Fun and Run Sunday

Good morning all – it’s Monday again already. Whoever decided that weekends should only be two days and the work week five days was a cruel person. I think it should be reversed.

I’ll start by giving you a quick recap of Sunday, which was a busy and beautiful day. I woke up pretty late  – around 9:15 and had a light breakfast of granola with blueberries and blackberries.

I kept my breakfast light because I was attending a fun blogger lunch at noon. I met up with Lindsay around 11:45 and we walked over to Candle Cafe. I’ve eaten dinner there before, but had yet to try brunch/lunch.

I was really craving some breakfast-brunch food and was excited to see waffles on the menu. I ordered the waffles, along with a much-needed coffee. The waffles were delicious – they came with banana, apple and candied pecans on top. I gobbled them right up while enjoying some lively conversation with five other fellow bloggers. Here we are:

From the front left, that would be me, Lindsay, Katherine, Dori, Ashley and Melissa. Katherine and Melissa had just finished a run in Central Park and oh how it made me jealous. I decided I needed to squeeze a run in at some point in the afternoon. It was a lovely gathering and the conversation was wonderful – I can’t wait to do it again in the near future!

After my brunch/lunch I headed home to start the dreaded laundry. I settled on doing two loads and then squeezing in a run – the sun was beckoning me.

I finally made it out around 4:15 and headed to the promenade along the East River. My run yesterday felt good, but it didn’t feel fast and although I should have been taking this run slow as a recovery, I decided to test my speed a bit. Here are my stats:

Mile 1 – 8:04
Mile 2 – 8:08
Mile 3 – 8:23
Mile 4 – 8:03
.52 – 4:35

Total Mileage: 4.52 miles in 37.13

It wasn’t particularly easy to maintain that pace, but it did feel good to be moving faster. I’ve decided I definitely need to work more fast runs like this into my week, along with some hill-work. It’s time to get serious if I want to try to qualify.

Have you ever tried to increase your speed – what kind of workouts did you do?

After my run, I cleaned the apartment a bit and then made some dinner. I was inspired by this recipe from Cooking Light.com, but definitely made some changes.  

Pasta with Chicken and Spinach

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 cup)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups of wheat pasta  (9-ounce) package fresh cheese tortellini (such as DiGiorno)
• 1  tablespoon  pine nuts
• 1  teaspoon  olive oil
• 6  4 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1/8 cup of chopped onion
• 1  (6-ounce) package fresh baby spinach
• 1/4  cup  (1 ounce) preshredded Parmesan cheese
• 2 Laughing Cow Light Swiss Cheese triangles
• 1/4 cup of dry white wine
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1/4  teaspoon  black pepper
• 1 large chicken breast 2  ounces  prosciutto, thinly sliced

Preparation

1. Cook pasta according to the package directions.

2. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add nuts to pan; cook 1 1/2 minutes or until toasted, stirring occasionally. Then add garlic and onion to pan; cook 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add spinach and chicken to pan; cook until chicken starts to brown and spinach is wilted. Add the wine and butter – cook for 2 minutes. Turn down the head and add laughing cow cheese and mix until evenly distributed.

3. Add pasta to the pan and toss with chicken and spinach mixture.

I enjoyed my meal with a glass of red wine.

It was very yummy and the Hubby said he liked it much better than some of my recent “crazy concoctions.” 🙂

After dinner, we settled in to wait for the Oscars to start. To make it a bit more interesting, I printed two ballot forms from online and gave one to Hubby to fill out and one for me. Here’s my blue ballot:

A little while later I decided I needed a snack for the start of the show. I slathered some peanut butter on a few triscuits and finished up the blackberries.

And then we watched The Academy Awards. And boy did they go on forever! For some reason, I didn’t think this year’s show was all that funny or entertaining. I just kind of kept waiting to check off my ballot boxes.

What did you think of the awards?

As I said in a previous post, I wasn’t such a huge fan of The Hurt Locker, but my instincts told me it was going to win. And indeed, I was right. I ended up winning our ballot guessing contest by only missing 7 categories as opposed to the Hubby who missed 10. He picked Avatar to win more awards and I agree with him that it should have won more, but my gut said it just wasn’t going to happen.  

By the time the awards were over it was waaay past my bedtime. Hence, I’m a tired little lady this morning, but will hopefully wake up as the day progresses. Have a great Monday all!