Three Year Anniversary (of Running), Bokum Bop (Korean Fried Rice), and the Home Improvement Marathon (Automated Sprinkler Edition)

Here comes a trip down memory lane. So be prepared for a story...

On April 4, 2007, Kevin started keeping track of my exercise to try and see why I kept getting headaches after working out. We started noting that I couldn’t do any high-impact aerobic exercise (elliptical workout, etc) for more than about 17-18 minutes without getting a headache afterwards. I couldn’t run at all (not event a minute or two) without getting a headache.

On May 9, 2007 after Kevin’s pestering finally sunk in, I decided to take myself off of my daily dose of decongestant. I’d been taking Claritin D every day for about 13 years, so I thought, why not see if the decongestant (which is also a known ingredient for creating illegal/home-brewed speed, by the way) might be the problem. Then I increased my time on the elliptical by a few more minutes to compensate. I started getting less headaches.

And then I took my first baby step…

Three years ago, on May 15, 2007, I put on my first pair of true running shoes (they were a pair of green and white New Balance shoes that I bought at Academy with Kevin and his two sisters) and went for my first run, ever. Here’s what my log said for the day:

__________________________

• Miles: 1.5
• Time: 24 minutes
• Heart Rate: Maximum was 161
• Notes: FIRST RUN! Ran at XXX Park along the middle stretch. Ran at 1:00 pm. Warm approximately 75-80. Ran in new shoes.

__________________________

Did you notice I didn’t say anything about a headache! Crazy!!!! Obviously people can walk faster than 24 minutes per mile, but man I was just happy to be showing any type of running form! Not too long after (after we went back home to Lubbock) Kevin suggested that maybe we should do a triathlon. Ha! I told him he was crazy. But I told him I’d train and if I thought I could do it without extreme pain, I’d try it.

So here are the highlights since then:

• Second Run: 5/17/2007, 1.5 miles, 21.16 minutes, max heart rate 163, “Second run. Ran at Concho Park along middle stretch with Mom. No walking. Felt good. Fourth workout in four days.”
• Landmark Run: 6/2/2007, 2 mile, 33 minutes
• Landmark Run: 6/11/2007, 1 mile, 12:15 minutes
• Sprint Triathlon at Texas Tech: 9/2007, 1:26:3 (11:30 400 yard swim, 45:35 mile ride, 29:21 2.3 mile run)
• Got off Claritin completely in May 2008!
• First Road Race, Lunar Lope at TTU: 6/18/2008, 31:30, 3.1 miles, “Ran FIRST ROAD RACE!!!! Luner Lope 5K at Texas Tech's campus. Beat 52 people on her first race. The exact time is still unknown because she started her watch when the gun went off instead of at the starting line”
• Sprint Triathlon at Texas Tech (second try, same distance as first): 9/2008, 1:22:2
• Habitat for Humanity 5K: 9/19/2009, 3.1 miles, 29:15 minutes “Habitat for Humanity 5K. Finished 51/83 people.”
• Turkey Trot: 11/21/2009, 3 mile, 28:53 minutes , “Finished 69/102. Beat Kayla by .6 of a second thanks to a woman with a baby. Got a pie and water bottle. Got 3rd out of ASU employee.”
• Resolution Half Marathon: 1/2/2010, 13.1 miles, 2 hours 23 minutes, “First half marathon!!!!”
• 3 Mile Race: 4/10/2010, 3 miles, 27 minutes

I hurt. I hurt a lot during this process. But I hurt less as time went on. I started adding more carbs back into my diet that previously didn’t like me. I stopped having frequent headaches. No rashes.

And now I can eat thing like this.

And I can work for 12 hours for two straight days with mis padres and hubby on things like this (that's the hubby by the way).

Life is good. Thank you Lord for showing me the way!

Coconut in What?

Another Southern staple food besides fried chicken is mashed potatoes. Their mmm mmm good! But when I was still staying away from rice milk, soy milk, and I hadn't discovered almond milk yet, it was really hard to make creamy mashed potatoes!

In comes the miracle ingredient (dah dah dah dah!) coconut milk:

Coconut in mashed potatoes? How can that be?

It's pretty good actually. It gives the potatoes a sweetish (no sugar), rich taste, much like butter and if you add just a little salt and pepper, you've got yourself a rockin' side dish! I've even found reduced fat coconut milk at some health food or Asian grocery stores. Now that I've started using the other alternative milk products, I still prefer the coconut milk.

Dairy Free, Soy Free, Gluten Free, Nut Free Mashed Potatoes

6-8 small to medium Russet Potatoes (or potatoes of your choice)

1/2 can coconut milk (your choice of reduced fat or regular)

1/2 tsp of salt or to taste

1/4 tsp of salt or to taste

1-1 1/2 cup of water

Chop up the potatoes (pealed or un-pealed) into a large pot. Boil until you can easily cut with a fork. Drain water (if you've got the "skills" you can try to leave in some of the water from boiling instead of adding more--will leave more nutrients in the mash). Add the milk, water, salt, and pepper and mash until your a fan of the consistency.

This recipe's great with gluten free fried chicken! I'll have to post my recipe some time soon. Oh, and next week I'll remember to have my camera with me so I can upload photos from this past weekend's cooking-fried-rice-while-fixing-our-automated-sprinkler-system-with-my-parents extravaganza!

Allergy Free Business Trips

So last week I didn't blog because I was out of town at a conference for most of the time, and the other part of the week I was scrambling to do the things I would normally do if I had the whole week in the office. The conference was fun, but I got to thinking about the effort I was putting into making sure I was eating and exercising while on my trip.

For example, my meals were paid for, but I can't just eat out at every restaurant that's conveniently located near my hotel. So my first thought when I heard I'd be traveling by car was "Yes! I can take an ice chest!" You might, as a passerby, think me and my husband odd looking as we strolled through the elegant Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dallas with an ice chest, but frankly I could care less. In fact, I'm sure that the vallet parking dudes (yes, we had to vallet park in order to not get charged $10 each time I left the hotel and came back) gave us a few interesting looks. That wonderfully large, blue ice chest made it possible for me to purchase and store milk free, dairy free, apple free, and banana free foods in our hotel room. Not only was it convenient so that I didn't have to leave the hotel very often to go out to eat, but it also added some variety to my diet (i.e. so I wouldn't have to eat 400 salads from Subway).

Also, because I knew we'd get tired of cold food, I had to do some serious Internet research about local restaurants and their ingredients. It's amazing to me how much information a place like subway provides about their ingredients, but a place like Chipolte (horribly annoying Web site by the way), who prides itself on fresh Tex-Mex ingredients, fails to mention that they add butter to their rice (fortunately I asked before I added rice to my tacos).

I even made a point of discussing my food allergies with the travel office where I work so that, when they saw I went to several grocery stores (Walmart, Whole Foods, HEB), they wouldn't think I was trying to pay for a month's worth of groceries, but I was in fact paying the excessive amount of moola on allergen-free foods. The travel office ladies were very nice about it, thank the Lord!

In our hotel room, my husband turned the cabinet next to our television into a pantry of snacks and Katherine-friendly, non-refrigerated foods. It looked quite appetizing actually. At the end of the conference day, I'd come back to the hotel, watch TV commercials about pizza, and snack on pico de gio flavored rice chips. Quite yummy!

I even had a backup plan in case I had forgotten our large ice chest. Normally, these fancy hotels have little containers to store ice or chill wine... Yeah, that's right! I've done it before while in San Francisco! They're a great place to at least store some sandwich meat, bag of salad, and some carrots. But thankfully we had a little more room than that in our ice chest.

The only thing I could have done better was stay in a hotel with a kitchenette so we could heat up food. But that was pretty much out of the question for this trip considering the conference was held in downtown Dallas, where only the rich, and obviously, non-kitchenetty people like to stay when in town. I have to say, though, the peeps who cater to the rich really know how to put together an in-hotel fitness center! Lots of treadmills, elliptical, bikes, weight lifting machines, fitness balls, and free weights. It was awesome! Used it every day I was there! And getting a good allergy butt-kicking session in was quite easy.

In a nutshell, that's how I survived my trip last week and didn't once come down with a headache! It may seem like a lot of work and not as much fun as just going out to eat at like where ever, but I enjoyed the trip as a real healthy human being and my husband enjoyed it too.