Day 2 and Graduate School

So last nights ride didn't actually happen. Sometimes life just happens instead right..? So I have pictures to post from TONIGHT's Brick...

12 mile ride and then a tough 3 miles. Right now in Logan there is like a freaking ton of construction.. awful... and what do they put on the roads.. chip and seal... horrible to bike on. Yuck.

I took it upside down... oops. lol 

It was a great ride though.. Brooke and I talked about our favorite Grey's anatomy characters and how we are excited for the new season :)

For dinner tonight we had Mango Chicken Stir Fry. Yumm!! I chopped everything up after work before my grad school orientation. That way when Bryce go home he just had to plop it in the pan a stir it around. (That is why there is a lack of cooking pictures.) It was super delicious though!

As I mentioned earlier I went to a Graduate School Orientation... super duper boring. Slightly informative but mostly boring. After that I went to go pick up my books. Crazy thing they only had ONE of my books. I was slightly upset. I guess the reason that they don't have the books for my other class is because only 3 people are taking it and that is including me. (My mind was blown a little... definitely going to get a lot of attention in that class ehh?)

As for my Abs of the day I did Medball sit-ups, Side crunches, pillars on the med ball and around the worlds. Hopefully this is gonna pay off... ehh?

Do you like fruit in your stir-fry's?

New challenge... 60 days to a 6 pack

Lately I have been feeling the urge to really polish my nutrition and add a lot of core work to my workouts. It sounds really vain (and it is). Oh well. I talked to my husband last night and formulated a plan. He is going to give me
ab workouts. I am going to plan out my meals and try and get in more high protein snacks. We went to the gym last night to start with my ab workouts... he is brutal I literally almost cried.

So here we go for my nutrition plan for today:

Breakfast 7:30 am: 1/2 cup old fashion oatmeal, 2 scoops of Larry Scott strawberry protein powder, 4 strawberries, banana, 2 egg whites and 1 cup of unsweetened almond milk. (CHECK)
Snack 10:00 am: Protein Shake
Lunch 1:00 pm: Chicken Salad Sandwiches (older post recipe)
Snack 4:00 pm: Greek yogurt
Dinner 7:30-8:00ish pm: Shrimp taco salad :)

As for today's work out. I will post about it after.. maybe have some picture. I have lifting, abs (that Bryce gave me.... ouch) and a BRICK (bike/run). Brooke and I are headed out at 6:30 tonight to do a 12 mile bike and then an interval workout. I really hope that Bryce didn't decide to unplug my Garmen again or I will totally flip out. Maximus should be excited though He is going to get to play with his BFF/Girlfriend Mia (Brooke's Dog) while we are doing our brick tonight.

For the abs I am going to do 100 leg lifts, 200 Russian Twists, Medball boat hold 1 min, 1 min plank each direction and 10 superman's (each way)


This week I have been teaching a Stability Ball Class on Monday they did a full body circuit and were totally loving it hahahahaha Today I am thinking that we are going to do a lower body circuit... I swear SB makes you more sore than anything else.

Have you guys every really worked with a Stability ball?

What is your least favorite ab workout? and your Favorite?

Speed work, sweating and shopping.

Today is a day just full off "s's". It started out with an awesome day of speed work for our tri. Brooke and I met up at the track at 8:30 and did 2x400/1200/400. The goal was to run the 400's at 5k pace and the 1200's about 15 seconds slower than 5k pace. It was a quick to the point workout. I didn't waste anytime because the doors to the bathroom were locked and I had to go. Needless to say I hit the times I was looking for.

I hoped into the car and picked up my bountiful basket. It was awesome. I love love love getting them. It makes it so easy because then I don't have to pick what is for dinner, I just base all of our meals off what we get in the basket. This week we got:

- kale

- lettuce 

- 4 tomatoes

- cabbage 

- cauliflower 

- bananas

- blue berries

- plums (like 8 of them)

- 2 bags of cherries 

- cantaloupe 

- huge purple grapes (I will post pictures later) 

I got home and did 25 minutes of yoga for runners on YouTube. I think Maximus was a little confused at what I was doing; but he did find it entertaining to lay on his back underneath me and paw at me while I was doing downward dog. 

As I finished up Bryce came home from selling more protein we wrote out our meals for the week (based on the bountiful basket) and headed to the grocery store. While we were there we found a new favorite treat. Little frozen yogurts made by healthy choice. The literally tasted like strawberry ice cream. Delicious! And yes we did smile...

I slacked off and didn't cook anything really for lunch, unless Papa Murphy's counts? We tried a new flavor Thai chicken... Mmmmmmhmmmm. So good. I guess I did throw together Bryce's favorite salad that is adapted from Our Best Bites: 

Spinach Walnut Salad with Citrus

Ingredients:

-bag of baby spinach

- 1/4 cup of red onion

- 1/3 cup of raisins 

- 1/2 cup of toasted chopped walnuts 

- 2 oranges (peeled and chopped up) 

Directions 

- Toss all ingredients together and top with your favorite dressing (I always love balsamic vinaigrette). 

Bikes and Boo Boos

I am a day late on this one... But here we go anyway. Yesterday.. Haha I had my first encounter with the tar on my bike. We had gone on a 15 mile bike ride and were headed back to campus... (Why all college campuses are on a hill beats me). The last mile is a straight uphill shot to campus. As Brooke and I cursed our way up the hill I downshifted a little too hard and my chain fell off. I tried to clip out but I haven't had a ton of experience. Just picture a cow tipping over in slow motion. That was me... In front of all the construction workers. Haha luckily I just scuffed up my elbow... And yes Melanie I was wearing my helmet! Haha the best part is my husband Bryce went mountain biking last night up green canyon with a friend and totally ate it and scrapped up his knee, back, ear and helmet pretty good! Thank goodness for ibuprofen. We are quite the pair...

Enough about us eating gravel lets get to what we ate for dinner. It is one our favorites adapted from blog.naturebox.com/post/35207819367/harvest-chicken-salad.  I just changed it a little bit. We didn't have any apple so to give it a crunch and add some veggies I put in two stocks of celery. (I have to hide celery in food so Bryce will eat it. If not he will only touch it if it is smothered in peanut butter). Along with our sandwiches cooked some carrots because Maximus loves to chomp on them. But he leaves a mess of carrots all over the floor. #firstworldproblems

Harvest Chicken Salad Sandwiches

Serves 4 

Ingredients 

- 1 pound of cooked chicken breast

- 1/2 cup diced red onion

- 1/2 cup diced celery

- 2/3 cup grapes, halved

- 1/4 cup sliced almonds 

- 1/2 cup Greek yogurt 

- 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice 

- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

- Salt and pepper to taste

- whole wheat bread 

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients (except bread). Mix together and then serve on wheat bread. 

*you can also serve over spinach for a salad 

Failed at Blogging.

So I have not done as well at this blogging thing as I really would like to! So here I am recommitting.
What has happened in the last 3 months:

-I graduated with my B.S. in Exercise Science

-I got to go to Texas and see an old friend and watch my Husband kick some booty throwing far!

-I celebrated my birthday with my family! They know me so well! I LOVE LOVE LOVE watermelon. Nothing is better. EVER.

-I started training for my first sprint triathlon. I have never been so excited about training in my whole life (today I am doing mile repeats and a little less than a mile swim... and I cannot wait to get off work to do it!)

-Bryce and I adopted a new member of our family!! Meet Maximus... my future running buddy! I took him on a 15 minute run. He loved it... but was so so so tired after. Haha We love him.

-I had the awesome chance to run Ragnar with my whole family and some great friends. We laughed, ran, sweat, got really ornery, ate and ended up having so so so much fun.

-Last update is I finally took the ACSM Health Fitness Specialist test and passed. Pretty excited that I don't have to pay membership dues for another 3 years.. haha as they would say on twitter #expensive.

Random side note it is my 7 month anniversary!! It has been crazy with ups and downs... and I need to be better at writing down our adventures. I am publicly posting my goal of blogging (they say if you write down your goals and have support from friends and family you are more likely to be successful. This is a double wammy).

P.F. Chang's Lettuce Wraps

I am a huge fan of Bountiful Baskets. If you don't know what they are I will tell you. Basically in a nut shell it is this organization that you pay on Monday and on Saturday you show up and they give you a basket of half fruits and half vegetables of what ever is in season. I love it because it has created so much variety and makes it easy for us to plan dinners for the week. If you are interested check them out at http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/. This past week we were lucky enough to get butter lettuce. Therefore I have to make lettuce wraps eh?
I got this recipe from food.com and tweaked it a little bit of course :)

P.F. Chang's Lettuce Wraps
Ingredients:
1/2 lb ground turkey
3/4 green bell pepper chopped
1/2 onion chopped
1/2 cup mushrooms chopped
1 clove of garlic

Special Sauce:
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 Tbsp Truvia or 1/4 cup white sugar
2 Tbsp light soy sauce
2 Tbsp Sriracha sauce
1 Tbsp lemon juice

Stir fry sauce
2 Tbsp light soy sauce
3 tsp truvia or 2 Tbsp white sugar
1/2 tsp vinegar

Serve with:
Butter lettuce
Rice

Directions:
-Brown the ground turkey take out of the pan an
-Sautée the onions, peppers, garlic and mushrooms
-While those are cooking mix all the ingredients for the special sauce in a separate bowl. Set aside.
-Once the onions are translucent add the turkey back into the pan and add the stir fry sauce ingredients. Let simmer for 5 minutes.
-Serve in Lettuce Cups with rice and top with Special Sauce

Enjoy!!

Face card workout

So this is a few days late but I put this workout together in honor of The Biggest Loser finale. I saw Bob do a version if this workout. I am a huge fan and so excited that Dani won this year! So my boot campers got to celebrate!

Warm-up: 400 meter run, dynamic stretching, high knees and butt kickers

Workout: I took a regular deck of face cards. I assigned each suit a different exercise. The number dictates how many of the exercise you do. We just flipped through all the cards.
-spades: 180 rotation squats
-clubs: abdominal pikes
-diamonds: triceps push-ups
-hearts: jump rope (this one we multiplied the number by ten ex: 2 of hearts = 20 single jump ropes)
-aces: one minute rest
-joker: 10 burpees

It took about 35-40 minutes and gave us just enough time to cool down and stretch! It is a great workout for when you are stuck inside and don't have any real equipment. Enjoy!