The Boondock Saints – heck yeah!

Hello! Yesterday was a busy day. It started off with a fairly usual day at work, however I tried something new (to me) for breakfast - overnight oats. I made these oats by combining 1/2 c strawberry yogurt, 1/2 c almond milk, 1/2 c uncooked rolled oats, and a sliced banana. I let them soak in the fridge overnight, and in the morning I had filling bowl of chewy deliciousness!

We had a team outing at work and went to Upstream for lunch. I ordered a cup of the tomato soup (I swear it's more parmesan cheese than tomato!) and a side salad with dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, and a walnut vinaigrette. Sorry, I didn't take any pictures.

Back at my desk, I broke into my snack around 3:30. I had a small handful of almonds and half of a grapefruit.

Here is where the busy-ness came in! We had some special birthday plans (it's both mine & my brother's birthday today!) at 6:45 last night, but I really wanted to get in a run. I had just planned to run outside, but I woke up yesterday morning to more snow! I knew if I wanted to run, I'd have to go to the gym right after work. I warned Katie ahead of time, so we were able to pack up our gym bags quickly, and scarf down our pre-workout snacks while we fought the rush-hour traffic to get to the gym. I had a Kashi granola bar in the car.

I'm so glad we went! My run was hard - my legs felt heavy & tired. But I felt so much better for squeezing it in. I had a 4 mile run + 4 'pick-ups' on the schedule, but I kind of mashed it together for a total of 4 miles, including 6 sets of pick-ups for the last mile. A pick-up is where you start off slow and then increase your speed to almost a sprint over about 100 meters. This is hard to do on the treadmill so I improvised. I slowed down to a walk, and then increased the speed to a 9.0 and held there until I had gone 0.1 mi. Then I slowed back to a walk and recovered for 0.05 mi. It actually felt great to get my legs moving that fast, my heart pumping that hard, and my lungs really working!!

After my run, I quickly showered and got ready for the evening's main event - but first we had to pick up dinner. We swung by a Panera Bread and I ordered the Mediterranean veggie sandwich which came with a small bag of kettle chips and a pickle spear. I ended up eating about 3/4 of the sandwich, half of the pickle, and all of the chips. I didn't get a picture of it because I ended up eating it in the movie theater. Yep, last night we went to a screening of The Boondock Saints...on the big screen! This was a 10th anniversary special engagement that happened to fall the night before our birthday. All the kids in my family are big fans of the movie, as well as my brother-in-law, Katie, & Laura, so we went as a kind of birthday celebration. It was awesome!! I was exhausted by the time we got home, but it was worth it.