Fudge, Star Wars and Other Randomness

My pistachio fudge turned out pretty good! I actually think it's more of a nougat texture, but it's tasty!

I used this recipe, but I let it cook a little longer than it said because I felt like the mixture needed a little longer to smooth out and become less gritty. If I make it again I would use a larger pan so the fudge would come out a little thinner. It's very sweet, so I think it would be better if it was more spread out. A better pistachio to fudge ratio. 

I cut some seriously consistently sized pieces too. Ha!

We'll see what other people think on Christmas.

The Sound of Music was on tv the other night as a sing along - it was basically movie karaoke. Pretty funny.

Tom and I went and saw the new Star Wars on Monday.

And again on Tuesday.

Tom is a big Star Wars fan, so the fact that he wanted to see it again is a big endorsement for the movie. I really liked it too! Have you seen it yet?

I can't remember the last time gas was this cheap!

I got this body butter as part of an Influenster campaign, and I ended up really liking it. I'm officially out!

I'm still looking for my motivation. It's been really hard to get out the door for a run this week. I made it out on Tuesday for 6 miles around the neighborhood, and I wasn't ridiculously slow, which was nice. My made up training plan has gone out the window this month. I'll be back to an actual training plan in January, so my goal right now is to do what I can so I don't feel like I'm starting over when that time comes.

And since no post is complete without a Buddy picture:

Marathon Training Week 4

This week in training started strong, and ended kind of blah. I am only partly to blame, the weather needs to take a little credit.

Monday: Cross Training. I did a couple of Piyo workouts (Define: Lower Body & Define: Upper Body) to make about an hour of cross training. Piyo is interesting because it manages to work my muscles in a way where they hurt and/or shake while I'm working out, but they feel nice and relaxed once I stop. It's pretty nice.

Buddy helped.

Tuesday: 3 miles.  I wore my Wave Sayonaras, which really should be retired, and had an awesome run! It was still fairly humid out, but it was a little cooler than it has been, and I was feeling good! I ran 3.11 miles in 25:58 - an 8:21 pace! I was really happy to have a great run, because all this hot weather is really starting to wear me out.

Wednesday: 5 miles. Humid, as usual. I didn't plan out my route well, and ended up running up and down some dead end streets to hit my mileage. The world's creepiest ice cream truck passed me several times too. 5.01 miles at 9:00 pace.

Thursday: 3 miles.  I was SO tired and was just not feeling a run. I took a rest day, and then stayed up too late at the drive-in movies. Worth it.

Friday: Rest day. I decided to do Thursday's run on Friday, though I was whiny about it. I actually said, "but three miles is really far!" before I left. Mature. 3.1 miles at an 8:51 pace.

Saturday: 6 mile pace run. I woke up early and drove down to meet up with my old weekend running buddies. I missed them and the beautiful trails we run on! About a half mile after we started the weather took a turn and we ended up running through a crazy thunderstorm. We were drenched, but it was a lot of fun! 6.89 miles at a 9:09 pace.

Sunday: 9 miles. This just didn't happen. Saturday afternoon, while lugging laundry bags back and forth to the car, I pinched something in my neck. It was seriously painful, and it wasn't feeling better this morning. Between my neck and the fact that it was supposed to be the hottest day of the year, I opted to err on the side of not getting heat stroke and/or making my neck worse.

Instead I spent some time relaxing, and did a bit of coloring in the super-cute coloring book my friend Kate made. You should definitely check out her Etsy store: HERE!

Some Randomness and a Movie Night

I've gotten really bad about blogging lately. Between work, random house projects, and marathon training, blogging seems to be the thing that gets dropped first. So today you get a super random update. Aren't you excited?

We got this big (10'x20') canopy for the patio area. Since the grill is pretty much our only way of cooking right now (other than the toaster and the waffle iron), we needed to make sure the weather wouldn't stop us from having dinner.

My Wave Sayonara 2s should really be retired at this point, but I had a super great run in them this week, so today is not that day.

Buddy likes to lay in the narrowest spot in the house. That way you can't go anywhere without him knowing. Don't you love our kitchen floor? It's getting replaced. For sure. And the cabinets...and the counters...most of the kitchen really.

This is a really good, summertime beer. Grapefruit IPA, yes please!

I am a super lazy member of Influester, and somehow managed to get picked for their Sunshine VoxBox. I am pretty excited to try out the Vaseline spray moisturizer, and I have been looking for those sriracha almonds every time I go to the grocery store. I love getting to try out new things for free! (Who doesn't?)

Thursday night we decided to go to a drive in movie theater. Dogs are allowed, so Buddy got to come with us.

He was pretty happy to be invited.

We saw Minions and Jurassic World. Minions was really cute and funny and Jurassic World was way better than I had been led to believe.

There are actually a couple of drive ins near us, so there's a definite possibility that we'll be going again.

Have you gone to a drive in? 

Do you now have the "stranded at the drive in" song from Grease stuck in your head?

How about now?

Movies and Training Changes

We had a relaxing post-race weekend. Mostly we lounged at home and watched movies.

First up was Interstellar - long, but infinitely more interesting than Gravity. Plus we only made Matthew McConaughey/Lincoln jokes for the first half hour or so ;)

Last night was Night at the Museum 3 - super cute, like all the Night at the Museum movies, but sad to watch Robin Williams.

I'm trying to get myself to run outside more. I'm getting the miles in, but running outside is so different from the treadmill. Changes in weather, hills and running surface just can't be properly simulated on the treadmill. I've made a few changes in my training too, so hopefully when race day rolls around again I'll be able to keep up the pace I know I should be able to maintain.

Before each run I am doing the lunge matrix and leg swings  and I have started following Coach Jay Johnson's 8 week general strength training plan. These extra steps only add about 10-15 minutes to my workout, and hopefully they'll help my overall fitness. Fingers crossed!

I ran a few easy miles around the neighborhood this afternoon. They weren't fast by any means, but they were easier than I expected them to be this soon after the race this weekend. Plus I went into a different neighborhood than I usually run in, and it was much nicer - less traffic, and better views!

Have you seen any good movies lately?

Pictures of Buddy Sleeping

It was a pretty low-key weekend around here. A sore throat snuck up on me on Friday, so I didn't end up meeting up with the group to run on Saturday morning. I hated to miss the run, but with the West Point Half coming up in a few weeks, I would rather miss out now rather than later.

I still wasn't 100% on Sunday, so I decided to take a pass on my long run for the week. I ran 3.1 miles instead - better than nothing. I ran 13 last week, so I'm not worried about being under trained. Worst-case scenario I will be slower than I want to be come race day, and that's ok.

We finally watched Mockingjay: Part 1 - it was pretty good, though I really don't think they needed to split the last book into two movies. Parts of it really felt unnecessarily stretched out, but money's gotta be made I suppose.

Since I don't have anything else terribly exciting to talk about, please enjoy some pictures of Buddy sleeping.

Race Sign Up, Strength Training and Crab

I took my rest day on Sunday very seriously. Mostly unintentionally.

I was ridiculously tired from not sleeping well on Friday and waking up early on Saturday to run, so I ended up sleeping in. Really sleeping in.

Ok, I woke up at 10:58.

The day mostly consisted of catching up on blogs and digging through boxes in the basement for all of my workout dvds - I did manage to do some laundry though!

And we watched Divergent. It was cute - Hunger Games is better though.

I also signed up for my first race of the year - the West Point Half Marathon at the end of March. It's hilly. Crazy hilly. One of my weekend running buddies ran it last year and is running it again this year, so we are now planning to harass convince some our other weekend runners to join us.

Good thing I got my new training journal in the mail over the weekend!

Today I reinforced the knowledge that while I can run for hours, I have really minimal muscle strength when it comes to anything else.

I did a Jillian Michaels dvd and wanted to die for about half of it. I guess that means I should do it more than once a year.

She's so mean.

You should definitely be jealous of our dinner tonight. For Christmas, my mom sent us a big box of fish and some king crab.

Merry Christmas to us!

Buddy's had an exhausting day of napping. It's a rough life.

Do you do any workout videos?

Are you a cardio addict or are you good about strength training?

A slightly longer streak

We watched Epic this morning - it's really cute!

I somehow managed to scrape my shin stepping onto my treadmill this afternoon. And I'm pretty sure the tv remote batteries are dying. Other than that, it was a couple of nice, easy miles.

Today was supposed to be a rest day - the Runner's World Holiday Run Streak ended yesterday, and I was planning on taking today off. But in my quest to hit 1,000 miles in 2014 I have my own personal run streak going. When I counted up the days I realized that ending it yesterday would make it a 48 day streak.

Why stop at 48 days when I could stop at 50?

Exactly.

So I took it easy today, and tomorrow I will be up and running with the group to round out my 50 day streak.

Sunday I will be the laziest person you have ever met.

Buddy spent some time in the sun behind the curtain today. It's one of his favorite spots.

I took the tree down this afternoon. Luckily that's pretty much all of our decorations so it doesn't take very long to get it all put away. The living room corner is much less fun now.

And Buddy had to hide from the vacuum while we cleaned up the glitter and tree pieces.

Scary vacuum!

Tom made pizza with some leftover meatloaf for dinner - don't knock it til you've tried it! One of our favorite things to get from the pizza place by us is meatball pizza with mushrooms and onions, so he created a homemade version.

It turned out really good!

We'll see if I actually got to bed early tonight so I can wake up bright and early tomorrow.

Unlikely.

Don't forget to check out the Gigabody giveaway if you haven't already!

A Pretty Run with Buddy

We watched The Monuments Men last night. It was really good, and extra crazy knowing that it's based on true events. Have you seen it?

Buddy's beds have been smelling extra doggy lately, so we decided it was about time we washed them (it's been a while). He was not happy with them getting moved.

This afternoon, Buddy and I went running at Rockefeller. Since I wasn't worried about pace, I brought my phone with us.

My running group was just talking last weekend about how weird it was that there was no ice on the lake. It was definitely there today!

 Buddy and I ended up running 1.84 miles in 15:54.

That brings my total mileage for 2014 up to 1,024!

We are heading over to our friend's house for a New Years Bonfire later (just like last year) - it's supposed to be cold, so there will be many layers involved. Nothing like ringing in the new year with flaming Christmas trees!

What are your New Years Eve plans?

1,000 Miles in 2014

This morning I watched my absolute favorite Christmas show.

Growing up, I had a Christmas tape with several different shows (Garfield's 9 Lives, A Snow White Christmas, a snippet of Fat Albert, Care Bear's Nutcracker and A Muppet Family Christmas). At some point in high school, I sat on the vcr remote and RECORDED OVER my Christmas tape.

It was not a good day.

The best of those shows was A Muppet Family Christmas, it had the Muppets, Sesame Street characters, the Fraggles, and had a Jim Henson cameo at the end - plus it had all the excellent 80s commercials. It originally aired in 1987, and because of poorly thought out song rights (they only secured them for airing on television) all the versions available to purchase are seriously edited (and obviously don't have the awesome commercials).

I managed to find someone online who had the original version (commercials and all!), so now I have it on dvd.

It's pretty much the best.

I did it! Today I broke 1,000 miles for 2014! It's definitely the most I have ever run in a year. I ran 4.5 miles and called it good. I may cut back on my mileage now that I've hit my 1,000, but I'm kind of in the middle of the Runner's World Holiday Run Streak (at least 1 mile a day Thanksgiving-New Years) and I don't really want to stop.

My falling injury is looking better, mostly. There are some good colors in the bruises.

I got fun mail again today. Jan sent me some KT tape for my ankle, and also some really tasty looking corn salsa and some treats for Buddy.

He was pretty excited to get the mail too :)

It's kind of inevitable

Happy Saturday!

I hope you're having a great weekend so far and haven't had to venture out and deal with the last-minute shopping madness.

Friday was pretty uneventful around here. I ran, I did dishes, harassed the dog - the usual.

I got to try out my new tank top from Sweat Pink - it's really soft!

I was up too late on Friday night, hanging out and drinking eggnog, so 6:45 felt even earlier than usual this morning.

Pre-run breakfast was coffee and an English muffin with peanut butter. It's my go-to meal before a run or a race.

For some reason, it felt extra cold this morning. My face was numb for about half the run. We were pretty speedy today, we averaged an 8:48 minute pace for around 6.5 miles. It was a really good run! And I fell. It's kind of inevitable if you spend enough time on the trails. We've all done it.

We were about half a mile away from finishing when my toe caught on a tree root. I impressively managed to hit both knees, my right hip, forearm and shoulder. I'm not even sure how I was able to hit so many body parts on the ground. A couple of guys from my running group were right there and helped me up, and we were off again. I must have been a little numb from the cold, because things definitely started to hurt more once I got home.

Not my worst injury (you should have seen some of the ones from roller derby), but not fun either.

I was also very popular this morning because I brought some eggnog cookies for everyone.

I watched The Book Thief this afternoon. It's a total crying movie - and if you haven't read the book, you totally should.

Now I'm being festive drinking White Christmas tea and watching Die Hard (It's totally a Christmas movie).

What's your favorite Christmas movie?

Any good falling stories?

Sleep in Sunday

My recent Sunday tradition of sleeping in continued this morning. I keep staying up too late on Fridays and waking up early on Saturdays to run, so by Saturday night, I'm exhausted.

Buddy comes downstairs for breakfast with whoever wakes up first in the morning, but if anyone is still sleeping, he heads back upstairs to go back to bed. Goofy dog.

We watched Guardians of the Galaxy last night, it was a fun movie, lots of fighting and explosions.

We took Buddy on his first ride in the new truck today. He likes his window out the back.

The afternoon was spent watching football - hooray for the Giants actually winning! As for the 49ers, well, there's always next year.

I got 4 miles in on the treadmill this afternoon. I have less than 40 miles to go before I hit my 1,000 miles for the year!

I really need to start thinking about races for next year, especially if I want to do an early spring race. It seems far away, but training for something in March could start as early as January.

Have you started planning your races for 2015?