Ladies Night!

Okay so maybe a little misleading. By ladies night you think me and a bunch of girl friends went out to a bar or a movie and dinner or something. Nope, I talked a group of five of my girlfriends out to accompany me to Phase IV - Scientific Health and Performance Center for a lecture and a raffle.

Dr. Chris Renna, founder of LifeSpan Medicine, gave a lecture about women and sports. Very interesting stuff as the man is highly intelligent and spoke a lot about the chemistry of our bodies. It all sounded vaguely familiar from my days in school but I'm a little rusty. Here were my takeaways:
• You need to get proper sleep in order to prepare your body to WANT to exercise.
o Turn off all overhead lights by 9pm and read. If you are hungry after dinner
it is probably your body telling you that you are tired.
o Actually not a problem for me but I thought I'd share for the blogging
world. I know…. I'm lucky.
• Yikes! Type A and Type O blood cannot process wheat or dairy or peanut butter.
o This is going to be super hard for me. I can do without peanut butter no
problem. Apparently I can substitue any other nut butter and I'll be in good
shape. BUT NO DAIRY ! Oh my lord... this means no cheese, no yogurt, NO ICE CREAM! Wheat is going to be tough too but DAIRY, ah carumba.

If you have any good substitutes for dairy please let me know because right I now I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it.

Dr. Renna also said that the way America processes there dairy is bad for our system. A friend is letting me borrow a book on this. Apparently Europe dairy is ok. I need to find out what the difference is.

I had frozen yogurt and greek yogurt last night. Day 1 and I already failed.

I've done it! Ironman CDA here I come!

June 24, 2012 I will be doing my first Ironman race in Idaho! I'm currently engaged in reading all about nutrition at the moment.

When I did my first Half Ironman, Vineman, in July of 2011 I didn't suffer an Gastro-Intestinal distress but I have a feeling that they way I'm eating now is going to be a problem for a full day race. So, I'm barrelling down. I'm challenging myself to follow a periodization structure full with Heart Rate monitoring and a healthy diet that mirrors my training. I'll start into base training in December. Here's go nothing!

Hopefully I'll be all smiles like this lovely lady:

Disneyland Family Holiday Party

One of the many joys of working for Disney is the Employee Christmas Party at Disneyland each year. The picture above is Main Street. It was a wonderful year this year as it wasn't too cold (we'd just had 80 degree weather the day before) and it wasn't very crowded.

We enjoyed a lovely Mexican dinner and headed off to the rides. Captain EO (so outdated it was funny, gotta love MJ), Space Mountain, Indiana Jones (pictured below), and Haunted Mansion.

The picture quality isn't wonderful as I'm getting used to my new phone. But yeah, here is me and Pete waiting in line for Indiana Jones.

More holiday spirit posts to come...

Finally something good to talk about...

Life had been pretty uneventful there for a little while. (Ok, ok I did make an awesome turkey for Thanksgiving and play flag football that morning but I have no pictures.)

Last weekend though- prime action! Saturday I talked Pete, my trainer, and a couple of other people into doing this awesome 5k obstacle/ mud course run called the Gladiator Rock N Run. It was super, super fun. Nitro from American Gladiators put it on and it was really well organized. They had all kinds of great sponsors, great music, and food trucks there at the end. So that was part one - get really really dirty, work out, and have fun.

Part two of Saturday's activities was the LA Scavenger Hunt for the LA Union Rescue Mission and the LA Food Bank. The purpose of the race was to help gather material items (food, clothing, toys, etc.) for well you guessed it, the less fortunate. So you had to run around the city and pick up all these crazy things or do certain things and take a picture or a video of it. One of the bigger item scores was to have a teammate get a piercing. So, after a little encouraging from my team... I got my nose repierced. (I had done it back when I was 19 or so but got rid of it pretty quickly.) Ta dah! Yeah, I'm ballsy.

Then Sunday, I got a new phone. I left ATT and joined Verizon and got a fabulous new smart phone. Pity though, I'm still having troubles getting texts. But nonetheless I'm a happy girl.

He's all grown up!

Pete has re-entered the world of no roommates land. We moved him into a charming 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house in the rancho-equestrian district of Burbank this weekend. His next door neighbors have ducks and horses (and dogs)! Its kind of fun to hear it. I'm very excited for him.
He's close to Griffith Park, which I love and he's also close to Baskin Robbins, which I secretly love but also wish it was further away. We had BR twice this weekend. :( How am I supposed to lose weight when Baskin Robbins is 40 feet away?

In other news, I got my little sister (BBBS) hooked on Harry Potter- oh yeah! She likes to read to me in the car when I drive her around. I thinks its adorable. She really needs work on her reading and writing skills. Poor thing's brother is in the mental hospital for at least the fourth time during this year.

I signed up for my first half Ironman. I'm excited to announce that after the 8 hour sweat fest and rest I'll be able to enjoy wine country in Sonoma afterwards.

Live Strong

So, I'm going to go ahead and it put it out there that I'm aiming to lose at least 10 pounds but I hate, hate the idea of dieting. I think I put on some LB's because I tend to overeat after a workout thinking, "hey I deserve to splurge" and then I just kept splurging more and more. Last year I paid for a site that counted my calories but now there is an even better one that is pretty much free!

www.livestrong.com

It will ask you first how much you weigh, what your height is, , what your normal activity level is, and then what your goal is. Goals could be "I want to maintain my weight", "I want to lose/ gain 1 lb. a week", "I want to lose/ gain 2lbs. per week." Then you enter in what you eat every day (MyPlate) and the activity that you do and it charts it out for you what you have left for the rest of the day. It tracks water consumption, fitness, sodium levels, etc.

That's it just passing on a little gem for the rest to enjoy.

Man Weekend

Yes, that's right I was invited to go to Man Weekend. Pete's younger brother organizes it with one of his best friends from growing up. Basically you go camping and do manly things all weekend but the whole family is invited. It's pretty much dedicated to Chuck Norris.

We camped and rode around on ATV's all weekend in beautiful Marysvale, Utah. Others fished. There was even a chicken making competition where you had to cook over an open fire. In our camp site Pete and I won. I gave him the recipe idea and he did all the execution so technically- HE won. :) I'll share the basis for the recipe from the wonderful and extremely talented Bobby Flay:

Pomegranate-Black Pepper Glaze
½ cup pomegranate molasses
1 heaping tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 heaping tablespoon prepared horseradish, drained
½ teaspoon coarse black pepper
¼ teaspoon kosher salt

Whisk together all ingredients and let sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before using.

Pan Roasted Chicken
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 (8-ounce) boneless chicken breasts, skin on
Pomegranate Glaze
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large nonstick sauté pan over high until almost smoking. Season chicken on both sides with salt and pepper. Place chicken in the pan, skin-side down and cook until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Turn chicken over, brush with some of the glaze and continue cooking, brushing with the glaze every minute, until chicken is cooked through, about 5 to 6 minutes longer.