Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Half-Day Eats and Half Marathon Training Question

Since I am currently living alone, I get to eat whatever I want. It is a double edged sword for sure. Nobody's stopping me when I feel like ice cream and chocolates for breakfast. While I have my moments and make less healthy food decisions at times, I'm thankful that I love fruits and vegetables so that it's easy for me to get my fill of 10 various veggies in a day. Yes, I do make a fruits and veggie count and panic a bit when the number drops to 5 veg/2 fruits. :P Do you live alone? If not, do the people you live with share your healthy eating habits?
{Breakfast: Egg, mizuna, shaved carrots, green pepper in gim/Korean nori}
I loved how the warm egg made the nori melty yummy. Blogging snack was a slice of banana bread, frozen banana slices, and frozen grapes. This time, I added kinako (soy bean flour) to the mix for some protein action and topped with black sesame seeds. Wiki says that: "About one-third of the sesame crop imported by the United States from Mexico is purchased by McDonald's for their sesame seed buns (The Nut Factory 1999)". That's a lotta buns! Protein in a sweet slice of bread, winner methinks.
{Snack: A Slice of Kinako Banana Bread}
Check out my watermelon August calendar at the background, love the color contrast. :D I had plans of trying to make Thai Green Curry but the heat is killing me so that will have to wait another day. :s Instead, I deciced to recycle left over carrots, green pepper, and mizuna to make a salad. With thinly sliced cucumber and gluten free rice penne; it made for a quick cool lunch. Haha, lazy me. There's still a big container of that in the fridge so I can have it whenever the tummy grumbles.
{Lunch: Rice Penne with Veg + Raw Tofu}
That was refreshing. I'm gonna have another serving of that later with some slices of avocado for the healthy fats! Whew! I'm only half-way through my eats for the day. I am truly amazed at bloggers who post all their eats every single day! You guys are awesome.

Running Question: Hal Higdon's Half Marathon Plan is 12 weeks but I have 16 weeks to go (not including this week) before the race, how should I go about that? I plan on repeating 4 weeks (ex: W1, W2, W5, W6) depending on how each training week goes. Any suggestions? Super thanks!

17 comments:

  1. I would definitely repeat 4 of the weeks, especially some of the higher mileages to help your body adjust to it. Of course, if you're feeling especially tired or run down at all, you could even consider cutting the long run mileage down on one of those weeks before going back up to the original mileage you were at the week before.

    Your meals look so wonderfully delicious! :D I live with the rest of my family, but thankfully I'm the one in charge of cooking and shopping. ;)

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  2. I think you are doing the right thing by repeating 4 weeks. The Hal plan is so good and really eases you into running those distances. I have the half marathon book by him--haha, I just need to pick it up and run a half sometime in my life. :)

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  3. i think repeating weeks is the right idea. that gives your body time to adjust to the mileage without building up too fast (although you've already got a great base if you're doing 12 mile long runs!).

    your meals look so wonderful. i don't live alone, but my sister is pretty understanding of my eating habits. she likes fruit and vegetables, but she doesn't care much about whether the things she eats are healthy or not. it's quite a change form my last roommate though, who basically opened a mayonnaise/butter/cheese store in our refrigerator.

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  4. Well.. I just got out of a house where I was living with 3 other people. There was so much stuff everywhere, and we didn't share the same eating habits. However, one of them (I just moved into a new place with her), has more similar eating to me. Or atleast she seems to express an interest in trying new things, just like me. So when I make things, or buy things I offer them to her and usually she really like it :D So her eating is becoming similar to mine lol

    I know there are some online resources that have different training plans. If you Google it, I'm sure something will come up.

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  5. mcdonalds uses 1/3 of the sesame seed crop? RIDICULOUS!

    http://thehealthyeverythingtarian.wordpress.com

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  6. woah I have never seen rice penne! It looks so cool :)
    delicious snack too :)

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  7. I would do what you said - repeat certain weeks - or, you could just take the next 4 weeks to run whatever you feel like!

    This may mean running less than the schedule would call for... but, it may mean running more! For example, just yesterday I was looking through my running "calendar" where I keep track of my mileage and I was actually running MORE per week before my marathon training actually kicked off, because I was just running for fun and whatever distance felt right.

    In terms of geting 10 servings of fruit/veggies - I actually never think about that, oddly enough, even though I do try to eat my product, obviously.... do you try for 5 veggies and 5 fruits? Do you think when I juice stuff that counts?

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  8. Hmmm. All your food looks SO delicious!

    I think it's a great idea to repeat four weeks of it!!

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  9. I'm the main grocery shopper at my place- I just have the one roommate and we mostly both eat fairly healthy.

    Not going to lie, though, many of my "meals" are sandwiches or massive bowls of popcorn. Hehehe.

    - Sagan

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  10. oh I LOVE soy bean flour! Esp the roasted kind! Have you tried those rice cakes thingies dusted with that?
    And wow. Such colorful, refreshing eats!

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  11. I live with ma boy which is generally a good thing food-wise. He doesn't always want to go with the healthiest options I make/choose but he is pretty healthy overall and we mix well. He is also the cook in the house so I don't like to interfere too much! (hence hot dogs tonight! haha) Luckily he is also willing to try anything new and he accepts my choices but balances me out by reminding me it is both fun and wonderful to eat giant lasagnes, ice cream and buttery risotto. Yum!

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  12. Haha I got pretty good at posting all my eats until I got home and things got busy! It'll be interesting how it plays out when I'm at school and stressed out of my mind. Hopefully blogging will be a good release for me! My family eats pretty healthy, the only problem is I usually eat unhealthier at home because a) I am rarely at home and b) there are tempting foods everywhere--foods that I normally don't have around. Granted "tempting' in our family is nowhere near terrible. Just some M and Ms and chips. We don't have too many sweets and pastries lying around. Otherwise I'd be in trrrrouble :)

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  13. I had the same situation as you when training for my half - I had a couple extra weeks in there. I just repeated the weeks where my long runs were 6-7 miles so I could get comfortable with a medium distance run! Good luck!

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  14. OMG kinako banana bread? Can you post the recipe? That just sounds like heaven!
    My housemates don't have unhealthy eating habits, but they are SOOOOOOOOOO DIRTY. The kitchen always looks like a battle zone. I think that's worse than them coming home with McDonalds every night.
    As for Hal Higdon plan, what I would do is repeat the first four weeks, but when you repeat, add a little more distance, a little more intensity. Key word: a little bit, so you dont get injured!
    Good luck!

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  15. I agree with everyone else with the repeating 4 of the weeks :) The important thing is getting in those long runs. If you can do that, then you're golden.

    Haha, I totally go crazy over produce too! Though I still live with my fam (in the summer, at least), no one else touches the fruit but me, haha.
    I glad other people don't think its strange to eat MASSIVE amounts of fruit/veggies!

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  16. I'm a bit backwards from most people :\ I would take the 4 weeks to build a stronger running base. Not that you don't have a strong base now, miss I just knocked out 12 miles ;), but it's just something to consider.

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  17. Your lunch looks great! Is raw tofu just normal tofu, uncooked? Or do you have to buy a special kind?

    As for the running question, repeating isn't a bad idea. Another idea would be just to take the next four weeks and concentrate on slow, easy mileage. A training program is demanding, and I wouldn't want to make it any longer than it needs to be. Geting hurt when you're in otherwise great running shape is the worst.

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