I always tell myself that recovery and comebacks have to start somewhere. I guess my road back into serious training started on Friday night. On my way home from work, I stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts and ordered a small coffee with milk and no sugar, in hopes that the caffeine would help me get to the gym after a long week. Thankfully, it did the trick and I was on the elliptical for 32:30 minutes and just over three miles. I like doing a decent workout on the elliptical machine the day or night before I have a “long” run scheduled. It loosens up the muscles and gets your body ready for the bigger workout the next day.

I slept really well on Friday night (thankfully) and got up excited for a good run on Saturday morning. The fuel for my run was:

A piece of multi-grain toast, a tablespoon of peanut butter and a banana. What a great breakfast – and it totally got me through a 6.2 mile run! I waited for about an hour after eating before heading out. I organized my run differently than I normally do. I parked in one area, ran 2.5 miles to my gym where I had a water & bathroom break and then ran 2.5 miles back to my car. There I took another couple of sips of water and then ran another 1.2 miles to finish up the run. I walked for a few minutes after. Then I walked myself over to Starbucks where I ordered a skim milk pumpkin latte, a grande size, with only two pumps of pumpkin (they usually put FOUR pumps in a grande and that is just too sweet for me). I enjoyed the latte while reading in one of the comfy chairs and it was a great recovery, I stayed for about 20 minutes or so. During this time I drank more water and started to think about lunch. I went over to Whole Foods and grabbed a Greek yogurt and a couple of other things (Peanut Butter Puffins because I can’t live without them and the cereal was on sale!).

After Starbucks and Whole Foods I went home, showered and then stretched for a bit. I also did some yoga. I was not hungry right away. But eventually I heated up a bowl of brown rice with chicken and broccoli (left over Thai food from Friday night). For the rest of the day I took it easy (it was hard to do, because I like being busy and on the go… but sometimes your body NEEDS a break!) I did some laundry, did some reading, more yoga and watched a few episodes of Homeland. What is your opinion about this show? Do you love it? Do you think it is good but are not quite sure what all the hype is about? I’m sort of in the middle. I am in the middle of episode 7, Season 1 at the moment.

I am still reading the Updike book that I started a couple of weeks ago. I would love to finish it this weekend. I think that’s going to be my goal.

I spent a lot of the day yesterday being hungry. I guess that sort of makes sense since I burned an additional 600 calories in my morning run. I drank a lot of water and tea, and had a couple of snacks during the day. For dinner I had more brown rice with chicken and broccoli.

This morning I decided to make a substantial breakfast in hopes that I wouldn’t spend the entire day being hungry today! Oats:

In the mix this morning:

1/2 C of raw oats

1/2 C of 1% milk

1/2 C of water

A few raisins

Blueberries (added when oats were in the final bowl)

Pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, vanilla

Topped with toasted coconut (about a teaspoon), peanut butter, and a sprinkle of brown sugar

I enjoyed the oatmeal with a mug of tea and it was a really nice breakfast:

My latest Runner’s World magazine arrived yesterday and the timing could not be better. I really need to be re-inspired with running. So today I am going on a three mile run and then I might do a light weight workout at the gym. My body definitely felt a little achey after my 6.2 mile run yesterday. I guess it felt a little more like I had run a half marathon than just over a 10K.

I started the month of October doing a great job of getting in exercise every single day. Then I ran into a couple of weeks of stress. Personal stress, medical stress and that turned into about two weeks of horrible migraine headaches. It was really hard to go to the gym during this time period and nearly impossible to run. On the days that I was feeling ok and not having horrible headaches, I definitely went to for either a run or to the gym, but the workouts were definitely less frequent. Now I am back at it.

Happy Sunday, everyone. I hope you are warm, wherever you are!