Howdy!

How has your Friday been? I hope it’s been a good one! Who’s ready for the long weekend?! (Even though I’m still on summer vacation, so there’s no difference to me…sorry.)

Today started with the usual blog-reading while standing at my counter. I took a nice long time, because I was waiting until my mom came back from her gym (that she’s attending with a Groupon deal–typical) with the car so I could head to my gym. This week has been filled with dance, and I’ve been loving moving artistically again. But it was also fun to get back into “workout-workouts” today.

Breakfast

Classic:

Moves

I started with 10 minutes on the elliptical and then GUESS WHAT? I ran on the treadmill! As you may know, I am not a fan of running, but I wanted to challenge myself and step outside of my comfort zone. I only ran 10 minutes, but it went surprisingly well! I usually run at a speed no greater than 7.3 maybe, but that felt slow to me today, so I ran at 8.0 and increased the speed throughout the 10 minutes. I even went at 10.0 for the last 30 seconds! The weird part was that I didn’t feel quite as tired as I usually do when I’m running. My mile was around 7:30, which was my PR earlier this year..but I feel like I could have ran faster today! Maybe that bootcamp class helped? Or burpees? I dunno. Actually, I’m skeptical and think that perhaps that particular treadmill was defective or something. Like maybe the treadmill went slower than the speeds shown on the monitor. Well, let’s just massage my ego and say that maybe I’m getting better at running. 😀

Moving on. I completed one of my favorite circuit workouts from Jess at Blonde Ponytail: You Can Ring My (Dumb)Bell Workout. Cute name, right? Ya won’t feel so cute after you finish though. This kicks my butt every time! I’ve gradually cut down my rest time in between workouts and increased the weights so that it keeps challenging me. ‘Twas a doozy!

I came home, showered, and then got ready to host my “little sister” from company, Lilly! We both dread sewing our pointe shoes, so we decided to have a little date so that we could eat healthy food and sew our shoes together (does that make us sound like prima ballerinas or what?!).

Lunch

Options for our sandwiches (Lilly’s a vegetarian, so it’s pretty easy to find food for her 🙂 )

Lilly’s creation:

I believe it contained pesto, mozzarella, tomato, and spinach! I may have missed somethin’.

She even added that basil leaf for garnish. She’s got the presentation aspect down-pat.

And mine:

Two sunnies, toast with mozzarella and roasted bell peppers + basil for garnish (inspired by Lilly)

Plus sides

It was a beautiful day for eating outside and everything was delicious! The best part was this though:

Peanut butter banana soft serve. I’ve got Lilly hooked. Muahaha.

And then we watched Youtube videos and old dance DVDs while we tediously sewed our pointe shoes.

Pointe shoes: hurt your fingers when you sew ’em, hurt your toes when you wear ’em. But it’s all for the love of dance.

We had a nice time bonding! Now I’m going grocery shopping with mom and then it will be dinner time for me. Have a nice Labor Day weekend!

So tell me: Have you ever had a breakthrough with running/exercise? What was for lunch? Any fun Labor Day weekend plans?