A Case of the Runs

July has been going well, fitness-wise. Late in May, I joined a gym and started working out at lunch .  My goal was to work out three or four days a week and be "active" on at least one other day.  Most weeks, I get in my three, sometimes four.  They don't always happen at the gym or during the lunch hour.  Sometimes, if I'm not on baby-pickup duty, I will squeeze it in after work.  Once in a while, I get to work from home and do it in the morning or mid-day.  And sometimes, when the baby wakes up at an odd hour and I can't go back to sleep before I must wake for the day anyway, workouts have happened on my driveway in the dark. Along with trying to find balance, I've been able to try out more of the things that have come my way, as well.  I took these Tiger Lady claws on a run recently.  Pepper spray is kind of the normal thing to carry, but I'm always freaked out that I'll set if off accidentally, so these also give me some sense of security.  W

Quite a while back, I had reviewed Quest Nutrition Bars and had a somewhat lukewarm response to them.  However, this was back when I would have chosen sugar over protein, and given my current goal to cut back on the sugary stuff where I can, these seemed to fit my needs and re-entered the picture. It started with an innocent need for food-on-the-run.  Although I've gotten better at bringing food from home to work again, I usually eat more than I bring (darn breastfeeding appetite!), so these keep me from having to buy extra food after I've spent my lunch breaks working out.  To my astonishment, I actually liked the bar and decided to try all the flavors I could find.  Luckily, GNC is really convenient to me, so with their Quest Bar promotion at the time, I was able to do just that.  I had to eat these over time, of course, so this post has been a while in the making, but here are some brief notes about the flavors I tried/re-tried: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough: see

Baby Tuesday is almost 8 months old, and these past couple of months have been full of fun changes, for sure.  I feel like once he crossed the 6 month point, he suddenly became a "big boy."  As much as I sometimes miss his sleepy days, I really love watching him learn about the world.   He's interested in everything around him, from wrappers to water bottles to my phone. *sigh*  I had to dig up an old phone and gut it of its batteries to use as a bait-n-switch for his grabby fingers.   We recently washed and put away these play mats (activity gyms?), as he's no longer interested in laying down to play as much.  As he outgrows things, I try to resell them when possible because clutter kills me!  This is ironic, because I used to be the messiest kid, but sometime in my early twenties, as I moved from dorm to dorm, I learned to dislike piles and piles of stuff.  A part of me wants to hold on to stuff "just in case," but man, I can't imagine that

EVENT: Rosemead 5K DATE: Saturday, July 4, 2015 LOCATION: Rosemead, CA RACE BEGAN: 7:00 am  FINISH TIME: 27:55 It had been well over a year since I really kind of run a race.  I did a couple of others last year, but they were surrounding my pregnancy , so there was a lot of run/walking going on. So when I realized I was really going to be doing this 5k, I made sure to condition myself to be able to run without stopping.  In the past, that was not notable, but I literally sat on my behind for three months after months of not running. I ran 5k distances whenever I could -- a couple of times during my maternity leave around my house, and finally, last month when I joined the gym, I tried to do it at least once a week on the treadmill.  Surprisingly, I was able to push myself on this fairly quickly, so by race day, I was confident I could do it. That morning, I was kicking myself because I reallllly did not want to get out of bed early.  After all these months of not getting a