Ray’s on his first afternoon shift in over a year and I decided that in order to celebrate (his recovery and my alone time) I would go for a jog after work. I normally do not go to the gym directly after work, I find it much too disruptive to our evening. I prefer to come home first, make and clean up dinner together, make lunches and then I’ll go back out and do a class. Today, since he’s at work anyway and our dog is happy as long as I’m home to feed her by 6, an afternoon jog (and tan) seemed like just the thing.
I happened to look back at my calendar this afternoon and noticed that I haven’t jogged at all since July 14th and not on a treadmill since mid May. I was curious to know how I would do. I go to spinning and kill myself in intervals for an hour, I figured that the jog couldn’t be that bad. Plus, I used to really like watching Law & Order on the treadmill TV while I ran so I was overall pretty happy to be going.
Turns out that while my cardio system had no trouble at all with the jog, my ankles, knee, back….it all hurt. It’s still aching now. Especially my ankles. It never even occurred to me that most people don’t go from zero to 5km in one day. Usually, I think, you build up the distance…which more than likely gives your ankles and knees and jogging muscles time to adjust and build up. So…..ya….I didn’t make it 5km, I only made it 4.2 km and it took me 32 minutes to get that far. I could have pushed on to get the full 5k but I thought about it and determined that in this instance I had nothing to prove. My goal was to go for a jog. I went for a jog. A little over 4km is nothing to sneeze at and there was no reason to push through any sort of discomfort…not when it was my first run in…too long. And definitely not since I knew I was coming to 6am spinning this morning.
After my jog I came home and cooked a dinner I had no intention of eating. Well…sort of. You see, I don’t like the idea of Ray eating microwave meals more than once/week (sodium and blood pressure issues, not to mention chemicals and lack of recognizable veggies), nor do I love the idea of him buying whatever high calorie, high carb, low nutrition ‘meal’ that our cafe at work serves. Too expensive and too unhealthy. So, because it bothers me, I choose to make sure that he has a proper work lunch every day, even when he’s on afternoons and I don’t want to cook just for myself. No point in complaining about having to cook all the time when I’m the one who chooses to have an issue with the alternatives.
Anyway, my point is, I came home and made a marinara meat sauce and then cooked some whole wheat pasta for him. For me, I quartered and roasted an acorn squash. I took a quarter of the hot roasted squash, put a teeny amount of spaghetti noodles in the hollow and then topped it with fresh sauce. And damnit, it was delicious! There were enough noodles to feel like I wasn’t getting ripped off, the acorn squash was filling and the sauce was so flavourful! There’s enough sauce for dinner for me tomorrow and two lunches for Ray and there’s enough squash left I expect to be having some of it heated up and then topped with a bit of butter and brown sugar, maybe after Wednesday night’s spinning class. (how’s that for weird food combo, Marathon Sweetheart?) 🙂
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Love List ~ October 25, 2011
Today I am grateful for:
- a crisp evening walk with my dog
- a good hard sweat
- common ground
- caramel tea & a gingerbread from Budapest
Fitty vs Fatty 
That’s not a weird combo at all! It’s very standard way to have Acorn Squash and absolutely divine!
As for the jogging – I think for your first time in a long time that you did really well! Just because you are cardio conditioned doesn’t mean you are run conditioned. It’s also important to know when to stop.
And Oh my goodness that dinner looks DELICIOUS!