running

Off With a Fizzle

/ Amanda / Leave a comment

Ironman Raleigh 70.3 training started this week! So did winter! These two things do not go together! So instead of starting training off with a bang, it’s been more of a fizzle. Oh well.

Mondays are off days. So I took full advantage of that and lazed.

Tuesday….I woke up and went down to the trainer to get a 40 min ride in

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It was supposed to be in Zone 2 (heart rate) so I kept it pretty slow and did about 9 miles. When I finished, I walked up to take a shower and saw this!

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Surprise snow! A quick check of the weather app said that the snow would stop by 9am so I decided to head in to school with stuff packed for an afternoon swim. This was a mistake. The roads were worse than when it iced!

This time, I wasn’t the only crazy grad student who showed up to work, Shake and David did too 🙂

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Grad school is waaaay more fun with friends, btw.

Since it didn’t stop snowing…

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and the roads were a mess, the afternoon swim was canceled and I went home to spend the rest of the day with Lisa, Steve and Indy.

Wednesday…aka today…is long run day. Luckily the GIANT SNOWSTORM OF RALEIGH isn’t supposed to start until later tonight, so I did 7.5 miles in 1:07 (the schedule said to run for 1:10)

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The swim tomorrow will likely be canceled and I plan to spend the day in warm and pleasant ways. We shall see what happens!

Jesus Geese

/ Amanda / Leave a comment

Hey friends! How’s it goin?

It was forcasted to reach above 30 degrees today! So obviously that means all the ice has melted and I can go for a run right?!

Well….ok. First ‘mistake’ was deciding to run while it was still only 25 with a helluva wind chill. Second ‘mistake’…..forgetting that the greenway is super shady and probably won’t thaw for another week or so.

ANYWHO. So I went anyways dammit and it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting! Only fell once! (looks very proud of self)

About 50% of the greenway looked like this

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Please note, this is not nice, crunchy, non-slippery snow. This. Is. Ice. While it may look like the optimal choice of path is in the middle where the tire tracks are….DO NOT BE FOOLED, it is way  more slick there since the ice has melted and refrozen a couple times.

Also. This is Raleigh, North Carolina we are talking about. To us, cold is 40 degrees and frigid is anything below that. So to run up to Shelley Lake and see it like this…

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was a total surprise!! Those are GEESE on the water. THEY ARE WALKING ON THE WATER. THEY ARE JESUS GEESE. ALL HAIL THE JESUS GEESE!!! You should take careful note of the geese’s newfound ability to walk on water. These creatures are pure evil. ANY new skill they acquire is bad news for us mere humans. You have been warned.

Back to the run!

Like I was saying, seeing ice on the ground in Raleigh that has been there since Tuesday is kinda weird. And extremely slippery.

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Note the ice.

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Note how I feel about the ice.

The greenway was like that (a solid sheet of ice) for the next solid 3/4 miles or so.  In fact….take a look at this portion

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This is where I fell. The only time I fell. Imagine a cartoon character literally slipping and falling in the most hilarious way and that’s probably what I looked like. This was the most treacherous part of the run. Because this was solid ice. No footprints to break it up. No tire tracks. A solid sheet of continuous ice. Like at an ice rink. Only you don’t have skates. You have running shoes. Without spikes. And you’re trying to run like a penguin only to fall head over heels and almost end up in the frozen lake.

Luckily, my rear was so cold, I didn’t feel it and kept on running 🙂

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This was the last, long stretch of evil on the run.

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Me finishing said stretch of evil without falling!

The remainder of the run wasn’t bad. All in all, I did 4.3 miles in about 46 min. This includes stopping for pictures and falling and waddling on scary ice. When I wasn’t on ice I had about an 8:00 pace. On the ice…whilst running like a penguin, I slowed to about a 10:30 pace.

Let’s hope it finishes melting soon!

Sunday Funday

/ Amanda / Leave a comment

Hi everyone! How was your weekend?

We didn’t work at all! This may be a first. It’s super exciting when you don’t work on the weekend in grad school. A rare beauty of a weekend. Therefore we took advantage of the freedom and lazed and ran and biked and chilled and it was awesome.

Friday night we cooked the first of the week’s Blue Apron meals. Before….

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And after!!

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This was definitely a good recipe. Which is high praise since I’m not a huge pork fan. The carrots in butter completely stole the show (they’re in the picture I promise). Here’s the link to the recipe if you wanna try it out sometime –> Pork Chop Recipe

Saturday was long run day. I got through 6.5 miles with an 8:50 min pace and felt fantastic the whole time! Steve accomplished his longest run yet…yay Steve!

We also spent an embarrassing amount of time watching Dr. Who until we decided that we should get out of the house and attempt to behave like normal people. This is what people do right? So we trekked over to World of Beer and had a couple pints. My second Imperial Golden Stout was particularly delicious. Steve’s IPAs were gross and also gross.

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We then decided to hang out with Kevin and Rachel (Hi Kevin and Rachel!!) at Sahara, one of the local hookah bars. It was a fantastic end to a lazy day.

Today was forecast to be warm (70 degrees in February…OMG unheard of) so the goal of the day was to be outside as much as possible.

I went for a 20 mile easy bike ride (averaged 15 mph on rolling hills) although the headwind/crosswind was insane. How is it that no matter what direction you are going, there is always, always a solid headwind in yo face. Ugh. The worst. Also, I’m a dork and forgot to take a picture of me on the bike, so here’s one after I finished with my bike tire in the background. Also also…please ignore how pale I am.

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The sunshine and warmth continued through the afternoon so we, and everyone else in Raleigh, took the dog out for a walk. We tried to wear her out (we failed) by letting her splash and play in the creek and romp with a new friend.  Here’s the creek before Indy got all up in it!

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So pretty 🙂

What adventures did you go on this weekend?

 

 

It’s Finally Friday

/ Amanda / Leave a comment

Hi friends and happy Friday! How has your week been? It’s been a little random over here (aka why posting has been random).

We had to prepare a working demo for a last min presentation on Wednesday, so Tuesday turned into a 14 hr work day. But … it was worth it because the demo worked! It was pretty awesome, not gonna lie.

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This is what it looked like after everything was assembled and hooked up. I can tell you that it uses TEGs (thermoelectric generators) to produce electrical power from body heat, but that’s about it (confidentiality stuff).

Even though I left work at 10pm, I was pretty pumped and motivated so I headed over to the gym for a short treadmill run. Ran about 2.5 miles in 21 min with a couple of sprints thrown in there at the end for a good sweaty end to the day!

Yesterday we got in another Blue Apron! (Note: we don’t receive any compensation for this, we just get really excited about food)

wpid-20150205_152018.jpgLook at all the food!! We’ll keep you updated on how this week’s recipes taste 🙂

This morning we took it easy, no thanks to a certain dog-who-shall-not-be-named who was ruthless in her quest for morning cuddles and pets. She has mastered those super sad puppy eyes that say “love me”….gets me every time!

I decided to whip up a bowl up unphotogenic oatmeal (added in some almond butter, chocolate whey protein powder, and a few semi-sweet chocolate chips) before heading into work for more testing and more fabrication.

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What are your plans for Friday night?

– today is First Friday in Raleigh so we may hit up some fun bars or something 🙂

I made cookies!

/ thievinsteven / Leave a comment

Well it’s been a while since I posted, things have been a little crazy. Let’s see if we can sum up what’s been going on. I’ve been continuing on my half marathon training and have upped my running schedule from 3 to 4 days a week. Amanda has been running too and also spent some time on her bike trainer.

wpid-20150201_122712.jpgWe went to see the Imitation Game about Alan Turing on Friday.

wpid-20150130_192123.jpgIt was really good and helped remind me that I like being a scientist. With my newly rediscovered inspiration and motivation I got back in the lab this week and made some good progress. More on that later.

On Sunday we went to a Superbowl party with some friends. We made sweet vanilla butter cookies (recipe below) and a delicious Thug Kitchen black bean and cilantro dip (after the turmoil of grocery shopping on Superbowl Sunday afternoon (which I will never recommend for anyone without a serious masochistic streak) in a store with NO FREAKIN CILANTRO! How does that even happen?

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wpid-20150201_170537.jpgWe also took tequila shots for some reason.

wpid-20150201_211828.jpgAnyway, this week I’ve been pretty productive in the lab. I took a bunch of measurements and made some nice pretty graphs and it’s a good thing too because today I was asked to present my recent work to a new industry partner for our Research Center. I got a good 90 minute notice that my adviser wouldn’t be attending and I would be presenting. Do you see why I sometimes hate grad school?

Anyway, race training! It’s going well so far. My long run this week is 5 miles and then I have an easy week before increasing again. Week after next when I do 6 miles it will have been my longest run ever! I still haven’t cried any (well, maybe a little on that damn foam roller) and my legs don’t feel like they’re going to fall off despite how much I might like them to. I’ve been making great use of my GPS watch Christmas gift (thank you baby!) and logging my runs on Garmin connect. Even though I was a little off this week and my short runs were a little tough (read: made me want to barf), it’s nice to see my progress 🙂

Are you training for anything??

Sweet Vanilla Butter Cookie

  • 2 1/2 cups unbleached, all purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cubed at 300K (room temperature)
  • 1 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract (get the real stuff, trust me)
  • 1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped*
  • 1 large egg
  1. Preheat oven to 350 F
  2. Put flour and salt in small mixing bowl, whisk to combine
  3. In large mixing bowl, combine butter and sugar with a mixer until light and creamy. Add vanilla, vanilla bean seeds (discard pod) and egg. Mix until combined. Add flour/salt mixture and mix on low until just combined.
  4. Make your cookies! We used a Cuisinart Electric Cookie Press to make nice shapes but you can do it however you like. They were pretty small, maybe the size of a half dollar and a quarter inch thick.
  5. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until lightly golden around the edges. Keep a close eye on them since your cookie size may influence the cooking time.
  6. Cool before removing from pan (I didn’t do this, I just started eating them. I burnt my fingers a little)

* to get the seeds out of the pod, cut it in half lengthwise with a sharp knife, flatten it out and scrape the seeds out with the knife edge/tip