School’s Out (Almost) and Random Ramblings

I am three classes, two finals, one paper rewrite and one two page response away from finishing my sophomore year of college. Monday is my last day of classes, and this time two weeks from now, I will be done.

If you can believe it, study days and finals week are actually less busy for me than the regular school year. The paper doesn’t publish, I don’t have to go to classes, there’s all this time on my hands! I’m looking forward to the freedom to schedule my own life. I can go to bed EARLY (no more staying up for 2:00 a.m. deadlines every Tuesday and Friday) and get 8 hours of sleep every night, go running when I feel like it (I’m thinking halfway through the day to break up the monotony of the library).

I don’t really have much in mind to talk about. My running life hasn’t been too eventful in the past two weeks, mostly because I’ve been too busy doing stuff for the newspaper and last minute school work to do much running. I’m hoping to fit in a long run tomorrow morning. Twelve miles! It’ll be must first double digit run since the marathon. I guess that’s all for today. I’ll report back later with info from my run!

Did/do you like finals week in college? What do you do when you have free time?

Totally Terrific Tuesday

Warning: I am totally high on endorphins and adrenaline right now. My enthusiasm for running, journalism, and life in general may be highly contagious. If you are susceptible to gleefulness, giddiness, or smiling uncontrollably, it might be wise to step away from the computer.

I LOVE LIFE.

It is very rare that things go better than according to plan, especially when you’re a college kid in the midst of the final week of school, with term papers looming and application deadlines approaching.

But in the past couple of days, everything’s gone exactly as I had hoped, and better!

First off, the newspaper had elections this weekend and I was elected to the position I’ve been dreaming about basically since the beginning of this school year. It was in my New Years resolutions, even. And last night, my very first production night in the position, we finished the paper ON DEADLINE (that never happens!) and, as far as I know, without any mistakes.

VICTORY!

Secondly, and probably more relevant to this blog, I did my first real tempo run in a VERY long time today and it was GREAT! I was shooting for four miles at or around 8:20 min/mile pace, because that’s roughly what I was running last October right before my half marathon, and I wanted to gauge if I had lost any fitness.

The answer: I haven’t! After a too-fast warmup (The first mile really should have been more around 9:00 min) I managed to keep my pace around 8:20 and then drop it down to 8:10 for the second half of the tempo. I was so thrilled to see that pace flashing on my watch that I promptly tripped and face planted halfway through my cooldown mile, cutting the celebration somewhat short. But I won’t let a scraped shin and a bruised elbow get me down! I am WAY too excited about the paper and the run. It might be dangerous.

Unfortunately, I now have to go work on an International Trade problem set with my study group (that’ll bring me off of my cloud pretty quick) so I’ll leave you with a happy bunny photo:

What kinds of things make your day totally terrific? Do you do tempo runs?

In Which I Proselytize

I know that I’ve mentioned this before, but I am a vegetarian. I have a hard time explaining this to people, because I am not your typical, “animals have feelings too and we shouldn’t eat them,” PETA-loving vegetarian. I often joke to people when I explain my diet choice that I don’t care how the cow feels.

Sorry cows. You’re cute, but that won’t stop anyone from eating you. 

It’s not that I think animals don’t have feelings or their lives don’t have value — they do. Humans have profited from the work of animals for thousands of years and I think that’s pretty darn amazing slash lucky for us. It’s more that an animal’s feelings and life will never be as worth as much to me personally as a human life, and since eating other species is a natural part of the food chain anyway (you’d never tell a lion to think more about how the gazelle feels) there’s nothing morally wrong with humans eating meat.

No, my problem is with the WAY we eat meat, and the WAY we produce it and transport it and package it for consumption. Lately a lot of movies about the food/meat industry have been circulating on Netflix (I’ve watched Forks Over Knives and Fresh in the past two weeks, both of which I recommend) and it really got me thinking about what made me decide to become a vegetarian two and a half years ago, and whether those reasons still stand.

The answer is yes. The rate at which Americans consume meat and animal products is bad for both our health and our planet. People can argue about the degree to which this is true, but it’s still true. It takes 10 times as much land to produce animal products as it does to produce plant-based foods and 3 to 15 times as much water. Huge swaths of the forest both in the U.S. and abroad have been clear cut to make room for cattle farms. But none of that environmental cost is shown in the actual cost of the meat because the U.S. subsidizes the meat industry so heavily.

Even if you don’t care about the environment, eating most meat is bad for your personal health — especially in the quantities in which Americans consume it. Most American meat comes from huge farms where animals are bred closely together and given all kinds of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. All of those chemicals and drugs make it into your hamburger. Animal products, when consumed in large quantities, also can lead to health problems, from obesity to heart disease to cancer to acne.

Plus, vegetables are delicious! And beautiful! And colorful! I ate meat for 17 years, but no hamburger was ever as delicious or aesthetically appealing as a bowl of veggie curry or a colorful salad.

I don’t think that eating meat or dairy is across-the-board immoral. Blanket statements about morality are almost never true. But I do think that the system which produces our beef and chicken and milk and cheese is a bad one, and we need to opt out to the degree to which we are able. Meat and dairy shouldn’t be seen as forbidden, unethical foods — we just need to recognize their full environmental and biological cost and treat them as luxury items.  I’ve never liked meat that much, so going whole-hog vegetarian was a personal decision that was no problem for me, though I don’t think everyone in the world necessarily needs to do the same. I do eat a lot of yogurt and a lot of baked goods, so cutting dairy is harder. But I have tried to cut down on cheese and I almost never drink milk any more (the regular stuff is full of additives and I can’t afford organic!).

Anyway, I’ve found that being a vegetarian comes with a TON of benefits. I’m a lot more aware of what I eat now, because I’m always trying to make sure I get enough protein and I can’t just revert to the easy chicken from the cafeteria.  That means that I’m eating a much wider variety of foods — lentil stews, homemade black bean burgers, chickpea curry, etc. It’s been a ton of fun playing with different recipes, and realizing how delicious veggies can be has actually made me a much more adventurous eater. I was convinced that I hated mushrooms from ages 5 to 18, but now I love them. Same goes for a lot of other foods. It’s great! One of my favorite places to find awesome vegetarian recipes is tastespotting, which is basically a giant bible of food recipes and blogs. But I’ve also started experimenting with cooking a lot more, and cooking without any recipe at all. Since veggies won’t make you sick if you don’t cook them right, it’s a lot easier to just make dinner up out of your own head!

Okay. I think that’s enough for one day. But I want to hear about you guys! What kind of diet do you have? Do you think you eat too much meat/dairy? Not enough? Do you like to cook your own dinner? 

Back on (the) Track

I did a track workout today. It was my first one in oh, lets say five months?

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It was HARD. I may or my not have threatened my running buddy (who ran track in high school and is significantly faster than me – this was probably a walk in the park for him) with severe violence on multiple occasions.
K-, my super-speedy friend who came up with the workout, had me doing a ladder, which is when you start out doing shorter distance splits, progress up to a longer split in the middle, and then come back down again. (Sorry that none of this is the appropriate/official terminology. I’ve never run on a team, so everything I know about track workouts comes from blogs and occasional readings of Runners World). The track near my school is 320 meters, so we broke this up into 1/2 loop, full loop, and 2 loop splits.

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(I tried to keep track of it it on the garmin but the splits came out super weird. I need to learn how to program that to do things other than track my mile pace. A lot of math went into figuring these splits out!

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0.1 mile (160 meters) = 0:40 (6:34 min/mile pace)
0.1 mile (160 meters) = 0:39 (6:31 min/mile pace)
0.2 mile (320 meters) = 1:19 (6:34 min/mile pace)
0.2 mile (320 meters) = ??? The garmin didn’t keep track of this one somehow…
0.4 mile (640 meters) = 2:39 (6:37 min/mile pace)
0.2 mile (320 meters) = 1:24 (6:50 min/mile pace)
0.2 mile (320 meters) = 1:21 (6:47 min/mile pace)
0.1 mile (160 meters) = ??? This one also got lost
0.1 mile (160 meters) = 0:37 (6:12 min/mile pace)

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This was HARD! Oh my gosh, I don’t know how people run 20 minute 5Ks. I could barely even keep up the 6:37 min/mile pace for the 640 meter split. I thought I was going to keel over by the end of it (I survived). Basically, K- decided what pace he thought was appropriate and I just tried to keep up with him. By the second half of the workout, especially during the two 320 meter splits after the longest 640 meter one, I tried to distract my brain from thinking “I WANT TO DIE” by thinking of ways to inflict physical pain on K- in exchange for this. Of course, after it was all done and I had a drink of water I was so glad that K- had agreed to run with me and basically floated on an awesome endorphin cloud for the rest of the afternoon.

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Yay running!

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Do you do track workouts? Do you do them with friends or alone? (I think having K- around really helped push me to run at a pace that I probably would have been afraid of normally) Which track workouts are your favorite? 

Meme Me

Yesterday, the inevitable happened.

I got turned into a meme.

I’m infamous among my friends for saying really dumb but cute-sounding things (in this case, I was trying to make a surprise cake for my friend Arturo’s birthday and I kept trying to ask subtle questions about his favorite flavors and he wasn’t being very helpful so I just blurted this out) and now there are 15 of these photos all over facebook, so that I will officially never be able to live any of them down.

In other news, I’m back at school, and as finals week looms and paper deadlines approach my stress levels are going through the roof, inducing an overwhelming desire to curl up in a ball and cry like a baby.

But at least the running has been good! I joined my friend K- for our weekly Tuesday afternoon run. Usually we go out to the Tidal Basin, but she had to get back early for a meeting with a professor so we opted for 4.5 miles along the Capitol Crescent Trail instead.

This trail is basically one long, straight, paved road through the woods, but I never get bored of it! Today, there were a lot of bikers out and a couple of people walking their dogs. It was fun to see so many people enjoying the spring time!

Sorry that there’s not a whole lot of running talk in this post. There’s not been much to report! I’m hoping to head over to the track for some kind of speed workout on Thursday, so there’ll be lots of fun running then!

Do you get teased a lot by your friends? Ever been made into a meme?

The Week and Fast Finish Runs

Hey folks!

First off, happy Easter and Passover to those who celebrate! To those who don’t, happy Empanada Day! Who knew there was such a thing? I didn’t, but I’ll happily eat some empanadas if that’s what’s required.

I ran 23 miles this week, which doesn’t seem like very much compared to the 35-40 mpw I was running before the marathon, but this week was the first time since March 17 that I haven’t felt like my legs were made of lead while running.

Monday: 40 min swim
Tuesday: 6 mile run around the Tidal Basin
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: 4.9 mile run in Prospect Park
Friday: Circuit training at the Y (my arms and glutes are still sore!)
Saturday: 7.58 mile run in Prospect Park and Yoga at the Y
Sunday: 4.82 mile run in Prospect Park
TOTAL: 23.3 miles

It’s awesome to finally be getting back into the groove and I’m pumped to start getting my weekly mileage up in the 30s again and to throw in some speed work!

Lately, I’ve been trying to do some fast finish runs, where I speed up for the last mile or so of my run. I did this on Wednesday (somewhat involuntarily, because sometimes I get WAY more competitive than is necessary) and again today. Here are the splits for today’s run:

I only really sped up for the last half mile or so of mile 4 (and then the .82 miles were my jog back home from the park), and I tried to maintain a 8:00 to 8:15 min/mile pace for that half mile. It felt pretty hard, because it’s been a while and a half since I last did any kind of speed work, but it was awesome to run fast!

I’m no expert, but I think that fast finishe runs are really great training both mentally and physically. They teach your body to run hard even after you’re tired and it also helps you practice revving up your energy to finish a race looking and feeling strong. I slowed down a LOT during my marathon (going from a 9:30 min/mile during the first half to about a 12 min/mile by the finish) and I think that as I keep training and becoming a better runner, fast finish runs will help me avoid that.

Did you celebrate empanada day? (Did you even know it existed?) How do you feel about fast finish runs?

This Was Not an Easy Post to Write

I started running two years ago, during the spring of my senior year in high school. Since by that point I’d already gotten into college and was basically done with high school, I had a lot of free time on my hands. I was feeling frustrated about a lot of things, particularly the way I looked, and I thought that running would be exactly what I needed. It would be an opportunity to clear my head, to get stronger physically, and hopefully help me drop some of the weight I gained from stress-eating my way through college applications. In late April, I signed myself up for a 5K that was scheduled for the first weekend of June, and I told myself I would need to be able to cross that finish line standing by race day.

You could say I crossed that finish line and just kept right on running. Almost two years after I registered for that race, running has become more a part of me than I could possibly have imagined. It’s brought me joy and a sense of accomplishment. I love it. When I signed up for that first 5K, I saw running as a way of achieving other goals, but now running is a goal in and of itself. I don’t run to lose weight or because I want bigger calf muscles. I run for the sheer joy of it, because I can’t imagine waking up in the morning and NOT running.

But the truth of the matter is, I still haven’t lost that weight I originally wanted to get rid of. In fact, I’ve put on weight since I’ve started running. A substantial amount of it. This is not necessarily a bad thing — I don’t think that women need to be super skinny or that there’s certain weight that a person ought to be — but right now I’m not happy with the way I look. My clothes don’t fit me right and I just don’t feel good. And I want to do something about it.

Clearly exercise is not the problem here, since I run 25 to 35 miles a week and cross train on top of that. So I’ve decided to start being more aware of the food I eat. This is really hard at college, when unhealthy foods abound and my dining options are basically limited to the gross food that’s available in the cafeteria (Not a whole lot of fresh fruit and healthy whole grains, that’s for sure.) But I think that if I can plan out what I’m going to eat at the beginning of the day, and STICK to that plan, I can avoid temptation. I already do eat pretty healthily — lots of salads, yogurt and fruit for breakfast, more than 8 cups of water a day and never any soda, etc. — but I have a serious sweet tooth and can’t say no to cookies, even though the desserts in the dining hall aren’t even very good. So in addition to planning my meals for the day, I’m going to stop eating dessert of any kind from the dining hall since they’re just not worth it (but I’ll keep dark chocolate in my room to satisfy my sweet tooth!) and also give up fancy coffee drinks. I’m also going to eat fresh fruit throughout the day and not cover it in peanut butter, which is my current habit.

I’m also going to seriously commit to weight lifting and core-strengthening, something I’ve always tried to do but usually give up on. I’m going to do 10 minutes of abs work EVERY MORNING when I wake up and lift weights at the gym once a week. I know that this will make me a better runner as well as helping me fit back into my jeans, so that’s motivation as well.

Talking about weight and body image is always tricky, especially because the media portrayal of how women ought to look is so damaging psychologically. (That’s a link to the website of the movie MissRepresentation, by the way. If you haven’t seen it, you should.) A lot of the time it’s hard to distinguish what you actually want from what it feels like society expects from you. I want to be clear that I don’t hate my body  — my body has done amazing things, like running a marathon — and I am so so grateful for it. I just think that right now, I don’t look or feel my best, and I want to work on changing that in a way that’s healthy and safe.

Did your body image affect your decision to start running? Have you ever tried to lose weight? What do you think of the issue of how girls’ body image is affected by the media?

I’m HOME!

Back in the greatest city in the world and it feels GREAT! I love New York. Have I mentioned that recently? Oh yeah, maybe once or twice. But there’s really no place like it. For example, I got on the F train coming home from Penn Station late last night and was greeted by this:

Super sketchy (and surreptitiously taken) photo of a girl wearing flower jeans. Sorry for the poor photo quality.

That’s definitely NOT something you would see in D.C. The District is way too straight laced and suit-oriented. New Yorkers have spunk!

So I’ve been home for approximately 20 hours and thus far I haven’t been doing too much exciting stuff. I pretty much collapsed into my bed last night and slept the sleep of the dead. 11 hours of sleep for the win! I felt a little bad when I woke up 2 hours after I had intended this morning, but I can’t really blame myself. I’m catching up on three months of academics-induced sleep deprivation!

This morning I got coffee with a friend from elementary school who’s also home on Easter Break. We chatted for an hour, mostly about running and her awesome study abroad plans. I stayed at the coffee shop to try and work on a Comparative Political Systems paper about whether China can be classified as communist. It was a bit of a struggle, especially because I kept getting distracted by pre-registration for next fall. I’ve said it before, but looking at possible classes I want to take is seriously addictive! It’s like drugs for nerds.

After three hours and three pages of writing (more than halfway done!) I rewarded myself with a run in Prospect Park. In case you’re wondering why this post is so upbeat (with so many exclamation points!) this is the reason. The sun was shining, the temperature was a perfect 59 degrees, and all around it was just one of those OMG I LOVE ENDORPHINS runs.

Here are the stats:

It took me a while to get warmed up (plus it’s all uphill for me to get to the park) but after that I fell right into a nice groove. I meant to keep this run easy, about 9:15 pace, but you can see that on mile 4 I got a little carried away. I caught up with a girl who had passed me early in my run and decided I wanted to beat her to the end of the loop. I gotta tell you, that 8:39 min/mile felt SO GOOD! It’s been months since I’ve done any kind of speed work and I forgot how awesome it feels! Of course, then I had to go ahead and trip over a dog on my cooldown, dispelling any feeling I had of speed and agility.

Good going Sarah.

What kind of things do you like to do when you go home? When’s the last time you had a great workout? Any thoughts on the communist nature of the People’s Republic of China? I can cite you in my paper!

The World Is a Wonderful Place

I know I said this in my last post, regarding a tinkerbell kite, but it’s really true. The world is a wonderful place.

Exhibit A: It is officially, definitively springtime and campus looks like a fairytale land.

My favorite spot on campus, all decked out in cherry blossoms.

True story: Last night as I was walking back from a meeting for the newspaper, I heard a little boy turn to his father and say, “Daddy, I didn’t know this college was in a castle!” It was probably the most adorable thing to happen all semester.

Exhibit B: It is 70 degrees and sunny and I went for a fantastic, therapeutic six-mile run around the tidal basin with my friend K-.

Exhibit C: Ben & Jerry’s free cone day. Need I say more?

I got a scoop of raspberry fudge chunk, which apparently is made with greek yogurt! (Didn’t know that till after I ordered it.) As greek yogurt is one of my favorite things in this universe, I was all for it. It was definitely more on the sweet creamy ice cream-y side than the tart greek yogurt-y side, but still delicious!

Exhibit D: I GET TO GO HOME TOMORROW! One of the fantastic things about my college is that we get Easter break, and even though I don’t celebrate Easter I plan on taking full advantage of this extra-long weekend. My plans for my five days in New York include:

– Numerous runs in Prospect Park, one of my all-time favorite places

– Lots of baking and cooking with my mom (I’ve been bookmarking recipes on tastepotting since I was last home over winter break)

– Classes at the Y, especially spinning, yoga, and my favorite weights/strengthening class

– REAL LIVE NEW YORK BAGELS! This place, the Bagel Hole, has hands down the best bagels made by man. Ask anyone.

– Hanging out in Union Square and browsing at The Strand while lusting after books I can’t afford to buy

– Lots of sleeping in my bed, watching TV, and general loafing around the house

Oh yeah. And I have to write two papers and prepare a research presentation on activist literature in Native American Culture for my English class. I’m sure I’ll find time for that somewhere, you know, in between running, bagel-consuming, and loafing around the house.

Are you from New York? What are your favorite things to do there? What’s making your world wonderful today?

Running, Blogging and Cake

Life is hard.

Sometimes you have midterms.

Sometimes you have friend drama.

Sometimes you have papers that come out really crappy (excuse my french) and your professor won’t give you a rewrite.

Sometimes you get sick and need to sleep for 13 hours in one night.

Those things happen. All of them happened to me this weekend. They’re not great. In fact, they really suck.

But even when life is at its suckiest, great things happen.

For example, you go on a fantastic 7 mile run around the Tidal Basin and the National Mall:

AND on that seven miler you run into Emily from SweatOnceADay and you send her an email and she emails you back and it’s awesome! Like talking to a celebrity. (Hashtag running nerd alert!)

AND you make a fantabulous cake for one of your best friends birthdays involving chocolate, ice cream, and more chocolate:

(You know you want to make/eat this. I’ll include the recipe at the bottom of the post).

AND you go to the National Kite Festival and spend a fantastic morning on the National Mall making new friends, getting sunburned, and not thinking about your school work:

You are not mistaken. That is a Tinkerbell kite. The world is a wonderful place. 

I realize I’ve been writing a lot of these “Ahh life is hard and I have too much school work and I don’t want to think about it so I’m going to post a picture of food and make a list of things that make me happy!” posts. I don’t know if they’re boring or not. But trust me, it’s better than me whining about subsidies with imperfect competition (International Trade) and the imperative in Arabic.

QUESTION: Have you ever met bloggers that you follow in real life? What’s it like? What did you do this weekend that was great?

Also, the recipe for the greatest ice cream cake ever made, lovingly borrowed and slightly tweaked from Smitten Kitchen:

Ingredients:

4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons  baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon (5 grams) table salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups plus 1/4 cup whole milk

1 bag milk chocolate chips

1 carton ice cream (I recommend Ben & Jerrys’ vanilla heath bar crunch flavor), slightly softened.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour three 8-inch round cake pans.

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs 1 at a time, then mix in vanilla. In alternating batches of flour and milk, add the dry ingredients and 2 cups of milk to the butter/sugar/egg mixture (I added 1 cup of the flour mixture, then 1/2 cup of the milk, then 1 cup of flour, and so on). Mix in 1/2 the bag of chocolate chips.

Spread batter evenly in cake pans and bake about 30 to 40 minutes until golden and a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. (This took a really long time in my oven because dorm kitchens are awful. Yours will probably cook faster). Cool in pan on a rack about 1 hour, then remove cakes from the pan. Cut off the domed tops of two of the cakes with a serrated knife (eat these scraps, they are delicious). Spread half of ice cream on top of the first cake layer that has had its top removed, then cover with second top-less cake. Spread remaining ice cream on top of that, then place the third cake (the one that you didn’t cut the top off of) on top of it. Freeze for 1 hour.

Just before you remove the cake from the freezer, heat milk on the stove until simmering, then pour into a bowl with remaining chocolate chips. Stir until the chips melt and the chocolate is smooth. Drizzle artfully (or Jackson Pollack-y) over cake.