Oh no! Weekend Guilt-o-Meter!

**Image from goodhousekeeping.com**
I feel like I do this every week, but woo! I'm not good with weekend eating. This weekend, there was a big meal every day:

Friday:
Pasta dinner (Homemade pesto, alfredo, and marinara!?! Must try all three!) + Garlic bread = Epic points

Saturday:
Race "Reward" Burger + Fries + Dinner (Chicken breasts in a white wine, mushroom, and shallot sauce with couscous)

Sunday:
Szechwan peanut butter noodles with Chicken (WW recipe), but more than 1 serving
I meant to take photos of the chicken and the noodles because they were SO delicious. Here's a link to the chicken recipe at Epicurious... Yum!

It's hard to not over-psych yourself out for a race. I think there's definitely that mentality that you've worked SO hard and definitely deserve to indulge (which I felt, and did) and it's easy to forget that your awesome 33-minute race time only actually translates into 4 Activity Points... i.e. almost enough to burn off the hamburger bun by itself. So, when I finally 'fessed up and went to track my weekend (after the fact), I was in the red 35 points! I mean, I'm not *that* suprised, but wow. The fact that it poured rain on Sunday so I didn't go out and run didn't do me any favors either.

That said, yesterday, I jumped back on the bandwagon with an epic workout based on my calculations of how much I have to work out to even begin to make up for the weekend. Yesterday's plan: an 8-mile run, biking to and from the gym, and a Pilates class. I ended up only running a little over 4 miles due to time constraints before Pilates and a general feeling of pain in my entire body afterwards. That, and the first run wasn't very good--I couldn't pick up the pace and it was humid and muggy outside already at 9am. I actually got sunburnt, regardless of having put on sunscreen beforehand. Oh, the joys of being really pale. Regardless, the Pilates definitely felt good. It's true that after a few months of no Pilates, the first day back is KILLER. I can definitely feel it in my abs this morning. Please tell me I'm not alone in that I actually really enjoy feeling a bit sore after a good workout--it really makes me feel like I pushed myself and accomplished something. I'm definitely going to have to keep using it as a cross training exercise since I'd love to one day have actual abs.

Anyways, I also decided to try something new with the Garmin for this workout series. I wore it the whole time: Biking, Jogging, and Pilaticizing (yes, I made a new verb). It worked pretty well, though somehow right before Pilates it changed to a different workout (thus the two separate sets of charts). It also thought I moved around a lot more than I did during Pilates. To my knowledge, I never left my mat.

Map 1: the bike ride to the gym, my jogging route and the beginning of Pilates
Map 2: Staying on my mat in Pilates and biking back

The heart rate charts were pretty interesting too:


I didn't label this one, just Pilates and then the bike ride

And here are the labeled splits:


The calories are a bit off because I left the Garmin in running mode for the biking bits (so it thinks I ran a 5-minute mile), but still, pretty interesting. Next time, I'll have to break things up more effectively to get a better count.

So yeah, I felt a lot better about being back on track after that workout. Then, for dinner I made healthy salads with dill/lemon salmon, homemade lemon vinaigrette, feta and veggies. Then for dessert we made homemade versions of my favorite Dairy Queen blizzard: the Hawaiian one. We put frozen pineapple, a banana, some shaved coconut, and fat-free vanilla frozen yogurt in a the blender and roughly blended them together and voilà blizzard! So good! I definitely recommend it.

Anyways, it feels good to be back on track. I stepped on the scale this morning as per usual and was down a pound from Monday morning's whopping 170, so that felt good. We'll see what happens. Moral of the story: don't over estimate your race rewards or your need for pasta prep. Well, unless you're going to run a marathon. Then all bets are off.