when I could have totally skipped my run and stayed in bed, it would have been today. It took everything I had to get out of bed this morning, so I forgive myself for a pretty brutal start. Eventually, I got in my groove and although it wasn't very fast, it ended up being an okay run. I just kept reminding myself that my next run will be in Mexico, which made me really, really excited.

W2D3:

I also busted open a blister on the back of my foot this morning, which made my last mile a little more difficult. Each time I stretched out my foot I could feel my sock rub the open blister which made me cringe. I now have several beautiful blisters on my feet, along with horrific calluses that just add to the ugliness that are feet. I guess it comes with the territory, so I just have to deal.

In some other fun news... I have hit the 200 mile mark on my Nike+ app! In less than 3 months, I have added another 100 miles to my log, which is pretty freaking impressive, if you ask me. :)

I think it is time for some new running shoes now.

I will be signing off until next week when I return to the good old U.S. of A! I will be posting my runs from my phone when I can or when I get back to the states.

Have a great week!