Tuesday, May 25, 2010

TT Contest Week 2: Burning Down The House

Week 2 is complete! Once again I skipped my Monday workout because I was so sore from all the work on the patio over the weekend! :) I did the workout on Tuesday instead. Overall, my nutrition has been kind of a mess this week. Some days good, some days...not as good. But my weight did go down just a bit. I think it must be all the extra work I've been doing on the weekends. lol

I've been using the TT Hot Zone Fat Loss Workout. It's one that I've never used before. One of the reasons I chose it is because on Fridays you do a 20 minute "high intensity" cardio instead of the intervals that you do on Monday and Wednesday. I thought this would help me gear up for all the running I will be doing this summer. I officially kick off my half marathon training on May 31.

The last day to enter the Turbulence Training Transformation contest and still have the full 12 weeks is May 31. Come and join me this summer in the contest! (To my sister-in-law, if you're reading this, This Means You! lol) You can read the all the rules here ==> TT Contest Rules

On Saturday night I made a pizza using the pizza crust recipe from a recent issue of Cooking Light magazine (except I used whole wheat flour). The crust was a lot of work, but on the other hand, not a lot of work. Let me explain. ;)

First, the crust had to be made 24 hours in advance so it could sit in the fridge. However, the only ingredients in the crust were flour, water, yeast and oil so it was easy to throw together.

Second, the recipe made the pizza more of a "Neapolitan" style - cooked at a high temperature (550 degrees F) on a pizza stone. My pizza stone hasn't seen the light of day in a while so it probably should have been cleaned a little better, but I popped it in the oven anyway. Soon thereafter, smoke started pouring out of my oven! With 5 minutes left of a 30 minute preheat, I made a last minute decision to ditch the pizza stone. By now, the smoke was getting pretty thick. So instead, I popped in my perforated pizza pan. Well, that started smoking too! lol

I put the pizza on the perforated pan, threw it in the oven, and lowered the temperature to 440 degrees F. Finally, the smoking stopped! I had to open all the windows and turn on fans to get all the smoke out of the house.

So after all that work, how did the pizza taste? My kids deemed it "super-duper-licious" and we ate the whole thing. I'll make this crust again for sure, but next time I'm going to follow the recipe for Chicago deep dish. Same crust recipe, but you cook it in a baking pan at a lower temperature. :)

Have a great week!




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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

TT Contest Week 1: Insomnia

TT Contest Week 1 is in the books and for some reason this week I have had trouble sleeping. This is totally unlike me. Usually I am out like a light and I don't wake up at all. A few nights during this past week I was awake every hour. As a consequence, I've been feeling exhausted all week.

Part of the reason may be that last weekend we started building a brick paver patio. It's a lot of work! Lots of heavy lifting. Both last Monday and yesterday I did not workout because my back was really sore. Instead, I did my Monday workout on Tuesday. (That's my plan for today as well. My back still feels tweaky, so I am going to try to take it easy.) Anyway, the patio still isn't finished. We didn't finish it the first weekend - let's just say someone (who shall remain nameless) miscalculated the number of bricks we needed. ;) Then it rained for much of the week so we couldn't work on it. Then this past weekend, we had all the bricks in place and realized it wasn't really level. (Bob Villa would not approve!) So it was back to the store for more paver base! We had to make 2 trips because the guy at the store feared our car would bottom out if we piled it all in. But we ran out of time again so the saga will continue this week. I'll post pictures when we are finally done!

Have a great day! :)

Monday, May 3, 2010

Love, Death And The Bike Anti-Theft

Wow, time flies, doesn't it? This weekend I finished up the Bikini Ready workout I had been using. My weight didn't change all that much, but my bodyfat dropped about 1% according to my Omron.

The workouts were starting to wear on me a little bit because they were big circuits and I always felt like I was hogging equipment at the gym. So I am taking this week off from workouts - except I am running a 5K on Thursday. LOL This particular race is the same race that was my very first 5K a year ago (and I ran it in 40:59). I haven't been training per se for a 5K, but I'm pretty sure I should be able to improve on that time! :)

....BIG ANNOUNCEMENT....

The 8th Turbulence Training Transformation Contest started this week...and I think I am going to join this one! (You can read the rules HERE.) My sister-in-law might join as well, so give it up for T.! [Hurray! :)] I'm going to use this contest to really focus on my training and nutrition as I prepare for the half marathon I am running late this summer. I plan to start Monday, May 10! :) I decided not to join the M&F Hers contest. I checked out the rules online, and just decided it wasn't for me.

...OTHER SILLY RANDOMNESS...

The past couple of weeks my back has been feeling tweaky. (That's a technical term, by the way; my chiropractor used it.) I made an appointment with said chiropractor and decided to ride my bike over after work. When I went to unlock my bike, I discovered that someone had locked up their bike next to mine, and had put their lock through a part of my back tire. It's a little hard to explain, but there's a straight piece that comes down from the "basket holder" and hooks into the pin that holds on the back tire. Luckily, 2 girls walked by and helped me remove my back tire so I could remove the idiot's bike lock. I was not amused.

A couple weeks ago I was on a Saturday run and I nearly witnessed death. Some poor squirrel was in the middle of the road and a truck was speeding toward him. I started yelling at the squirrel, but I don't think he could hear me. Or understand me. Or know why the heck I was yelling at him. I think the truck actually ran over his tail. Then the squirrel staggered over to the curb. He jumped up once and missed the curb, then jumped up again and made it. He limped over to his tree with kind of a dazed look. There was squirrel tail fluff blowing across the road, but I think the little guy made it.

Finally, on my Saturday runs, without fail, the song "Your Love" by the Outfield comes on. (You know the song - "I just wanna use your love, tonight") The first line of the song is "Josie's on a vacation far away" so we already know he's cheating on her, but I always thought it was with some underage girl. There's a line where he says "You know I like my girls a little bit older" which I always interpreted as him meaning "I usually like my girls older, but you'll do". After listening to the song so many times, however, I've decided that the woman he's talking to is actually "older". So now instead of being a pervert, he's chasing a cougar. Which makes me feel only slightly better. After all, he's still cheating on poor Josie.

Have a great week!!



Please see my Disclaimer/Disclosure Statement.