According to Berni

So this morning I headed over to Wal-Mart looking for nothing in particular.  I just needed to stock up on sunscreen and possibly get some craft items for my 6 year old niece who is staying with me this weekend. 

While I was there look at what I found!  This adorable workout top is part of their Danskin line.  I remember Danskin from high school dance class but apparently they are still around and have gotten into the workout thing.  

I was surprised at how good the quality seems to be.  The fabric is super soft and the best part of all is this great little ‘media pocket’ that my iPod fits perfectly into!!   How awesome is that?!

Wanna hear the BEST part of all???   Check out this tag.  

Yes it was only $7 but that isn’t the best part (at least for me) it’s the size SMALL that I accidentally bought!!   I grabbed a hanger that said Large because normally that’s what I wear in an exercise top.  I got it home, tried it on and was parading around the house so happy with my find until I realized it was a small.  I literally stopped in my tracks and said “Oh no, I got the wrong size.  I need to take it back.” 

My daughter looked at me and said “um NO you don’t, it fits you perfectly!”   and then I realized that it did fit me and that no I don’t need to take it back… 

It does have a built in shelf bra that feels like it is pretty supportive, I will still need some extra support when I run but for a low impact sport it seems to be good.  I am taking it out for a test run later this evening and will let you know how it performs.  And if all goes well I will be going back to get more of these gems…

How’s YOUR weekend going so far??   Anything fun planned??

xoxo

Had me a blast…

2 days into Summer and I’m reminded of why I love this season soooo very much!

I was thinking about my eats for yesterday and realized one of the best things about Summer is that it is SO easy to meet all my fruit & veggie needs.

Nothing cools you off quiet like a green smoothie with Spinach and frozen banana.  A big salad for lunch and some roasted veggies for dinner… BINGO! 

I was a little surprised at how many fruits and veggies I had yesterday…and that was just a typical day, I didn’t ‘try’ to do it.

LOVE IT!

I hope everyone’s Summer has gotten off to a good start! 

And remember to hop on over to Cindy’s and wish her a Happy 40th Birthday!!  

Here are some pictures of our Summer Kick off BBQ from this weekend.

Enjoy!! 

One of 3 awesome kids that got me this picnic table for Father’s Day… pays to be a single mom when you’ve got 3 great kids!!

xoxo

Hello friends,

Just wanted to take a minute and say HI!   I’m about ready to head into the kitchen to start making salads, cleaning corn, cutting veggies and then outside for some SUMMERTIME FUN!! 

We are having a Summer Kick-off BBQ today to celebrate Summer and the end of school.  My parents, sisters, nephews and niece will all be coming over to eat, play, visit and did I say eat??    We’ll be making s’mores and having a grand old time!

Oh to be 9 and not afraid to bare it all….

In healthier news.

At last weeks trail race we were given these bars in our bags.   I just got around to trying them and I have to say, they are VERY good!   I’m not a big “bar” person and there are very few that I actually like,  I try LOTS of them but find they are too sweet or have odd texture.  But this one has recognizable foods in it and the sweet/salty combo was great!

The KIND bars are my favorite but this was something I enjoyed and would buy.

Clif MOJO Mountain Mix: It’s a sweet & salty trail mix bar and the packages says in contains Almonds, peanuts, raisins & chocolate chips but it had so much more… one of the things I liked about it were the little pretzel bits.   I would recommend it if your looking for a new bar to try out.

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!!

xoxo

So this weekend was pretty much about two things.

1. Relaxing
2. Food

There was some running but that was just a given…

Now, I don’t know about you but I’m all for a nice relaxing weekend after a week of running around like a chicken with no head.  So I planned nothing and just played it by ear.

Saturday morning I made a trip to Whole Foods in search of 1 thing.   This spread that Shari had posted about a while back.

Well, I am not joking when I tell you I jumped up and down the second I found it.  My daughter thought I had lost my mind, she was actually pretty sure that happened a while back but now she was convinced.    You MUST find this non-cheese cheesy spread!  RUN, don’t walk to your nearest health food store and buy this.   You will not be sorry!   I also got the Chili-Lime Mrs Dash that she said she sprinkles on top and OMG this is my new favorite snack!  I will be having this for lunch alongside my usual suspect salad. 

After our trip to Whole Foods we went in search of this truck…  

It may look like just your ordinary Roach Coach Lunch Truck, but underneath it’s modest exterior is the most un-believable tacos you’ve ever eaten.   I first discovered this while watching a show called “Best thing I ever ate” on Food Network.   This episode was about SNACKS.   One of the Chefs talked about these trucks.   The thing is, because it’s a truck and it moves, you can only find them if you follow them on Twitter.   They “Tweet” their location.   I had gotten the “tweet” in the morning saying where they were and it wasn’t far from home so we went.   They serve Korean BBQ meats in these small little ‘street tacos’ with an asian cabbage slaw on top and OMG.  SO GOOD.  Sorry, no pic of the tacos… I didn’t even think about it before inhaling eating them…Ooops!

And then last night on my weekly Sprouts run, I was appalled at what I saw.   They were throwing away a WHOLE box of bananas, because the peelings were not pretty!!  I’m telling you these bananas were not bruised, not even completely ripe and they were THROWING THEM AWAY!!!    I think the poor kid became afraid of the look on my face because he offered to set the box outside for me to take if I’d like… UM YEAH!   I offered to buy them if he was willing to mark them down but he said he couldn’t, he had to throw them away….   So I loaded up my box and came home with a boat-load of FREE bananas and about 20 apples.  SCORE!!   The apples were all juiced and I got an entire pitcher out of them.   I will be freezing those ugly bananas for smoothies which is the only way I use them anyway… who cares if the peeling isn’t pretty right?

My son thought I was completely NUTZ for taking these bananas…in his mind they were TRASH because that is where they were headed.  

What would you have done in this situation??  Would you have taken the bananas if offered??

Well everyone, I hope you all had a wonderfully relaxing and enjoyable weekend like I did… time to get ready for the week!! 

Have a great evening!!

xoxo

Whew! 

What a week that was…

I feel as if I have not stopped once to relax and breathe and based on what I’m reading out there I’m not the only one who feels that way.   Kalli is on her last week of school now heading into Summer vacation, and I’m oh so jealous!!! 

My little lump o’love is on her last week of school too and it makes me a little sad because I had been looking forward to spending Summer vacation at home with her, something I had never done.  But then I went back to work and while I’m grateful for my job, I’m just a little envious of the time I wont have at home…

Cindy and I apparently share more than a brain… we also seem to have a “Crazy maker” haunting us too…  that alone is enough to wear a girl out.

Thank God for running to help keep us SANE!

Thursday night our running group participated in a 5 mile Trail Race, it’s the 1st in the Summer Series of 3.  We ran the entire loop which I had not done since last Summer and man oh man, those hills were everything I remembered them to be…

BIG!

I did not run with my camera because I was really hoping to RACE this and beat last years time and I have a tendency to stop and play photographer when I have my camera.  I do have pictures of last year though and I’m not sure they do these hills justice. 

This picture was taken from about 1/2 the way up the hill.

My calves started talking to me last night and today they are definitely reminding me of what I did 2 nights ago…  feels SO awesome!!

We went into the race with a strategy to climb walk the steep hills and run the rest and that seemed to work perfectly.  I finished in 58:04,  not bad considering last years time was around 1:04.   We had perfect June Gloom running weather for our evening run but I’m a bit scared of what July’s race weather will be like.

I’m off to enjoy my Saturday… Have a great weekend everyone!!! 

xoxo

Hello lovelies…

Since the end of this month marks the halfway point of the year, I’ve been thinking about one of my goals for the year, the goal to run 500 miles.  I set this same goal last year and fell short about 73 miles.  Boo.

Upon checking my workout log I am happy to report that as of today I am on right on track to make that goal this year!  

To date I have ran 245 miles, which equates to 1 day 21 hours of running time (according to my log).   I have a 5 mile trail race on Thursday, so at least I know I’m half way to goal.

I ran a Boring with a capital B 3 miles tonight on the track… I do not recommend using the track for anything other than track workouts but my little lump o’love wanted to go and ride her bike so there we went… about 1 mile into my run she was bored (no duh kid) but she knew that we were committed so she occupied herself with cartwheels while I played loop di loop around the track. 

I hope everyone’s week is off to a good start!!

xoxo

Happy Saturday everyone!!

I wanted to share a new product I recently tried.   SunButter is a spread made from Sunflower Seeds.  For anyone looking to mix it up a bit and try something different than Almond or Peanut Butter this was a good alternative.  I tried the creamy version on toast and also on my oats this morning and it was really good!

This is what their website says:

Compared to peanut butter nutrition levels, SunButter^® products are definitely a healthy alternative to peanut butter! With one-third less saturated fat and 27 percent of a day’s recommended allowance of vitamin E in one serving, these products fit well into a healthy lifestyle and diet. Plus, SunButter^® products have a much higher iron and fiber content than peanut butter and are a great source of protein.

I cooked up some Multi-grain oats with 1/2 of a smashed banana and water, topped it with SunButter, toasted pecans and some toasted flaked coconut and it was DELISH! 

I hope everyone has a fantastic day!

xoxo

TGIF everyone!!

There’s been alot of talk lately about “living in the moment” and while I do try to practice that as much as possible, there’s still something in me that lives for the weekends.  It’s like my reward for working hard all week,  the desert after a good meal… 

Speaking of working hard, last night was running group.  We tackled some hills and one thing is for certain,  I DO NOT LIKE HILLS.   Or at least I just don’t run them enough to be strong on hills.  Which brings me to today’s title.  I have had this Nike gift card since Christmas, and try as I might I could not find anything I wanted to buy with it at my local Nike store.   I had been in there about 10 different times and nothing… well the other night I popped in and managed to spend it.  I found some awesome shorts, a cute tank and a much needed visor.   I decided to wear my new duds to running group and as I was walking out the door my son mentioned that I was the new NIKE poster child!!     I did kinda look like it, Nike from head to ankles (my shoes are Asics).  Whatever.

So back to the hills… I figured since I was posing as the Nike poster child for the night I may as well just use their slogan to power me up those HILLS and repeated in my head

JUST DO IT!

Well, I hope everyone has a happy Friday!!

xoxo

P.S.

I want to give a special shout out to Kalli over at FITANDFORTYSOMETHING,  this girl has the most amazing attitude and dinners!  THANK YOU Kalli for all the inspiration and the recent giveaway that I won!!  I’ll be enjoying a green smoothie today in your honor!!

Whew!

What a weekend!  I had the most glorious 3 day weekend.

We did some gardening, some swimming, some BBQing, some running and a whole lot of relaxing and enjoying the beautiful weather!

Last night once it started to cool down I took Makenna and her bike over to the high school to make use of their track.

The trail running group I recently joined has a specific training plan they gave us for the 10 weeks we will be training with them.  One day a week we have a ‘Track Workout’ that is emailed to us.   Track workouts can be a bit intimidating until you break it down but then it’s not bad.   I like to compare it to a recipe that may call for

1 C Flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 egg… you get the picture.

OR even a knitting pattern that may look something like this:

K1, P1, K2, YO, P1, K1

The workout looked like this:

800 Warm-up slow run/walk
2×400 @ aerobic pace (65% of MaxHR) w/ 1 minute recovery
2×400 @ tempo – move HR to labored breathing – keep under a burn in muscles w/1 min recovery
*1 MILE MARKER Timed – your fastest mile
4 laps/1 mile at constant speed you think you can withstand for the entire mile
If you can time each lap (or lap the lap), that is ideal to see if you held pace
*Get your Heart Rate right after the mile (monitor or 10 second pulse count)
2 minute recovery
2×400 aerobic pacing – HR 65% max -w/30 sec recovery
400 cool down – slow jog (or walk)

The high school track is 400 meters around (or 1/4 mile) so every 400 you see is one lap around the track.  So a “2×400 w/1 minute recovery” translates into: 1 lap w/1 minute walk, repeated twice.  One mile is 4 laps around the track.  

Before I headed over I programmed the workout into my Garmin (which you can do using the software that came with it)  so once I got there all I had to do is press START and the Garmin told me what to do.  Easy Peasy! 

It took me 45 minutes to complete and in the end I did about 3.6 miles.  It was a nice change of pace and challenging at the same time.   I believe we will be getting a new track workout emailed every week so I can’t wait to see what next weeks workout looks like!

For those wine lovers out there, head on over to Fitandfortysomething for an awesome wine giveaway!

Well my friends, I hope you all have a fantastic week, at least we only have 4 days this week till the weekend!!   Happy Monday everyone! 

xoxo