Recent Recipes

One good, one bad...

Good) Homemade peanut butter chocolate chip granola bars:  I saw some people on Pinterest or somewhere talking about making granola bars and thought that sounded like something I could handle.  These I make and keep in the freezer and just eat them right out of the freezer...I really like cold chocolate chips.  The recipe makes 12 small bars.  They're just enough that I can eat one right before running and have some sugar and protein in me but not feel sick while running.  I substitute applesauce for the coconut oil and leave out the wheat germ.  I tried one of the other granola bar recipes on this blog and it was a MAJOR bust, so now I've been nervous try other kinds besides these since I like them so much.  I'm kind of a peanut butter and chocolate addict...

Bad) Honey garlic chicken thighs: Aldi has chicken thighs on sale so I thought that I would buy some and try them out.  I normally just buy chicken breasts, but decided to live on the wild (i.e. cheap) side.  I googled "slow cooker chicken thighs" and this is what came up and seemed easy and sounded good.  Now I'll admit, it says to cook it for just 6 hours and I did more like 8...but it just came out kind of burned.  The sauce was pretty much black.  Not real appetizing...but we all still ate it, Shom even took the leftovers home.  I think the flavors have potential, but maybe just not this cooking method.

The Virtual Bookshelf

(I know that normally in the summer, I actually post here...that just hasn't happened.  We'll see if we can post a few things before summer runs out on me!)

One of my goals for this year, kind of a quasi-New Year's resolution, was to read more.  I feel like sometimes I don't have a very good vocabulary and tend to just read books that take no mental effort, so it seemed time to put in some effort.  Two things have really helped with that - two of my friends agreed to read some books with me in our own little mini book club and Brad gave me a kindle for Christmas.  So since December, here's what I've been reading (in no particular order):

-Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
-Dracula (Bram Stoker)
-The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
-The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
-The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
-The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
-The Sign of the Four (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
-The Black Tulip (Alexander Dumas)
-The Adventure of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
-The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
-Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
-The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
-A Town Like Alice (Nevil Shute)
-Where the Red Fern Grows (Wilson Rawls)
-Crazy Love (Francis Chan)
-The Awakening (Kate Chopin)
-Chasing Mona Lisa (Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey)
-Shadow in Serenity (Terri Blackstock)
-An Eye for an Eye (Irene Hannon)

Except for the last few, most of these were even "real books"...you know, without an FBI agent love story in there somewhere.  I have enjoyed most of them - I'd put The Scarlet Letter as my least favorite.  Favorites were probably A Town Like Alice and The Help, at least those were the ones I couldn't put down :)  I like being able to get a new book anytime with the kindle, and most of these that I read on my kindle were free.  I still like paperbacks, and five of these I read as real books instead of digital.  This is definitely way more books than I normally would have read by this point in the year, so I'm up for suggestions if you have any favorites...especially if they are free on kindle!

New Recipes

Well, it's been about five months since my last post. Really not much has changed since then :) This month I have had some time to enjoy cooking and have tried a bunch of new recipes. Some reports on the latest attempts in case you're looking for something fun for your kitchen:

1) Roasted red pepper hummus : I did change a couple things from the original...only did like 1/3 or 1/2 cup of red pepper instead of the whole jar and more like 2 Tbsp of the tahini. I also add a little of the liquid from the bean jar. I've been eating a batch a week of this stuff with my veggies in my lunch. Also great with tortilla chips or on tacos. I make it in my mini chopper/processor. I find that it chops up the beans better than my blender.

2) Peanut butter granola : I like to make little yogurt parfaits with berries, yogurt, and granola. I love that crunch :) Well granola is not very cheap (and I am) and the boxed kind tends to have ingredients I don't really need in my granola. So I thought I'd try out making my own. I like the flavor of this one, but it's not quite as crunch as I would like. I don't know if that's the recipe of if cooking longer would make crunchier. Still tasty...had a big bowl of it this morning for breakfast. I think I may try this one next time.

3) Garbanzo bean blondies : I just made these. They are currently cooling on the stove and smell fantastic and look like regular brownie type desserts. I haven't tasted it yet though.... (Update: Just tried these...and...they taste AWESOME!! Not gonna lie, kinda shocked.)

4) Brown rice : Ok I know, brown rice isn't exactly a new thing. But up until this week I made pretty bad brown rice. I saw this "recipe" and made it twice this week: 1 1/3 c. brown rice, 2 1/3 c. water, salt; combine in 1.5 qt casserole, cover, and bake at 375 degrees for 50 minutes. Take out of oven and let sit for 10 minutes covered before fluffing. Turns out perfect!

5) Lime chicken tacos : I make a lot of crock pot chicken tacos. Normally I just dump the salsa and taco seasoning in there with some frozen chicken and call it good. This recipe had 1 lb chicken breasts, 3 T. lime juice, and 1 T. chili powder in the crockpot until 30 minutes before eating. Then shred the chicken and add 1/2 cup salsa and 1/2 frozen corn (I put mine through the chopper first). Let everything mingle for 30 minutes and serve. I liked this better than my usual chicken. Not quite as liquidy at the end and some nice flavor. With the corn chopped up, you really didn't notice it texture-wise but it was nice for the flavor.

6) Honey garlic chicken stir fry : This one was from a Taste of Home Busy Family cookbook. In a skilled I cooked chicken with some soy sauce and honey and garlic, then removed it and sauteed some frozen veggies in the same liquid until warm and then added the chicken back in. This got served with some of my brown rice :) The honey and soy were nice together and it was pretty easy. Brad picked around most of the veggies, but seemed to like the chicken and rice.

I've instituted mandatory rating of all new dishes to see which ones stay and which ones go (Brad asked if he could just give everything a 5). I have a bunch of new recipes planned on this months menu plan so I'm writing down our rating for each one on a scale of 1-10 so at the end of the month I can remember what was worth making again.

I told you this would happen...

Well as you can probably tell, school has started. So the blogging has nearly stopped. We're almost through the first week and it's going pretty well but the first week is just always crazy. Switching classrooms, people trying to get into classes and out of classes, technology not working, hunting down students that never show up. I'm so ready for everyone to just be set with their classes, their rooms, their online homework...and just do some math. My classes seem like nice groups of people. No one has stuck out as super annoying, and usually those students show themselves in the first few days.
And I did get myself to run one night this week, so I'm down to the final run of the Couch to 5k. In theory that should happen tonight...we'll see.
The freezer meals, however, are working out wonderfully. Totally have saved us this past week.

Couch to 5k - Week 8 done!

Tonight I finished week 8 of the Couch to 5k program! Three 28 minute runs in the books. For the first time tonight at the recommendation of my facebook friends, I used the CardioTrainer app on my phone during my run. According to my phone I did 2.95 miles in 28:01. My first mile was 9:14 and my second mile was 9:44. So the next 0.95 miles would have been in 9:03. The route that I run in Pekin Country Club has two big (for me) hills during mile number 2, so that's definitely what happened there. The first mile and the last mile are completely flat. I know that I'm not actually running fast...but it feels fast. Maybe it just feels fast compared to the pace that I was running 9 weeks ago. I'm definitely running faster now. I know that speed is not really the goal, but it's kind of fun to go faster :) One of my goals at the beginning of this program was to be able to do a 5k in 30 minutes. So I am definitely on pace for being able to do that. I actually signed up for a 5k this week. No backing out now... There's a 5k at the Marigold Festival on September 10th. Brad is playing in the sand volleyball tournament that day so I knew we'd be down at the festival. So I'm going to do it. And I'm going to get a t-shirt. Maybe I'll even buy some shorts that stay up for the event.

Fall Semester Freezer Load-up Continued

Well with Brad out of town, I haven't really been cooking much for just me, so I decided to do a little more prep for some things in the freezer. Lawry's marinades were on sale for $0.88, so I grabbed two bottles and one of the super six pound packs of fresh chicken and came home and turned it into four meals for later. I was able to split it into 20 chicken breast halves and did two meals worth with the Tuscan Sun-dried tomato marinade and two meals worth with the Herb and garlic marinade.
I also made some chocolate chocolate chip cookies on Sunday night, and being the only one home, did not think it was probably a good plan to have too many of those laying around, so I froze two dozen cookies for when Shom comes over for dinner. And for Brad. :)
Our little jalapeno plant has also been producing peppers like crazy. Since the tomatillos aren't ready yet, I stemmed and seeded a bunch of peppers for salsa making later.
I need to make some freezer meals with some beef as I now have three meals with pork and like ten with chicken. I guess no-beef-wednesdays have kind of turned into no-beef-everydays.

C25k - Not just jogging

I just finished Week 8 Day 2 - my second 28 minute run. And I gotta say, I'm starting to feel like a runner again. Not just someone jogging slightly faster than I can walk for short intervals, but like I'm actually out there running. And I don't feel like I'm going to die at any moment. It feels really good. My run Friday night and my run today both felt really good. Both times I did right around 2.9 miles in 28 minutes. Today felt a little harder since my route had some hills in it, but the hills are definitely good for me.
Friday was fun as I actually ran with some other people for the first time. Trisha and Natalie are working on the Couch to 5k as well and were on the last run for week 5 which is the first long run of 20 minutes. So we all did the warm up together and head off together. It was nice to have some others around and it was fun to see them conquer the first long run. And we went out for McDonald's smoothies afterwards :)

Fall Semester Freezer Load-up

Well in one week the fall semester officially kicks off with the first day of classes. But pretty much, starting tomorrow summer is officially over. This week is the "celebration of learning" which really just translates to a lot of meetings that accomplish very little and some frantic last minute preparations for the first week. I do not feel very ready for the semester just yet and I'm really banking on some time this week to get some work done...hopefully half real work and half meetings.
The first couple weeks of the semester are always a little rough as we adjust to a new schedule, so I'm trying to get my freezer loaded up with some easy meals that don't take much planning or prep. I have been doing a few things here and there over the past couple weeks and did some cooking yesterday just for the freezer. I believe I have like 9 meals or at least partial meals in there now. We have:
-Two meals of chicken and black bean burritos
-Two meals of marinated pork chops (whenever I can get Lawry's marinades pretty cheap, I freeze four pork chops and half a bottle of marinade in a tupperware...then I just have to remember to put it in the fridge the night before or in the morning and these can get thrown on the grill)
-Three meals of chicken tortilla soup
-One meal of stromboli sandwiches (Brad refers to this as "the big sandwich". As it is, I only make a half recipe and I still freeze half of it.)
-One meal of shredded chicken tacos (I used some of my recently harvested peppers in with this meat as well as the meat for the burritos)
So hopefully this will get us through the crazy period at the beginning of the semester where I have to relearn how to go to work five days a week :) That teaching five days a week stuff really wears me out!

Salsa Verde

Pretty much the whole reason that I wanted a garden was so that I could grow some salsa ingredients. I LOVE salsa verde and I find that here in central Illinois it can be pretty hard to find the fresh ingredients. The East Peoria Walmart usually has tomatillos, but sometimes they look like they've been there for a really, really long time. And I love to roast poblano peppers, but they are frequently all wrinkly at the store. So those were the two main things that I wanted to grow.
We've been getting peppers for about a month now from the garden and this week the first tomatillos were ready. Earlier this week I harvested four anaheim peppers, five jalapenos, and five tomatillos. One of the tomatillos was all buggy, but I figured with four I could make a little batch of salsa.
I was roughly going off of a recipe I've used before from my Rick Bayless cookbook, so this morning I roasted my tomatillos and garlic in the skillet. Chopped up an anaheim pepper and threw all of that in the food chopper. I added a little water, salt, and lime juice. And it was so yummy :) It had really good flavor, but really was not spicy at all, so I ended up adding one jalapeno as well. And that seems just right. It only made like a cup of salsa, but I was still pretty excited. I didn't have any fresh white onion or cilantro, but I figured I could add those later.
This salsa is great with chips and on tacos, and I thought I might try using it as a sauce on some baked chicken. In the next few weeks there are going to be a lot more tomatillos, so I'm going to try making this and freezing it. I found a recipe where they did all of the roasting whole in the oven, so I think that would make it easier for a big batch.

Taste of Peoria

Last night, Shom and I went to the Taste of Peoria. I haven't been to the Taste in probably five years...the last time I went you could still get a cookie monster from Cheddar's if that tells you something. We met up at Belcan and wandered over. We started out with one of my favorite things: crab rangoon from Thanh Linh. They are so crispy and so delicious. I could have spent all of my Taste Bucks there. We went from there to Qdoba where I got some chicken nachos and then Gracie's where Shom got a bacon wrapped pig wing. Surprisingly all of this and a bottle of soda was quite filling, so we moved onto dessert from the Cookie Shack. I got an M&M cookie and Shom got a crazy ice cream/brownie/cookie/whipped creme sundae. The weather was gorgeous so we just sad down by the river and chatted for most of the evening, saying hello to all the people Shom knew as they passed. It was pretty busy, but we got there early enough that no one had run out of anything yet. All in all a fun night...though we did liken it to that Seinfeld episode where George and Elaine are hanging out, talking about Jerry...but Shom didn't want to be George.

Michigan Vacation 7/30-8/3

Midas used to love to swim. We would go down to the creek in the woods behind our house, and as soon as there were two inches of water he would be flopped down in it trying to swim. We always talked about how fun it would be to take him to the beach, but just never got to it.
This summer we ended up not doing a "big" vacation. We had just been to St. John in January and it didn't work out to have a big trip in May like we'd done the past few years. So we did two small trips instead - a three day weekend in May to Ohio and Indiana for antiquing and a five day weekend to the dunes in Michigan. It was perfect timing right after summer school and for our anniversary and before Brad needed to go to Norway for work.
We rented a house in Michiana, Michigan which is on the Michigan side of the Indiana/Michigan state line. The neighborhood was pretty wooded and quiet and the house was about a half mile walk from the town beach at Stop 40 (named for the old Lake Shore Drive bus route). We went up on a Saturday and had a picnic lunch and then walked down to check out the beach and wander around the neighborhood. The beach had "dog hours", so we knew we had to wait until the next morning for the pups to go for their first swim. We went into New Buffalo for dinner and ate a restaurant called The Stray Dog - appropriate start to the dog vacation. The place was packed and we enjoyed some burgers and wraps, and picked up some t-shirts with the cute dog logo. We spent most of the evenings of the trip playing with the dogs and doing crossword puzzles on B's phone - that's right, we're that exciting.
The next day we spent the whole day at the beach. We took the pups down first thing in the morning and let them walk along the sand for awhile first and they just waded in a little. Then we got out Lucy's pink frisbee and she just turned into a little fish. She would chase her frisbee into the water over and over again, running up and laying on the sand in between. If no one made a move to steal the frisbee from her and throw it, she would start crying - with the frisbee still in her mouth. Sally was a bit more cautious. When she first tried swimming, she didn't use her back legs at all, just had them pulled up real tight. That first day I kept her on a leash for the most part and would get in the water and coax her to swim out to me. She loosened up and got a little braver as the week went on. Around lunch time we would take the dogs home, hose them off, and put them in their crates for naps. They were completely exhausted after a couple hours at the beach. The pups went for swims three mornings and then also went for walks on the beach two nights, so they got lots of time at the beach. Sally was so good from what I thought she would be and did great being off leash most of the time.
We tried some other local favorite restaurants - Redamak's, Stop 50 Wood Fired Pizza, Oink's Ice Cream, and Mucho Mas. The food was great everywhere. I really enjoyed Mucho Mas - it is a mexican place in LaPorte, IN that is all fresh ingredients. It's run by these two young guys from California. They had great chips and a salsa bar. All things that make me happy :)
We tried to do some antiquing and it was kind of a bust. The places in Michigan we went to just had absolutely nothing - I wasn't even tempted to buy a single thing. We went to two places in LaPorte, but one was closing just as we got there and a couple others weren't open on Tuesdays. We did get to do some shopping at the outlet mall. B and I are super power shoppers and hit like 10 stores in under 2 hours. I got a couple things at Banana Republic and we both found stuff at Puma.
By the time it was time to go home on Wednesday, the dogs were thoroughly warn out. Sally slept pretty much the entire way back. That morning as we were packing stuff up Lucy was just passed out on the kitchen floor...too tired to move.
All in all it was a really nice time. I don't know if I would stay in this same house again, not that there was anything wrong with it, it just wasn't WOW AMAZING. It would be nice to find something even a little closer to the water, though I need to plan a bit more ahead for that. With how much Lucy loved swimming, whether we go here or somewhere else, I definitely want to take her to the water again. I love seeing my girls that happy :)

Couch to 5k - Week 7 done! (Finally!)

It took a bit longer than it was supposed to, but week 7 is officially in the books! I did my last 25 minute run tonight and felt really good. It was humid but cool. This was the first time I actually got myself to go run after going to work. I've done all of my other runs first thing in the morning or on the weekend. But with school getting into full swing, I need a new plan. I have 8am classes everyday, and we all know that I am not going to be getting up early enough to run before an 8am class. So the evenings are going to have to become the new routine.
Not wanting to become roadkill on Sheridan Road, I grabbed one of Brad's reflector vests to wear. Now you may have noticed, Brad and I are not the same size. So this vest is much more Brad sized than Megan sized, but still did the job on helping me not get killed. It was like 8:15 when I headed out, so I knew that it would be pretty close to dark by the time I got back. So while the reflectors are good, perhaps I need to find something in my size for these evening outings. This is when sidewalks would be nice.
I also tried running with my phone for the first time tonight. B and I got new phones about a month ago with data and texting. So I now have pandora on my phone. So tonight I tried letting pandora pick my running tunes. It was on my jack johnson station, but put together a nice mix of jason mraz and gavin degraw which suited the run nicely.
I felt really good the whole time tonight and finally didn't feel slow like I have the past few runs. I felt like I could have gone longer, which is good because the next run moves up to 28 minutes :)

C25k - Week 7 continues...

So it's been awhile since I've posted a running update...mostly because I haven't been running :( There were 10 days between my last two runs, but I'm happy to report that I got back out there this morning and picked up where I left off. I had done day 1 of week 7 and then I didn't feel good for two days and then we left on vacation. I fully intended to run on vacation, but we ended up doing so much walking that my legs and knee were pretty sore and tired, and I just didn't think I had a run in me. So while I didn't run, I did walk like three miles a day on vacation. I guess doing something is better than doing nothing.
I was still able to run for 25 minutes without walking today despite the break from the program. So that was encouraging. I have one more 25 minute run to do and then move up to 28 minute runs. Natalie and Trisha are also working on the Couch to 5k plan and are at the end of week 5, so Nat and I were talking about doing a 5k together in September. Sounds a lot more fun than doing a 5k by myself :)

Free samples!

In the past week I have gotten a bunch of free samples in the mail. I got:
-Shout wipes
-Pen
-Honey Nut Cheerios
-Crest Toothpaste and Mouthwash
-Downy Unstopables
-Coupon for free bottle of pantene
Hooray for free things :)

Thrifty Tuesday 7/26

Well this Tuesday wasn't much cooler than last Tuesday, but my partner in crime and I headed out anyway. There were TONS of sales in Morton today...we didn't even go to all of them. There was a sale out at Ackerman Farms so we started there and I bought a little wooden scoop that is just like the ones that the sell at the St. John Spice Company. We always bring home some gifts from this little shop on vacation and there are these multi-colored wooden scoops and bowls that I could never stop looking at. I bought one for my mother-in-law last time, but never bought one for myself. Well now I have a small one for a quarter :) I also bought a neat red glass candle holder, that price tag on the bottom from when they had it at their shop says that the set of three was $70. So that makes my 75 cents look even better. Red seemed good for christmas, valentines, or fourth of july. My next big purchase was some bottled water to keep us going a little longer. There were several houses that had kids selling home made snow cones. We ended with a house that had a sale earlier in the summer as well, with dirt cheap prices. My partner in crime found a vintage christmas tray that matched another tray she had found earlier in the summer. I found a cute christmas tin in the free box. We ended there for the day, but I got sucked in by a couple sales on my way home. I only bought one thing - a grapevine wreath for 50 cents. I thought maybe I could stick some hydrangea pieces or sweet annie in it and turn it into a fun fall wreath. So $1.75 today. I'll be taking the week of next week for vacation and after that work picks up a lot, so I'm not sure how many more Thrifty Tuesdays I'll get in this summer.

C25k - Why hello there week 7

Week 7, kids...I made it to week 7! Though this is really my eight week due to a double up on week 4, I'm still pretty excited. I started the same time summer school started up, so I've made it through our whole summer sessions (after finals tomorrow).
I was really hoping that it was going to be cooler this week - it's not. I went out this morning for Week 7 Day 1 which was a 25 minute run. I did not make it as far as I did when I did a 25 minute run on Saturday, but I didn't walk. Though I really wanted to. These long runs give a lot more opportunity for your mind to mess with you. With the intervals, just about when you were wanting to walk, it was time for walking anyways. Now I know that there's no walking. I think today I did 2.4 miles in 25:20. So definitely slower today. But, I have two more 25 minute runs this week so perhaps we can get back up to the 10:00 mile pace again. Maybe I really need that Queen at the beginning of my run :)
I rewarded myself after my morning run with a nice cold breakfast smoothy. I had been reading in this blog about a chocolate peanut butter banana smoothie...but I didn't have any chocolate milk or bananas. So that wasn't going to work. So I threw some vanilla yogurt, milk, strawberries and some ice in the blender. It was pretty tasty. Though that chocolate one might be better.

Couch to 5k - Week 6 done!

Well I survived another week - and this one was pretty crazy hot! Today I did my longest run yet...26 minutes (well, 25:55). Based on my google mapping, I think I did 2.6 miles in 26 minutes. The first 1.3 miles took 12:30 and the second 1.3 miles took 13:25. It started to feel really hot the second half and there was a big uphill. I didn't get up as early as I should have, so it was a little after 8:30 before I headed out the door. So the second half I was feeling the heat and humidity. I did take my iPod for the first time today, and though it was nice of my iPod to shuffle to Queen's "We Are The Champions" just as I was starting my run :)

I Heart School Supplies

I've had a love for school supplies since I was pretty little. The two best parts of a new school year were always: 1) Riding our bikes up to Lincoln School when they would post class lists to see who your teacher was and who was in your class and 2) Going to Farm & Fleet or Kmart to buy school supplies. There is just something about that perfect set of crayons and that blank notebook. Picking out the colors for your folders and pencils. I don't know. Because I still love it - I love picking out a planner at the beginning of a new school year (even if I'm not great about using them...) and finding some fun colored pens for doing my work.
So I was excited last Sunday when they said at church that they were collecting school supplies for the elementary schools in East Peoria. The bulletin said there was more details at the information table - so I made a bee line for the info table after church. They had four different lists that you could take, so naturally I took one of each :) So today I went to Walmart (with my ads for walgreens, menards, and kroger...my pricematching doesn't stop with groceries) and bought supplies for two students. This whole deal would be even more if they would just let me take two kids to walmart so they could get the colors they want on everything :) So I got markers, colored pencils, crayons, watercolors, scissors, glue sticks, and glue for some fantastic art time at school. A basic calculator, ruler, pencils, and erasers for learning some math. Notebooks, folders, and paper to record it all. And a green pencil box to keep everything neat and tidy. I hope these kids have as much fun with it as I did :)

Book Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

I picked this up for $1 earlier this summer at a garage sale, mostly because I knew they had made a movie out of this book and I thought, well if they made a movie out of it then it must be good :) I started reading it and was super not into it at first - the beginning is kind of confusing as you are trying to figure out what is going on with all the time traveling, especially when Henry is meeting up with himself at different times. Mostly due to a lack of any other books to read, I kept going (taking a short break to read a dog book in the middle - dog book always trumps time traveling romance book). In the end it was okay - a little more sex then I like in my books, but I'm kind of spoiled by my dog books and christian romantic suspense books on that one.
After reading it, I convinced Brad to download the movie so that we could watch that. Well the book is definitely better than the movie. The movie was pretty slow with some pretty terrible acting - I think if I hadn't already known what was going on from the book it would have been kind of confusing as well. Brad watched the whole thing, though I'm pretty sure he hated it.
All in all, I'd give the book one thumb up and the movie two thumbs down. The book has some pretty sad and depressing parts, as well as being confusing at the beginning, but it is interesting both in subject matter and the way that it is written (it switches back and forth between Henry narrating and Claire narrating). The book gave you dates with years at the beginning of each new section, which the movie could have used as well. Not too bad for $1.

C25k - No more intervals

Well today was my last day of intervals in the Couch to 5k program - all long runs from here on out. This week was on day 1 did 5-8-5 minute jogs with three minute walks in between and today was two 10 minute jogs with a three minute walk in the middle. It has been really hot all week, so I've been trying to go as soon as I get up...which is only like 7:45 :) They're my days off, okay?
This morning I made it like a block further in 10 minutes then I did on Saturday for my turn around point for my 20 minute run, so that was good. And for the second 10 minutes I felt really tired and hot, but I went pretty much the same distance as the first half despite feeling so slow.
Saturday I have a 25 minute run, and then a week of 25s, a week of 28s, and a week of 30s and then the end. So I should finish on August 13th. The 5k for Wishes is at Grand Prairie on August 20th, so I'm still considering that as a cap to my Couch to 5k adventure...though I haven't actually committed to that by signing up.