WIAW: What I Ate (& Wore!) Wednesday

…and a little of what I ate. Mid-way through the week and one day away from (American) Thanksgiving! Those will be fun updates to read from US bloggers – love that it is such a family holiday in the states, maybe even more than at Christmas! At least it always was for us (waving hi from Calgary to those of you in Leavenworth, LA, Antioch, and Oregon, family!). Mikey and I will be celebrating, actually, with some American friends and their Canadian spouses, so I’m super excited to still be a part of that holiday. Looking forward to tomorrow night for sure.

Well, after my hardcore run on Sunday, I headed out the door Monday for another run. My goal? 8 miles. It’s a distance that always seems doable to me. While it’s different for every runner, 8-10 miles are my favorite distances. 10 makes me feel like I went long but can do it easily within reason, while 8 miles seems mentally that much easier to me, so I thought it would be no problem to do two 8 milers back to back. Plus, the weather was warming up and I wanted to take advantage of it (even though it meant being less hardcore). So out I went!

The weather was much warmer but I dressed in less layers because of it and so took a while to get warm. I only ended up taking my long sleeved shirt off at the very end of my run, but I’d consider that a success! Gloves and headband-turned-ear-warmer stayed on the whole time, but the sunshine was glorious and added so much to my running experience! I set out with an easy 4 out, 4 back plan in mind but when I got into Fish Creek Park I found some new trails and decided to branch out and take them. I’m far from a Type-A personality, but when it comes to my running I usually stick to a plan since I don’t have a Garmin to track my distance as I’m running. I use MapMyRun to create a route and generally stick to it. Today felt different, and I decided to just run by feel and for time. I struck out on a new-to-me path and it brought to a familiar trail junction. I was brought back to my high school cross country and track days and decided to run some loops. Three loops later on a beautiful, snowy trail along the already frozen river, I was heading back through the park and up the hill to the neighborhoods.

The run, while beautiful around me, felt hard, my legs heavy and my body sluggish. I thought it might have been too much after not running as much to do another 8 miler, and the bottoms of my feet were aching towards the end. Less time in the Vibrams will do that to a runner – my feet are losing the muscles I was slowly building up! With all those things in mind, I didn’t think I’d hit 8 miles so I did an extra loop around some houses at the top of the ridge to round it out. “Surely that was 8 miles,” I thought to myself.

I got home, happy and tired, and wandered inside and immediately mapped out my run online. Sure enough, I’d hit 9.04 miles! That definitely made me happy to see after thinking I was running slow and wouldn’t hit my goal for the day. Almost a 10 instead! A happy medium between my two favorite distances.

Run happy, friends.

Since it’s Wednesday then, let’s get to the WIAW part of the post, thanks to Jenn! But remember, this week’s is “What I Ate” and “What I Wore” Wednesday!

Both Mikey and I were home for breakfast so we started the day off right with an egg, sausage, pepper, and spinach scramble and some coffee (black for me).

I’ve been loving eggs lately but hadn’t made any in a week or so; welcome back, eggies!

Hello, old friend!

And as the bad food blogger that I am (perhaps this is why my blog focuses on fitness and lifestyle change!), I don’t really have any other photos of our food for the day! Lunch was random and dinner was at our friends’ home for another week of….FAT TUESDAY! This is where the what I wore and ate parts combine. We got together as we do every Tuesday night for fellowship over good food. On the menu for this week was CocoBrook’s pizza! They are a really great company who makes personalized pizzas with real ingredients…it was fun to have a pizza night too! …coupled with a delicious spinach, broccoli slaw, cranberry, sunflower seed, and goat cheese salad, of course.

Bad food blogger again: pizza boxes but no pizza! It was so good I didn’t even think to snap a picture.

We had a great night dining together, catching up about life, and spending most of the night in prayer after discovering we’d all had similar weeks of struggling to make time in our relationships with God. It was good to sit in Jesus’ presence with friends and be thankful as a group while also giving our cares and anxieties to him.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 4:6,7

Another great aspect of the night? Group sweater pictures! I want to show them all to you…but am thinking I should save some for closer to Christmas. For now, here’s a sneak peak with what I wore (huzzah for Christmas sweaters!) included:

Ohhhh yes!

It’s killing me, but I’ll save the group shot for closer to the “Merry Christmas” card time. And that successfully concludes what I ate and wore Wednesday! The rest of the day involves a quick, high intensity basement workout, a trip to the post office, more door-to-door personal training cold calls, and a client this evening. Should be a good rest of the day!

Keepin’ it classy with my contact card on a garbage can in Fish Creek Park. Give me a call, residents of Woodbine!

To my Canadian readers: Any good recent workouts or eats? How about cool sweaters like ours above?

To my US readers: Happy Thanksgiving! What are your plans if you’re celebrating?

To all readers: I’d love it if you could “like” my new Facebook page! Let’s keep the conversation rolling there too.

Have a great rest of your Wednesday, guys! Live well & be well,

Bonnie