Mega Planning Monday: week of 8/11

Alrighty y'all, it's time for a new week!  I am promising myself that this will be the week I finally get all my planned training runs in. Cross your fingers for me please!
If the weather plays nice and sticks with the forecast, I only have to dodge storms on Tuesday.

Training Plan:
Monday: rest day
Tuesday: 3 miles (goal pace 10:00)
Wednesday: 5 miles at race pace (goal is 10:00)
Thursday: 3 miles (easy pace)
Friday: rest day
Saturday: 6 miles (goal pace 11:00)
Sunday: cross train

Can I just say how glad I am that this training plan has every Monday as a rest day? It's like they know me.  The first weekday is rough enough without having to wake up early or making an attempt to function after 5 p.m.!

 Food
I have to admit that my food plan is still to eat everything I can from my fridge and pantry.  This evening I am hopefully hard-boil a bunch of eggs. I also have lots of chicken...and cheeses and bacon. So I am certainly not roughing it! Oh and chia pudding for breakfast.  I love saying I am eating pudding for breakfast. I feel like my 9 year-old self would be so jealous!


I hope you have an amazing start to the week!

Proper Planning...and whatnot

The problem with life is that there is a big gap between planning and implementation. I am an excellent planner and I can, on paper, make a day that has time for everything. Then the next day I'll oversleep by nearly two hours and blow the whole thing before my feet are even out of my cozy bed.

This little munchkin wanting to snuggle also does not help.
And yes he really is that dingy in real life. We went to the dog park last night. Which is probably why the plan for the week post was not even written on time. Go me haha.

So here is a brief summary of my training plan for the week.

Monday: rest day
Tuesday: 3 miles (goal pace 9:30)
Wednesday: 5 miles (goal pace 11)
Thursday: 3 miles (no goal pace)
Friday: rest day
Saturday: 9 miles (goal pace under 12)
Sunday: cross training (hot yoga?)

Are you there groove?

I fell off the wagon. Hard. But I'm here and I'm back to making plans. Which is a great first step I think.

I am a perfectionist and I am competitive. In some ways this is great, but it poses a real challenge other times because if I don't feel like I am meeting my goals I get overwhelmed and burnt out pretty quickly.

So here I am after a rest, ready to create new and more manageable goals!

Besides, I love love love mega planning Monday!

On the food front I have pretty much nothing planned. I am moving soon so I'm really just attempting to live off my pantry stash so I have less to pack and carry.

Running: this week my marathon training plan officially starts! I'm using the Hal Higdon Novice plan. With a few tweaks here and there of course.
The week:
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 3 miles
Wednesday: 5 miles at race pace
Thursday: 3 miles
Friday: rest
Saturday: 8 miles
Sunday: cross training

Now for the particulars. I am aiming for a 10 min/mile pace. This might be a little overly optimistic but we will see what happens. I'm going to try it a few times and reevaluate at the end of the month.

Tuesday I am going to keep trying for a 9:30 average pace and Thursday will be more of a recovery run.

The big plan for this evening is to go check out my new place! Tuesday will probably be date night. Then the rest of the week should be uneventful until I head to Raleigh again Saturday morning for Hanks last lesson then watching racing Saturday night in Rockingham.

My biggest accomplishment this past weekend was (sorta) teaching Hank to take a selfie.

It's a work in progress.
Hope you have a wonderful Monday!

Missing the Mountains Monday

This weekend was exactly what I needed.  I will go ahead and confess that I totally skipped out of my long run, but I cross trained like a champ.  I also ran about two miles because I wanted to for the first time in a very long time.  Yay for kicking the slump in the face...finally.

I went for long walks up and down mountains every day and I have to admit that my legs on booty are still feeling it! I also rode four horses in two days.  This would not have been a big deal about 3 years ago, but now I am out of shape and don't have the same muscles I used to.

 

One of the ponies (ignore my super profesh riding with a halter abilities) and part of the driveway I walked)

Of course I refueled with awesome food.

If you go to Brevard, NC you have to go to Dolly's for ice cream and Julies for breakfast. It's a rule.  Also Pescado's (which I missed out on this time!) and Jet's Pizza (which I grabbed for the drive home and ate today for breakfast and dinner).  There are more too..so if you are going to Brevard hit me up. I will give you the very thorough list of awesome things to see and do :)

I also got to hang out with Duchess (the cat) and Luigi (the goat). They are pretty cool critters.

I even got to see one of my old campers and it almost made me cry...or maybe it did a tiny bit.

Now I'm back home and I have to confess I already miss the mountains terribly.  The weather down here stinks...and can literally make you stink! I have been sweating from the moment I walked out the door this morning. I think the heat index was around 105 today.  I got to give two campus tours and two barn tours, so I was walking around in the heat for nearly five hours. Super fun.

Now that I am back, it is time to plan for the rest of the week!

Food
Tomorrow night I have to cook a real dinner so I am thinking maybe stuffed peppers. Wednesday is work travel so that is a mystery...except I know I will be searching out a Dunkin Donuts for iced coffee because I am addicted! Friday is a picnic/BBQ at work for lunch and boyfriend is insisting on a date night.  So I didn't cook anything ahead this week. I have muesli and almond milk, turkey sandwiches in pita, and leftover pizza to get me through.

Workouts
Monday: Rest (which turned into walking about 4 miles in hot hot hot weather by the way!)
Tuesday: 3 miles, goal of 9:30 per mile
Wednesday: 5 miles, goal of 10:30 per mile
Thursday: 3 miles, goal of 10:00 per mile
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 12 miles, long and easy
Sunday: Cross training (TBD)

Saturday and Sunday will probably be switched because the dog has a lesson at 11 which means leaving the house by 8:30.

My goal is to do my run in the morning every day this week. Wednesday it is going to be necessary since I will be away until late and totally exhausted when I get home I am imagining.

Now it's off to SweetFrog to round out my nutritious pizza dinner haha.

Mega-planning Monday

I suppose it is only fitting that I procrastinated my post about planning.  Go figure!
Confession: I originally wanted it to be Meal Prep Monday but I realized I spend about half the year traveling and not cooking for myself. So that seemed silly.  I think it can still be part of my Mega Planning though :)

Food for the week: (this is vital because when I don't plan ahead I end up eating very large quantities of leftover cheesecake for lunch lol)

This week I made a sausage and rice combo to pack for lunch.  The inspiration was dirty rice...but I know this is far from accurate so please don't judge me too harshly!
I cooked up this rice and these sausages:

And mixed them together with some tomato sauce:

I was actually impressed with the results and I am excited to have lots of leftovers to pack for lunch!

I also boiled a bunch of eggs for a high protein snack:

Of course to supplement all this I also have bread, bananas, and snacks left and right. (to be highlighted on Friday of course!)  Oh and cheesecake of course:

Workouts: (because going out without a plan has not been working for me)
The plan this week is for 3 miles Tuesday, 5 miles Wednesday, 3 miles Thursday, and 10 miles Saturday.  The weather has been nuts so I am going to get up and run before work this week.  For reals this time.  Typing this is like an official announcement so I have to be accountable now haha. Monday and Friday are scheduled rest days (yay) and Sunday is supposed to be cross training.  I am still searching for better ideas of what to do for this, but right now I am planning to bike again. Perhaps if I get up for my runs all week I will reward myself with a hot yoga class on Sunday.

Blog: I won't tell you what I have planned for this week, but this important part is that I have made plans for every day this week and even started rough drafting a few things!  Woah!

Question for you:
Do you plan ahead or do things on the fly?
I have to admit to being a great planner in the abstract way but struggle more to make concrete plans and carry them out.