*Week 7!! *

“When you recognize that failing doesn’t make you a failure, you give yourself permission to try all sorts of things”- Lauren Freshmen

***disclaimer for those who subscribe to my blog: please disregard the first post sent to you! We had a laptop glitch which caused a premature publish of the week 7 post with no links and unfinished paragraphs!!*** 🙂

What a WILD and transformational week!

First of all, I’m so excited to share the highlight reel from our ski trip with friends in Montana!!! Here’s the link—–>>>>>https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LXB1QZdutEQ&feature=youtu.be

Week 7 is truly the week that I stopped training seriously last year because of the cancelled race. I knew I could do everything up through week 6 the second time around, but from here on out it’s alllll a new challenge!!

Monday was a terrible day…and when I say terrible I mean I had a breakdown equivalent to a two year old at 6:00pm on my kitchen floor with tears and all. Shall I say YIKES?! A combination of a rough day at work, the snowy weather and, my attempted run apparently were too much for my mental capacity on a Monday lol. We set out to do a 3.5 mile run on the treadmill because of the sloppy conditions outside. Now, remember, my Monday runs can be a very slow pace to be deemed “easy”, and normally my Monday runs turn out pretty decent simply because they are slow. Well, Monday was certainly slow. We started out at a whopping 12:30/mile pace-which I assumed would pick up as my legs loosened up-but, it didn’t. AND, I didn’t even make it to the two mile mark. I just wasn’t feelin’ it. What a crappy excuse right? But, it’s the truth. So we just stopped and that was it for Monday. A terribly slow 1.75 miles. To make myself feel better I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and self-soothed with a few fresh ones…oops.

This made looking forward to Wednesday’s “moderate” 3 miles quite full of anxiety and fear that it would be a repeat of Monday. For starters, Wednesday was a better weather day with no snowy conditions which meant no treadmill, YAY!! We picked Lake Bde Maka Ska since it’s right around 3 miles. I think we were just under a mile before I hit the brakes and let myself off the hook for the SECOND TIME this week. Just wasn’t feelin’ it again. Still a crappy excuse, I know. At least on Wednesday we ran the rest of the 3 miles in intervals so we technically hit the mileage, just not in the way I wanted to. Talk about a rough training week. UGH.

Thankfully, we didn’t have a rough week of meals though. A new favorite is a spin off of a recipe from Half Baked Harvests’ Homeade Cheesy Gordita Crunch Tacos….of course we didn’t have all of the ingredients so really ours were quite different but still similar. For anyone who struggles with choosing between a hard shell and a soft shell when having tacos, this is your perfect fix! ☺️☺️It’s also very filling, so would be great for filling up a big group of ppl! Here’s how you could make my version:

1. Choose your taco meat of choice (I used grilled strips of pre-cooked chicken for the sake of time) & prepare with taco seasonings of choice
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
3. Mix up the homeade dorito seasoning using between a teaspoon and Tablespoon for all ingredients depending on how many tacos you plan to have:
   1. Onion Powder
   2. Garlic Powder
   3. Paprika
   4. Cumi
   5. Salt
   6. Chili Powder (I use the Wahoo Chilli from Tastefully Simple)
   7. Sprinkle of parm cheese
4. Lay soft shell 6-8inch tortillas on baking sheet, sprinkle a layer of shredded Mexican blend cheese on the tortilla.
5. Sprinkle homemade Dorito seasoning on top of the cheese.
6. Bake in the oven for 2-3 minutes or until melted.
7. Take shells out of oven, press hard shells onto one side of the tortillas. Bake for another 2 minutes.
8. Take out of oven and press melted side into the remaining hard shell side.
9. Fill your shells with your taco meat and all the toppings you desire!
10. Enjoy!!!

So now after TWO failed runs in my eyes, I was even more fearful of the mighty 6 mile run we had for Saturday. The night before we decided that our route would be to run twice around Lake of the Isles to help break some of the wind and give us more movement in our path, which helps distract me. I had a nice lil’ bowl of oatmeal hoping it would sustain me for the next HOUR of RUNNING. Just in case you don’t realize this, at my slow pace, running 6 miles means atleast 60 minutes of running without stopping!!! That’s a long fricken time!!!

We started out nice and slow around an 11:45/mile pace trying to get a sense of how our bodies were feeling and figuring out our direction around the lake to have the least wind resistance in our face. As we got moving, my body started to actual feel pretty good. No knee pain, ankle pain, you name it. The first 2.5-3 miles FLEW by. Did I actually just say that?!! lol. Yes, and I meant it. I was in a chatty mood so basically just talked Bobby’s ear off for the first three miles. Somehow I managed to keep my breath steady while yapping and running, something I never imagined I would be capable of. Once my watch dinged me that we were at the halfway point I had a miniture freakout of thoughts: “holy s*** we’re already halfway”, “oh no, we’re only halfway”, “we still have a whole nother lap around the lake and I’ve already looked at all the houses…crap”!! I quickly talked myself down and got my head back in the game, if you will. On the way to mile 4 was Bobby trying to take on some of the talking so I could focus on my breathing and keeping my body in good form to use limited energy. After hitting the fourth mile, I had a burst of good feelings and deemed that I would indeed conquer this six mile run…WHAT?!?!? It was a good mile. Once we hit mile 5, I had a few moments of fear and pain start sneaking in through the cracks. All of a sudden I was very aware of how heavy I was breathing, how much my knees were starting to be in pain, and how far one whole mile was going to be yet. I’ve never ran more than 5 miles at a time in my life. So we were treading in all new water for my body, mind, and spirit, oof. From 5-5.5 I felt myself leaning into the bad things more than I wanted to, it was a battle. Mental and physical. Once I knew I only had a half mile left, I felt invincible. We were DOING IT!! 6 FREAKING MILES!! At this point, nothing was going to stop me from finishing it out. I actually even bursted out into song, singing “I feel good!! I knew that I would!! So good!! So good!!”. I was so elevated after we hit the 6 mile mark, what an incredible feeling. So very happy, relieved, proud, excited!! The way Saturday’s run ended is the feeling that I need to carry me through the rest of training.

Overall week 7 was a wild fricken week!! Talk about ups and downs, wowza.

Have a great week peeps!!

xoxo

Jos