Mmm. Beefy.

Hello again! Hope everyone is having a great weekend so far! It was absolutely gorgeous out today :) Warning - this might be a long, scattered post!

After I left you yesterday, I threw a quick salad together (surprise!) that I hoped would keep me full for the 6 hours of work at job numero dos:
I killed the rest of our bag of romaine, added a can of tuna, some slivered almonds, mandarin oranges, chow mein noodles and some freshly ground pepper. I topped it with some of that sesame ginger dressing I've used in the past. Not exactly my favorite salad, but it filled me up!

Since I've been super stressed between both jobs, running, blogging and cooking, Jamie offered to pick up some of the cooking/dinner responsibilities so I'm a little less crazed during the week. Chef Jamie came out in full force as he planned to make last night's burgers out of ground meat made from scratch. BOLD!

Jamie cut up and pulsed some chuck roast in a food processor and made some massive burger patties while I was at work and paid me a surprise visit as we were closing up shop (this is a big deal because I keep telling him he should stop by so he can get his shoes checked out). We took a leisurely walk back and the burger patties were ready to hit the grill pan!
I was a little concerned about all the white (FAT!) spots, but whatever, fat=flavor in red meat and most of it ends up draining off anyway. Jamie manned the grill pan (which I'm certain does nothing but leave grill marks on your food) while I prepped the toppings. I made some quick (lazy) guac
and sliced up some tomatoes and pepper jack cheese
B.o.B suggested doing a cucumber salad as a side dish and it would have been perfect - crisp, cool & light! Unfortunately, we didn't have any cucumber in the apartment and were trying to push off the grocery store trip to Sunday :( Ah well, next time! I scrambled for whatever veggies we had on hand. Frozen cauliflower won.
I nuked them for 2 minutes so they'd defrost and then popped them on the toaster oven tray, sprayed them with a little bit of olive oil (thank you to my almost dying Misto) and sprinkled them with some salt and pepper. Popped them into the toaster oven for about 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees. Super easy.

Ze burger in all it's glory on a potato roll with some romaine remains
Jamie's experiment with the making his own ground beef was pretty sweet. It was like eating a steak in burger form! Mine was cooked medium-ish and had great texture - it's hard to explain, but it was just a lot nicer than a regular ground beef patty. Kudos to the chef ;) I still think the cut might have been a little too fatty for my taste though. Fat does add flavor, but this was just a smidgen too oily for me.

I eat really random things the night before long runs and races so it's no surprise that I scarfed that down before this morning's scheduled 11 miler. No joke, I'll usually have sushi, Mexican, piles of meat...pretty much anything except for pasta. The one time I did pasta before a half marathon, I felt like complete doodie. Yes, I said doodie. My theory is that you should always stick with what works for you, even if it's weird. I also can't really eat that much pre-run. My typical pre-long run/race breakfast doesn't go beyond a handful of Triscuits. Half a bagel - forget it. My stomach will be rioting. Do you have any pre-race quirks or food habits?

This morning's run started super early (well, super early for me) since Jamie and I were meeting new running buddy out in Shirlington, VA. We left the apartment a little after 6:30 to make sure we'd be on the trail and running no later than 7am. New running buddy isn't really a new buddy, she's just new to our running group. Anyway, I was scrambling to get out of the apartment (as usual) and left without my Body Glide. I didn't want to waste time going back to the apartment, so I figured, eh, whatever. It's not that sticky out, I'll be fine. I will never go without Body Glide again. Totally got chafed on my left inner thigh...my new 'hot spot'. UGH.

I really need to justify spending the money on a Garmin (or at least price it out with my discount vs. on Ebay). We ended up running only 10.5 miles along the W&OD Trail since we had a space out moment where we couldn't remember if there were .5 mile markers or if there were only mile increments. I'm slightly bummed that we turned around too soon and ended up short .5 miles, but then I remember it's JUST .5 miles. We all felt good during and after the run AND I finally slowed down and we finished at just under 11:30 pace.

I highly recommend the W&OD Trail to anyone doing long runs in the DC Metro area. It's shaded, fairly flat, quiet and full of friendly bikers (not the grumpy ones that seem to frequent the Capital Crescent Trail). I've run it in a bunch of different spots and plan on doing our 17+ mile runs on it (probably starting all the way out in Reston - a good 45 minutes from our apartment)...it's great for zoning out :)

So I'm trying really really hard to pay attention to my training paces instead of just running everything at the same pace all the time (which I was guilty of doing in the past). I came across a nifty training calculator on Runner's World earlier this year and plugged in a half marathon time. I used 2:10 as my half marathon time (my average) instead of my PR and here's what it spit out:

Based on your half marathon race time of 02:10:00, the paces of your different training runs should be:

11:22 min/mile	Easy run training pace
9:31 min/mile	Tempo run training pace
8:36 min/mile	Maxmum oxygen training pace
7:58 min/mile	Speed form training pace
11:22 - 12:46 min/mile	Long run training pace
4:24 min/800	Yasso 800s training pace

These paces aren't too off from what I've been running (well, I take speed a tad slower because I'm a baby ;p) I know I've been running my long runs faster than I should be...they're the same as my weekday runs. Just a fun calculator I thought I'd share :)

After this morning's run, we stopped at the Teet for some sandwiches (at 9:30am, mind you) because I was absolutely STARVING. Jamie grabbed a sausage & pepper sub and I picked up a not so good turkey & brie sandwich that had an unexpected smear of cranberry sauce - GROSS! I also snagged a bottle of this:

Yes ladies and gents, I drank my first green drink
AND LIKED IT! haha. Not going to lie, the list of ingredients and color wasn't really appealing, but it was a bottle full of fruity deliciousness! A little richer/thicker than I expected when I picked it up, but not too bad! I'll never knock green drinks again :)

Ran off to job numero dos where it was surprisingly busy, talked to a ton of customers about water bottles for some reason and came back to a delicious smelling apartment. Chef Jamie was at it again! Since he picked up some ground beef yesterday (as backup in case his ground beef experiment didn't work), he whipped up some of his Gramma's Sloppy Joes. Now, I am partial to my mom's sloppy joes that involve a crap ton of ketchup, but these are pretty damn tasty too.

I walked into this cooking:
Jamie said he made a couple alterations to his gramma's recipe, so stay tuned for all the recipes.

Here it is served up on leftover potato rolls:
Sloppy? Check. Delicious? Check, check!

Phew! That was one monster of a post! I'm off to crash so I can get up early to chop some veggies at DC Central Kitchen and then helping Susan as she makes her triumphant return to the District tomorrow afternoon. I think tomorrow's dinner will make use of the mini paella kit Jamie's dad gave us...mmmm paella :)