5K challenge day 1

Got my run in this morning while Teya was at preschool. I put the baby down for his morning nap, plugged Brinley into a nice episode of Curious George and headed down to the basement for a run. I miss my old gym back in Minnesota that had childcare but a treadmill and PBS kids has turned out to be a pretty decent alternative : )

I warmed up by walking for a half a mile then got off to stretch. I hopped back on and started jogging at 5.5 mph (10:54 min pace) My training schedule called for 2 miles today so that's what I did. I bumped it up to 6.0 for about 3 minutes and it was tough, but I felt good through the whole run and finished in 21:26. After my run I did resistance bands and some ab work to try to coax my long lost ab muscles out of hibernation. I know they're buried in there somewhere...

It felt really good to run again and the new shoes are great, although I thought my knee did hurt a little when I was done. I'm probably being hypersensitive because I'm so paranoid of getting injured and not being able to run again, but I decided to ice it and take some ibuprofen just in case. It feels fine now so hopefully I was just overreacting.

So that's day 1, always feels good to be back on track. And since some people have asked for recipes I'm going to try to throw one in at the end of every post. Here are two of my favorites:

Grilled Chicken Fiesta Salad:

WW points plus value: 9 w/out chips, 13 with chips

Ingredients:

2-3 cups Mixed greens salad

1/2 cup canned black beans

1 grilled chicken breast (I just sprinkle mine with garlic salt and lemon pepper and saute it in a pan for about 3 minutes on both sides)

1/4 cup reduced fat Mexican blend cheese

Fresh garden salsa ( I get mine at Costco)

Trader Joe's corn salsa. (best stuff, EVER!)

Tortilla chips (optional, I just use them for extra WWpoints since I'm nursing but the salad is great without them)

Load everything up on your plate and top with the salsa. You don't need any dressing, the salsa is perfect and gives it tons of flavor for hardly any calories. In fact, Salsa is my go to condiment these days. Tons of flavor for low low points. I bought 10 jars of Trader Joe's corn salsa and 4 jars of black bean salsa the other day because we go through the stuff so quickly. And speaking of salsa, here's another quick lunch idea that I use it on:

Sweet Potato with black bean salsa:

WW points plus value: 5

Ingredients:

1 large sweet potato

3 Tbs black bean salsa

Wrap sweet potato in saran wrap and microwave for 5 minutes

cut it open, sprinkle with salt if you want and top with salsa. This is one of my favorite things to eat for lunch, fast, easy, delicious and filling. I'm sure other salsa's would be good with it but this black bean stuff that I get at Hannaford's is the bomb. (and if you don't have a Hannaford where you live then my taste buds weep for you, this stuff is awesome. Maybe I'll send it out to all my non-east coast friends for Christmas ; )