Speedwork and Vegetables

I had a nightmare about vegetables last night. I was chopping cauliflower and broccoli with a meat cleaver(?!?!) and the broccoli grew eyes, winked at me, and rolled off the cutting board so I instead sliced off three fingers and half a thumb! Eeep! I'm not the biggest vegetable eater out there, particularly salad type items. Last week, five of six dinners involved vegetables in place of pasta or rice. Saturday was the exception. We went to the Purple Rose with Princess for Mexican food and the closest I got to 'vegetables'... refried beans and a strawberry daiquiri. Not even close. Oh well. My favourite so far has been grated cauliflower sauteed with onion and cilantro - we had that twice and cauliflower is far from my first pick. Going to try it with a curry this week in place of rice :) Tonight is spaghetti squash with bolognese, and my biggest accomplishment was making myself eat (and kinda enjoy) an entire plate of cabbage (Meal: chicken marinated 24 hours in lemon juice with cumin/turmeric/paprika/ginger, served on a bed on lemon-infused red cabbage). Getting adventurous over here...

I've done a couple of speed work sessions on the treadmill, doing 400m 'sprints'. They're not quite sprints as I have to pre-determine a speed - stupid treadmill - so can't push as hard as I should. These are on a 1.5 incline. One of my February goals is to find a track or track substitute so I have a safe/flat/suitable terrain place to work on speed. Google earth showed up a couple near me, so I need to venture over and see if they are locked evenings/weekends. So my set speed the first session was 7mph (I know - this is slow for a lot of people. Equivalent is 8:34min/mile. Read the blog title again!) The following week I did three repeats at 7.5mph (8:00m/m) and two at 8mph 97:30m/m). This week I'm planning on 7.5x1, 8x3, 8.5x2. Eeep! I don't do fast. But I'm feeling strong.

Saturday morning I headed out for a trail run at Russian Gulch (my favourite route). My fastest time here has been 59:57, and I had to kill the last little stretch to get in under an hour. It sucked, I hurt, I gagged a little. Saturday, I was hoping for around an hour, under would be great so would keep that in mind on my pacing. I felt pretty strong most of the way around, although was more fatigued than I would like for the last hill. But far from the worst I've felt there, and whilst I could feel I'd been pushing myself more, I didn't feel exhausted. So it was a very pleasant surprise to hit the end of the trail and stop my GPS at 53:43! Wheeee! Happy Cyd!