Mile repeats

Yesterday's workout was mile repeats. I've never done this one before so I was a little nervous. I was also late. The cat hasn't been feeling well and I woke up to puke. I ran by myself to Zilker where we do mile repeats around the pool area. My group did 3-4 depending on how 'accomplished' they were feeling. I stopped at 3. I ran all three at an approx 9:35 mins pace. That's crazy because I'm not that fast in reality. Even coach was surprised.

The first two miles were great, albeit tough. The last one though was like running with 20lbs weights attached to my legs. I couldn't seem to move as fast as I wanted to. This was also how I felt during my long run on saturday. The same long run that we had to cut down to 10 miles from 13.5 because of the humidity.
So the question here is, is the humidity making it difficult to run because it makes my legs really heavy or is it something to do with what I'm eating or drinking. I suspect it's the humidity combined with the fact that I have been a little lax with my water/electrolyte intake.

Peanut butter smoothie time

My mom-in-law (MIL) is a teacher and she gets the most crazy gifts from parents. One of the gifts she got was the magic bullet. Actually she got two. While it may sound kitchy is supposed to work really well and is a really great tool to have for a small kitchen.Since she doesn't use either, I asked her to send one to me.

It arrived yesterday in all it's awesome informecial glory complete with the other ten thousand things I will never need to use. I don't have the space for a blender but this fits in a much smaller area and I think I might able to get rid of some of the other single taskers I own (like my coffee grinder I use for spices).

Anyways, the number one reason I've wanted one was to make smoothies with. It's just too hot for a warm breakfast but smoothies are perfect for this weather.
So this morning I went for a run. A short one, around 4 miles and made a smoothie when I got back. It was delicious. I can't wait to try more recipes.

For this morning I used:
Ice
Milk
Soaked almonds
Banana
Cottage cheese
Honey

I've been adding strained yogurt or cottage cheese to my smoothies to add protien since I can't take the taste of whey protein. It works beautifully. There is absolutely no texture of the cottage cheese in the smoothie. It's smooth and a little tangy from the addition which makes it really tasty. I think I want to experiment w/ rose/kewra water(kewra is a flower, the essence is a bit similar to rose but flowery-er) and vanilla next.

Did you know?

1.Alcohol is metabolized as fat? Fat has 30-something kcals (kJ, I can't remember) per gram, alcohol has 29. Both protein and carbs are in the late teens for energy/gram.

2. Oxybenzone (half of neutrogena's helioplex) is a chemical sunscreen but it's also a carcinogen? I started to use sunscreen w/ helioplex a few months ago and had a significant allergic reaction to it. So I went online to look for what might be causing it.
I found this wikipedia link.
And it's not even the only one; the internettings are full of information about this chemical. If I remember correctly, it cannot be used in sunscreens in Europe. Just in the US. Nice.
I switched to Eucerin's sunscreen w/ titanium dioxide*. This took about half day's worth of going through all the suncreens in the stores because almost everything has oxybenzone.

* in the interest of full disclosure, titanium dioxide may also be carcinogenic but the study deals more with inhaled Ti dust not in suspended form.

A little pick me up

Never fails to make me smile.