Thursday, February 21, 2013

Intervals and Coffee

Well, I don't even know where to start today. It's almost Friday! Good news for those of you that have weekends off.

Workouts:
Yesterday: 4 easy treadmill miles at the gym
Today: I was going to do my long run, but my weekend plans have changed so I did 6 miles consisting of a 2 mile warm up, 2.5 miles of intervals, and a 1.5 mile cool down. I did 800m intervals (.5 miles) at 8:xx pace, I didn't keep precise tabs on the exact pace, and 400m (.25 miles) at 10 min pace to recover. Repeat for 2.5 miles. I didn't want to do anything too fast since I'm still kind of testing the waters since getting back to training so I kept the faster pace pretty comfortable. I'm going to try to make intervals a more regular part of my running and will be able to increase the pace when I'm confident that I'm not overdoing it. Running intervals felt good. I gave me a little taste of my old pace without leaving me feeling exhausted and sore.

There are only 7 weeks until my first race of the season. It's a half marathon and I'm not worried about being able to finish it, but I was hoping to be able to train well and see what I could do. I've yet to set a time goal, I think this has a lot to do with a) not having a previous half marathon time of my own to compare it to b) having a very rough start to training and not knowing where I will be by the time this race rolls around and c) its scary to tell you what my time goal is because then I have to tell you if I don't make it. I'm going to give it some thought in the next few days and see what I can come up with for a realistic goal. If I have to scrap those plans when race days rolls around then fine. Not really.

I haven't been telling you about many yummy things lately because I haven't been doing much cooking. When it's just Lorelei and I for dinner it seems silly to spend lots of time cooking, the two of us don't eat much. We've been eating lots of salads (well, I have), wraps, and sandwiches. Nothing too exciting about that.

Instead of food, lets talk coffee. In the March 2013 issue of Redbook there's an article called Is Caffeine the World's Best Drug? Obviously my answer is YES! If I could only have one thing to eat or drink all day I'd have to pick coffee. Unless it's gross coffee, then I'd pick wine.
Here is why caffeine (in it's natural form meaning coffee and tea, not soda and energy drinks) is good for you.
Regular (not decaf) coffee can cut your diabetes risk in half and reduce your odds of getting a certain kind of breast cancer by 57%, also drinking 3 to 5 cups daily can reduce your odds of getting dementia by 65%
A Harvard study found that women that drank 2 to 3 cups of caffeinated coffee daily had a lower risk of depression than non coffee drinkers. Caffeine triggers the release of dopamine, the "feel good" chemical.
They also said caffeine contributes to a smaller waistline and easier workouts. Obviously drinking soda or energy drinks will not lead to less weight gain, they're full of sugar. The fake sugars in the diet stuff have been linked to weight gain, as well as worse things, so leave that alone too.

That's no joke!

I know I told you I was going out of town this weekend, but that's not happening anymore. We were going to visit family in Wisconsin but a couple of them have the flu and we don't want any of that. It was a big bummer to hear that last night. Hopefully we can find another weekend soon that works. I did have some other things going on this weekend that weren't as fun so I was going to skip them, guess now I have no excuse. Also, Paul has time off this weekend so who knows what adventures we'll drag him along on. Luckily the weather here will be a bit warmer and I won't have to do 9 miles on the 'mill.


2 comments:

  1. Love that shirt! Have to ask where did you find such an awesome shirt? Just found your blog and I'm looking forward to following you and your running adventures. I'm from Michigan too. :)

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  2. Hi! Welcome! I found the shirt on Pinterst, sadly I don't actually have one. I did google the phrase and found out that there are a lot of different shirt options that say that :) I should probably have one.

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