I had aspirations of presenting my mom with a stack of steaming pancakes...but it turns out that pancakes (one of the EASIEST recipes!) are not in my cooking repertoire. Loaves of six-stranded bread? Sure. Cream puffs? Throw that recipe at me and I'll crank 'em out in no time. But pancakes? No way. I burn them, they come out in odd shapes, cook too thick, etc. Not my thing. So instead we celebrated with presents, cards, and crescent rolls (and a nice dinner later).
Speaking of Trader Joe's, check out this beautiful thing:
Ever heard of a PB&J chocolate bar??? This is my new favorite type of chocolate bar that TJ's makes. Definitely a little odd, but mixes the classic chocolate/PB combo with a whole new element: the PB/Jelly combo! It's wonderful and everyone should run out to buy several.
This weekend has been my last low-key weekend before I start my new job/hectic summer schedule. I'm working at a job that I was linked to through Major Legal Services, at Youth Employment Opportunities. Basically, I'll be helping high school kids that come from impoverished homes find jobs. I'm pretty excited!
Anyways, since I was keeping it low-key, I didn't do much besides hot yoga, spinning, erging, and reading. My newest book is Hansons Marathon Method, which I decided to read mostly out of curiosity and in honor of the half-marathon I'm running in seven days.
I've heard that this method is extremely successful and I know that my favorite blogger, Hungry Runner Girl, is using the method as current training for a future marathon. Another blog I follow, seechrisrun.tumblr.com , also recommends the Hansons Method. As a probable future-marathoner, I wanted to see what this method was all about; maybe it's a good option for my first marathon-training plan, which might come in handy sometime in the near future! I plowed through this book this weekend, and I took excessive notes. The plan, which requires its user to follow it closely, incorporates a lot of speed work and tempo runs throughout the majority of the training, but never calls for a training run longer than 16 miles. Most marathon training plans have long runs between 20-23 miles as a max-out before the marathon!!! So this "short long-run" philosophy is somewhat mysterious to me. The plan walks you through how to do speed work and tempo work effectively, so that when you're doing your 16-mile long runs (there are typically 3) your body is already tired as if you'd run more. While some marathon training plans have you run as little as 3 days a week and always include a weekend long run (increasing in distance each week), this plan has the runner run complete runs more frequently and keep distance lower. Weekly mileage however, is just as high or even higher than the average marathon training plan.
This is an interesting concept; it puts a lot of weight on each run during the week, and I think it could be difficult to get back into it if time has to be taken off for illness or injury (or even just exhaustion, which is a definite factor in marathon training). While this plan is less flexible than some, the success rate might make it worth it (allegedly capable of shaving 15-30 minutes off a marathon PR if used correctly). I'll definitely keep reading and looking into it and make subsequent posts about it because I'm really curious to see how/if this might work (for me, since it clearly has worked for others). There's also a similar Hansons half-marathon plan which I might try in the nearer future!
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