Thanks to the good folks over at Random.org, we have some winners! Yes, today was the drawing for my birthday blog candy giveaway. After entering the info at Random.org (names were entered in the order in which people commented), here is who it selected as the winners:

Shepherd’s Bush kit: Annette
Weight Watchers cookbook: Nicole

SB Kit:

1. Missy Ann
2. Nicole
3. Margie
4. RC
5. Tricia
6. Debby
7. Kat
8. Annette
9. Sher
10. Agnes

Cookbook:

1. Missy Ann
2. Nicole
3. Margie
4. Kris
5. Laura
6. Alison
7. RC
8. Tricia
9. Cindi
10. Kat
11. Sher

Congratulations, ladies!! I’ll be sending each of you an email tomorrow to get your mailing information.

On a side note, there were several other people who commented to my birthday post who are not listed. If you did not specifically mention the drawing(s), then I assumed you were not interested so I didn’t include you. If you did want to be included and weren’t, please accept my apology!!

Next, in my continued series of video blog (vlog) entries, I filmed my grocery haul for this week. These haul videos are very popular among the weight loss losers group on YouTube, so I decided to give it a go.

Lastly, I just have to brag on myself a bit. I had an AWESOME workout last night at the gym. I managed to burn an amazing 675 calories while on the treadmill!! Gotta love an incline workout.

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Until next time …

I just wanted to post a quick reminder that tomorrow afternoon is the deadline for entering my blog candy giveaway. I will draw a random winner for each of the two prizes and notify the winners by email on Monday.

You can find full details here:

Birthday Blog Candy

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! I’m off to the gym.

It’s late. I’m tired. I have nothing creative to say. I’ll leave you with a few random photos I took yesterday (Tuesday) as I was out and about. As always, click to biggify (thanks for such a great word, Annette! )

Ferrari Sandwich:

At one point when I was driving to work yesterday morning, I realized I was driving behind a brand spanking new Ferrari. When I glanced in my rear view mirror, I noticed there was another one behind me! I was the middle of a Ferrari sandwich! I switched over into the next lane just so I could snap the photo at the next traffic light. The front car was a hard top and the one in back was a convertible.

Denny’s Madness:

As I’m sure all of you who live here in the US were aware, Denny’s was giving away (yes, for free) their original Gland (oops! ) Grand Slam breakfast (2 pancakes, 2 eggs, 2 bacon strips, and 2 sausage links) yesterday between the hours of 6am and 2pm.

As I was driving by the local Denny’s near my office at 10am, I was amazed at how long the line was! This photo was actually the side view of the building. There were at least as many, if not more, people lined up across the front of the building as well. I don’t even want to think about how many people were inside waiting in the lobby. I realize it’s a free breakfast and all, but for me, my time is worth FAR more than waiting that long in line for a free meal that 1) normally is only $5.99 anyway, and 2) isn’t very healthy to boot.

Paw Check (or, how I spent two hours of my Tuesday afternoon):

As many of you know, I’ve been battling on-going issues with my right foot/ankle. I’ve had on again, off again problems with plantar fasciitis in my right foot for the past couple of years. Then, on top of that, I developed a case of gout in my right ankle about three weeks ago. I had a follow-up appointment yesterday with Dr. Bennett (my podiatrist).

Unfortunately, he was running a bit behind, so I spent quite a bit a time sitting around — first in the waiting room and then in my exam room before seeing him. I got bored, so I naturally started taking pictures with my iPhone. Once he did actually see me, he gave me the all-clear with the foot/ankle, so I’m off and running again. Well, not literally running, but at least I can get back to my normal training routine.

I did discuss with him that fact that I’m starting to train for a half marathon. He said he was really happy to hear that I’m moving up from the 5k distances and thinking about some longer distances as well. He said that if I feel like the PF is holding me back from my training at any point to just give him a call and he can give me a cortisone shot. He said that should easily get me through my event and then we can decide how to go forward with the PF issue after the race.

Ok, so maybe I had something to say after all.

The desire is there, but my health isn’t. I was thisclose to walking out the door and heading over to the event this morning. I had a strong feeling that it probably wasn’t a smart thing to do though, so I called a running friend for some impartial advice.

He advised me that since I ultimately have larger goals on the horizon (my upcoming half marathon specifically) that sitting this one out made sense. He reminded me that there will be plenty of other 5k/10k races. He said it really wasn’t worth risking my upcoming training time for the half marathon to do a 5k now since I’ve been sick/injured the past couple of weeks. He basically gave a voice to what I already knew in my head was the right thing to do, even though my heart was screaming at me otherwise. This is exactly why I called him. It’s always good to have an impartial voice of reason.

Instead of racing this morning, I’ll head out a bit later and take a nice easy shorter walk. Since I haven’t been able to do any training in nearly 3 weeks, this will help me ease back into working out without taxing my recovering body too much. It will also give me a chance to try out my new custom mix of workout music my aforementioned friend created me a couple of weeks ago, too.

I’m still struggling with wanting to walk out the door and head over to the race. I still would have time to make it if I left right now. I decided I would take some time to blog instead to keep me from doing just that. Hopefully by the time I finish this entry, it will be too late for me to make it there in time. Hey, whatever works, right?

Since I won’t be doing the race after all this morning, I might actually start on a new stitching project. I went by my LNS yesterday to pay for my class project for the stitching cruise we’ll be going on next week. While I was there, I picked up the first of the charts & the fibers for the Lizzie Kate Boo Club double flip series.

The shop had actually kitted up the necessary fibers and a piece of the 32-count Dirty Belfast linen called for in the Boo Club instructions. It looked so amazing together that I was very tempted. I ended up deciding that the smart thing to do economically though was to use some fabric from my stash instead. The chart said any 32-count neutral fabric could be used, so I figured I probably already had something that would work.

My initial thought was to use one of the Lakeside Linens I’ve been collecting over the past couple of years through the Fabric of the Month club from Shakespeare’s Peddler. Once I started looking through them though, all of the colors I thought looked best were all 40-count. Given the charts in this series uses little buttons for things like eyes and such, I was afraid shifting from 32-count up to 40-count might throw off the proportions. Instead, I ended up deciding on a piece of 32-count hand-dyed Sand Castle Jobelan. Here is a photo of my floss toss on the fabric (click for larger version):

Ok, the window of opportunity for making the race is definitely over now. I’m going to head back to bed and try to get another couple of hours of sleep. I’ve only had about 6 hours’ worth so far since I got up at 5:15am to get ready for the race. I could definitely use a little more.

I hope everyone has a great day. For those watching and/or going to parties, have a great Super Bowl Sunday.

Today’s post is all about numbers, so I thought I would start it off with my photo du jour which is of all my race bibs from 2008. I finished the year having completed a total of eight 5k races, so that’s an average of a race about every 6 weeks or so. I feel really good about that!

Now, you may be asking yourself why I circled the “4″ in the top race bib in the photo. Well, that goes back to the whole numbers theme to this post. We all know that weight loss is a numbers game, right? You have to burn more calories than you consume. I clearly didn’t do such a good job of it this because I *gained* 4 pounds. I’m probably the only person in history who has ever managed to pack on that much weight the same week as having the flu.

Even though I’m not happy about it, I’m not going to whine & complain about it. Each and every pound is truly deserved due to my poor eating habits this week. Due to the whole situation with my family, I freely admit that I resorted to a LOT of emotional eating this week. No person should ever be faced with some of the decisions I had to make in the past week, so I’m not going to beat myself up over the fact that I turned to food for comfort. I’m just going to dust myself off and move on from here.

My focus for this coming week is to make the best food choices I can and to get back to my workouts. I’m finally feeling pretty much back to normal health-wise, so tomorrow I’ll get myself on track with my training plan again for my walking/running. I have a 5k race coming up in three weeks, so I need to get ready for it.

I really hope to get outside for some of my training tomorrow. We’re supposed to get into the mid-80’s (30C), so it’s definitely going to be an adjustment from the cooler temps we’ve been having. It’s going to feel really odd going from having to run the heat last night to probably needing to run the air conditioning tomorrow.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Ok, so as promised yesterday, here’s the latest scoop on my training life. I still can’t believe I’m doing this. All I keep saying to myself is, “Good lord, what have I done?!”

As if a single bootcamp class weren’t bad enough, I’ve signed up for an entire bootcamp WEEKEND in early March with some of the folks on the Jillian Michaels website. Yes, two whole days of bootcamp training with some of the top-notch trainers over at Made in L.A. Fitness. If you look over the bios of the trainers at MILA, you might recognize a few of them from the show “Workout” on the Bravo network.

Based on my conversations with other people who have gone to past bootcamp weekends, it’s pretty much two days of Biggest Loser-type workouts. So, at this point, I basically have two months to get myself ready for the ass kicking of my adult life, and one that I’ve actually paid money to receive.

There is an option of also taking more spin classes and/or having a 1-on-1 private training session with one of the trainers for an additional discounted fee. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to do that or not. I’m still kind of reeling from the fact that I’ve actually committed to doing this. Yeah, you can pretty much file this under “What the hell was I thinking?!” Naturally, I’ll be taking the following Monday off work. ;)

I started a Couch to 5k (C25K) training plan yesterday. Instead of the original C25K plan from Cool Running, I’m using a more conservative plan from Beginner Triathlete. They have both a 16-week “aggressive” and a 28-week “conservative” plan there. I’m following the 28-week plan since they said it was recommended for those who still have weight to lose.

The conservative plan starts very slowly which is perfect for anyone just getting back into exercise. In fact, the plan starts out with all walking for the first month. There’s not any actual running time until week 5, and even then it’s a very gradual increase over time. Given the amount of weight I still need to lose, I think this plan is perfect for me. It will allow me to get back to my love of running, yet still afford me the time to work out my PF issues and lose some more weight before I start running longer times/distances.

Starting this plan now actually coincides perfectly with the half marathon (Rock n’ Roll Seattle) I’m signed up for at the end of June, too. I was initially planning to walk the whole thing, but now I hope to run at least part of it.

If anyone else is interested in reading more about either of these plans, here are the links:

16-week “aggressive” C25K
28-week “conservative” C25K

Hope everyone is having a GREAT week!

Bulgur!

I tried a new recipe today that I saw last week on Roni’s Green Lite Bites food blog. I will admit that I was a bit skeptical at first because I couldn’t quite imagine the flavors together, but I decided to give it a try though because I love pomegranate. I’m glad I did because it was wonderful! Here’s a pic:

The recipe is called Bulgur with Peas & Pomegranates. I know … I know … it sounds like an odd combination, even Roni admits that in the video on her site. Even so, this recipe is a keeper and I will definitely be making it again! The peas, soy sauce, and ginger definitely give it a flavor reminiscent of fried rice, but the pomegranate seeds give it an amazing sweet/tart twist that’s pleasantly unexpected. Another added bonus — the recipe is vegetarian/vegan-friendly.

Now, for the best part, the bulgur makes this recipe a much more healthful alternative to rice. It’s both lower in calories and higher in fiber than rice. It also cooks MUCH faster than brown rice (10-15 minutes vs. 40-45 minutes). This may very well become my new favorite grain.

For those of you like me who are on Weight Watchers, it’s a real points bargain as well. A cup of bulgur is only 2 points whereas a cup of brown rice is 4 points. It’s also included on the list of Filling Foods for the new Momentum program introduced last week.

This was my first time using bulgur, so I’m definitely going to have to play around with it a bit more to perfect my cooking technique. In a nutshell, you basically cook it similarly to rice using a ratio of 2 parts liquid to 1 part bulgur. I think I actually overcooked mine because it turned out a bit sticky. I’ve already been thinking of other recipes I make where I currently use brown rice and may be switching some of those over to bulgur as well.

I will say that I did have a bit of difficulty finding it at first. I checked a couple of supermarkets and they didn’t carry it. I also checked at Trader Joe’s and didn’t find it there either. I was finally able to find it in the bulk grains section at Henry’s Farmers Market (subsidiary of Wild Oats). If all else fails, it can always be purchased online as well, but from an environmental viewpoint, finding a local source is always better when possible.

I’ll close this post by saying there will be no race report for this morning’s planned race. I opted not to do my 5k race this morning after all. My plantar fasciitis has really been bothering me the past couple of days, so I decided it was best to let my foot win this round and stay off of it this morning. Instead, I headed over to the gym and put in 12 miles on the LifeCycle at the same time I should have been racing. So, even though I wasn’t able to be there on the starting line with my friend Darla, at least I was with her in spirit by working out at the same time.

Hope every is having a great weekend! Until next time …

just because I have the hottest fashion accessory around and you don’t! Yes, that’s right people, I have that oh-so-trendy and sought after Night Splint. I’m just gonna be one hot steamy ball of pure sexiness in bed now. Then again, since I’m not currently in a romantic relationship, I guess it doesn’t really matter after all.

Yep, that’s right. I’m going for round 2 with my Plantar Fasciitis (PF). As some of you who have been reading my blog for a while may remember, I battled it about three years ago as well. At that time, I was able to ward it off with a set of custom orthodics for my shoes and a lot of stretching exercises.

Well, around the time of my vacation to Hawaii, it started rearing it’s ugly head once again. I went back to performing the stretches, but it just wasn’t getting any better. I finally broke down and went to the podiatrist. The course of treatment this time is more of the stretching, another set of the custom orthodics, the night splint, and a prescription-strength anti-inflammatory medication. If all of that doesn’t clear it up, the next step would be cortisone shots. He said if that still didn’t clear it up, then we would look into “other options”, but he never specified what that might entail.

I’m actually signed up for a 5k race with my friend Darla on Sunday. I’ll have to play things by ear to see whether or not I’ll actually do it. It will depend upon 1) the weather and 2) how my foot is feeling. The weather is definitely a big factor. The forecast is calling for a chance of showers and temps in the low 50’s at race time. Now I’m sure that might sound wonderful to many of you, but for those of us in southern California, that might as well be a Nor’easter. My biggest concern is that a damp cold could aggravate my PF even more, and I don’t want that.

I’ll be heading back to my Weight Watchers meeting on Sunday for my first weigh in since starting the new Momentum program. Given that I’m doing the 5k race right before my meeting, who knows what number I’ll see on the scale. I don’t usually go out for a 3 mile walk/jog before stepping on the scale at WW, so I’ll likely either be really happy or really disappointed.

In training news, I’ve actually revamped my training schedule for the Rock ‘n Roll Seattle half marathon as well. The new plan will kick off on Monday, Dec. 29. Until then, I’m just going to focus on trying to get out several times per week to walk. I’ll post more about my updated plan sometime this week.

Hope everyone has a GREAT weekend!

Sorry I didn’t get to this Sunday as normal. I’ve got a friend visiting from out of town and I’ve not been on the computer as much.

Here’s the weekly recap for last week:

By this table, I actually fell a bit short this week. I swapped my rest day from this past weekend from Sunday to Saturday. I walked a 5k on Sunday, but wanted to make sure I still got in a scheduled rest day as well. So, the extra mileage will show up on next week’s recap.

Here’s the schedule for this week:

As always, if you want to see the full schedule, you can find it here.