Moodswing

My mood has seriously improved since yesterday, the weather hasn't. When I got up I could hardly wait to go out and run.

I've run my usual 3.5 km course, because I've decided to split the long distances into run and walk. This way I still improve both running and fat metabolism. Otherwise I probably would have to walk the marathon and I won't have that.

Todays running stats:
distance: 3.5 km
time: 32:39 min
in zone: 18:46 min
heartrate: 154 bpm

Improvements on the last two. Yeah.

And two pictures for you. The blue track called the Testfeld.

KEEP RUNNING!

New Look and my first miss..

Hi,
I thought it was about time to give this blog a new look and some new features. In the sidebar you'll find such interesting things as: my weeks training schedule, my weekly weight shed (no, I don't lose weight, I shed it!) and my run / marched distances in km. (Have you recognised my sarcasm? Find it.)

I haven't trained today and I can't give you a good reason for it. The weather sucked and I had other things occupying my mind so I shifted my 12 km to tomorrow.

Yesterday on the other hand, we've had fabulous weather so I went on a bike ride to get some nice pictures of Leipzig for you. I took a lot and I will share them with you in the next weeks, there is no point in having 60 pics in one post.

First the speed trainings Start and Finish:

This is where we started with the first 1000 m leg last Thursday.

And this is the finish for the 1000 m. The stairs lead up to the central stadium of Leipzig. After the 3 min trot this is the start for the second, fourth, sixth and eighth leg of the Speedtraining.

Leipzigs new town hall and the skyscraper.

Though it looks like a medieval castle, the townhall was build from 1899 till 1905. So it's quite young. The old one was build in 1556/1557. (We've got 2! town halls in Leipzig.)

Rowing in December, you wouldn't think this is possible. But thanks to climate change...

Let's hope our leaders find their courage and decide something useful in Copenhagen this week.
It was marvelous to watch this man, his moves were fluid and really graceful.

And even though it was just 3 PM, we had a wonderful "sunset". (Well the sun didn't set until 4 PM, but it sure looks like a sunset to me.)

That's it for today.

KEEP RUNNING.
(If only I would. *cringe*)

Dr. Wallpaper and Beetroot soup

Hi there, I love it when the weather and my body contradict me and my anouncements! When I got up yesterday morning, we had fabulous sunshine (but it was breath cloud cold) and fine legs. Unfortunately I didn't have time to run, because we had to drive to my grandma's house to repaper her kitchen.
Here are some pics of yesterday. Enjoy.

I took those pictures before we started with repapering the kitchen. Originally the weather was better, but my grandma lives 1 1/2 driving hours in a small village and they mostly have different weather from us. But the sun still showed several times. In the evening it rained. So I had no guilty feeling then.

Now, now, the repapering. First of all let me present: Dr. Wallpaper (my dad) preparing for the good deed.

And now Dr. Wallpaper (Dad) and his fancy, extremely goodlooking assistent (me) repapering the ceiling:

(Pictures taken by mom.)

At 6 o'clock in the evening the whole kitchen was looking shiny new and my grandma gave us big hugs and eloquent thank you's.

Mampf Diary Saturday:
BF: 350 ml chocolate protein shake, 1 golden kiwi (I love them)
Lunch: diced turkey with mushrooms and Brussels sprouts (Have a look at the picture) cooked by my mom

Dinner: 1 Dream Apple, 1 golden kiwi and a butter roll late at night (I know! But I was hungry and had forgotten that I had a bag of nuts left. )

Snacks: 1 boiled egg

Now, let's get to something really tasty and not really paelithic, todays lunch:

Beetroot Soup!

Now before you keel over, I never liked beetroot, but this soup is delicious. I mean look at it!

It's delicious, I've got the recipe from a former flatmate (Thanks Julia!) and changed it a tiny bit, to accomodate it more to the paleo diet.

Ingredients for 3 persons:
1 kg of pre-cooked beetroot
2 onions
1 lemon
200 ml cocos milk (as a substitute for the dairy versions, it actually gives the taste a nice twist, yummy) or sour cream or creme fraiche
some spices you like (BTW go for organic spices. Spices are dried and this means everything is in higher concentration, including toxins and pesticids. So make sure they are organic.)
Olive oil, vegetable broth, Water, fresh Parsley if you like.

Utensils: Pot, stove, a blender, spoons, knife, apron, goggles, radio or iPod or other mp3-player (are there others? ;-)

Preparation (ca. 1 hour for the first time):

Dice the beetroots and onions (don't have to be neat or small, you'll blend them anyway) and sauté them in some olive oil. The temperature shouldn't be too high, if the olive oil starts to fume it's way too hot.

Get some vegetable broth to boiling or water (ca. 500-1000 ml) and give it over the sautéing beetroot-onion-mix. If you used just water get the mixture to boiling before you put in the vegetable broth powder (couldn't find the right english expression). Spice it with pepper and other spices you like. Then you let the whole soup simmer for about 10 minutes.

Time for the blending. Before you do it, let the soup cool down a bit, you don't want to melt your blender! And since beetroot stains are a nightmare, don't wear your best white dress or anything remotely lighter than black and get an apron or something like it.
This is what a blending master in mom's 20 years old apron looks like:

Muahh.

Now blend it carefully, till it's smooth.

Now you can add the juice of the lemon, blend it again. Time for the cocos milk or your dairy product of choice.

The hand belongs to my mom.

Blend it again. Season to taste again. If need be reheat it. And then serve it with parsley or basil.

Enjoy your beetroot soup.

Oh, it's getting late and dark. Time for my 15 km Sunday training march.

Keep Running.

Recovery Day

Where to start?!

Okay, first the speed training with the running seminar yesterday.
We met at 7 p.m. on the testfield of the DHFK (German University for Physical Culture, it is now a part of the University of Leipzig. But if you ask any denizen of Leipzig for the DHFK, he/she will still know where you have to go.) We were a huge group as you can see.

Since the track isn't big enough for 8 different pace groups, the six "slow" groups went down to run at the river bank. (Seems to be the runners route in Leipzig, we met so many.) The training went as followed. We had to run 1 km in the time we wanted to have our normal pace later. Between the "fast" 1 km legs we had 3 minutes of trot. This 1 km we had to ran accordingly to our schedule 6 to 10 times.

So, since I want to run a 6:30 (hahaha, dream on girl!) pace, I had this amount of time to run from the special parkbank to the second stairs, which is exactly 1 km. (I'll see how the weather is on Sunday, to get some pictures for you.) And my schedule said 8 km.

If you've read my post from last week, you'll know that my normal pace is 8:57 min and I only ran 3,5 km then. You're starting to guess it, don't ya? To make things worse, I walked 11 km on Wednesday to and fro the city (5 km one leg), after the 12 km training on Tuesday. Worsest? Yesterday I walked 9 km home through the city. I guessed it was fabulous weather so why pay for a tram ticket when I have legs?! When I got home at 3:45 p.m. my feet hurt already. And then I went to speed training!!! Do I have to write any more?!?

I got there with the tram (streetcar) and walked to the changing room. Meeting all the other runners was really exciting and I couldn't get the grin from my face. Peter, the organizer, called out the groups and so I went to the 6:30 group. HUGE mistake! We trotted down to the start at the river with Katharina (our tutor). Where we started with the fast running. Well the others started. I ended up with two Ladies trailing 100 m behind the group. What a humiliation! And if that wasn't enough, my right calf couldn't decide whether it wanted to cramp or not. After km four I wanted to throw it, but I stuck with the two ladies and did 2 more. After them we trotted back to the track grabbed our things and left. Well before I left the track I trank my vial of aminoacids. Eek, but if it helps. I went home by tram.

When I got home I was totally beside me. I even took a bite from a cookie! Luckily I realized what I did after the first bite and gave the rest to my dad. (Later I was really hungry and ate a buttered roll. >-( ) After that incident I sank into a hot and very relaxing bath and granted myself a chocolate treat - Fioretto!!! (I bought it myself and don't work or write for this company and this is my honest opinion.)

Necessary items to train for a marathon: chocolate treats and a bathtub!!!

http://www.clawfoot-connection.com/Fgallery/clawfoot222.jpg
(This would be my dream bathroom. Sadly my parents have only a normal bathtub / bathroom. But it's better than nothing.)

Oh, and since my Polar didn't work I don't have any stats for you. Sorry. But here is my Mampf
Diary:
BF: 350 ml protein chocolate shake, 2 golden kiwis (the fruit! I'm not a cannibal.)
Lunch: Veal with a Dream Apple and 2 golden kiwis (pic)
Dinner: buttered roll (told ya I was totally off)
Snacks: 1 waffle with vanilla cream, 1 bag of nuts, 1 Fioretto, 1 bite of a chocolate cookie

Yesterdays lunch. Strange but Yummy!

Today was SCAL(R)E DAY! I wanted to know if I had lost some weight since Wednesday, hopefully another 300 grams. I was NOT prepared to see this:

Weight 64,2 kg

Thats 800 grams less. And it wasn't water! It's been bodyfat. The full scale stats are this:
Weight: 64,2 kg
body fat: 29,1 % (minus 0,9 % since monday!!!!)
water: 51,7 %
muscles: 34,1 %
bones: 7,6 kg

So, yesterdays nightmarish training was worth something. My thighs aren't too sore, but we'll see what they say tomorrow. Essentially I took this day off to recover. My mom was really nice and got me some marvelous beef tenderloin (she was so mad at the butcher, because it was really expensive). This is what I made for my lunch today:

Beef tenderloin with sautéd mushrooms and a tossed salad with bell pepper and tomatoes. The dressing on the tenderloin is "Balsamico Cremoso". This was a culinarily marvelous meal. *Sigh* After that I took time to recover more deeply (afternoon nap ;-).

As you can see I'm back on track when it comes to eating Paleo. Next scheduled training is on Sunday. 15 km. Tomorrow my dad and me will repaper the kitchen of my grandma. No other workout, though I thought I would run my 3,5 km but my legs feel crappy. So, I'll give them more rest. And since the weather is bad too, I've got no guilty feeling for not being out in the sunshine.

KEEP RUNNING!!

Leipzig south-western sky, Wednesday, ca. 3:30 pm.

Mostly Pictures - Eye relaxation for you.

Since I wrote so much in my last posts, you'll get a lot of pictures in this post from me. This was a very nice day for me, I'll tell you at the end of this post.

As promised some pictures of Aurora, my bike. It's a mountain bike of 2001 I bought it in 2002, 200 € off.

The slimmer tires.

If I'd believe in signs I'd say this is one. The tires are called marathon.

Leipzig hasn't to be rainy in November there can be some beautiful sunshine days.

May I introduce you? The famous Trabant or short Trabbi, the Volkswagen of the former German Democratic Republic (1949-1989).

You still see the Trabbi in Leipzig, but you have to be lucky it's not an everyday occurrence. That day I saw 3 or 4 which is unusual. I still know the noise of its engine by heart. There were countless jokes about the Trabbi. A famous nickname of the Trabbi is "Rennpappe" = Racecardboard (Sounds better in German, doesn't it?), because the chassis is made of cardboard (a special kind).

I walked to the city today (5k one distance, so 11k over the whole day) because I had a dentists appointment for a deep cleaning. But I also got some other stuff.

This is my protein shake, I eat/drink/enjoy for breakfast. Its protein concentration isn't that high, but it tastes and blends best (in my opinion), and it is reasonably priced. This can contains 750g and lasts for about a month.

Aminoacids, which I will take after the hard training on Thursdays. I got them at my old health club, where I was a member about 8 or 9 years ago. And guess what!!! My spinning coach Heiko was there and remembered me!!! After nine years and with a totally different haircolor!!! I'm still excited about it and have to grin when I think about it.

The best running tight ever. That's what it should it be AT LEAST, going after the price I paid for it (110 €, which is sick). Since the temperatures dropped this week I needed to get thermal tights and that hasn't been easy. I've tried several pairs. Gore running wear is absolut crap, seams on the insight of the tights and at really uncomfortable places. (What were they thinking?) Odlo was slightly better, but the one they've got was too big for me. You know what really pisses me off? That there's not so much running wear for woman out there as should be. And winter tights are all for men, as if women don't run during the winter.

I scent a conspiracy! The male bosses of the sports gear companies are afraid of women catching up on men at the track. So they want to stop us, with offering only nice running wear for the summer. But we won't take it! No. We will run! In mens tights!!! Yes we can! ROFL. Finally I got my OWN conspiracy theory!

When I got home I was really hungry, but since I haven't been to the butcher I couldn't start out with making my lunch. Luckily I've got them:

Saver of my diet. Nuts in a bag. You have to love them. ;-)

This was my lunch: really paleolithic and so tasty. Afterwards I ate a small piece of chocolate from my christmas calendar. It was a house, yesterday it was a snowman.

Paleo that's my prompt. Paleo Diet is still working really well. I got on my scale this morning since I was curious if the non dairy would change something. And guess what, I've lost another 300g in the last 2 days. Wahoo. And I don't gave up chocolate, so I'm fine and content.

Off to the cinema with a friend of mine I go.

KEEP RUNNING!

12 km I did it...

Okay, after I wrote my next application and some e-mails I got on my feet and did the 12 k.

The course (12,2 km) was from google maps and the estimated time was 2:28 hrs. I didn't wear my running clothes, but my Nike Free 5.0 and I ROCKED the street. Yeah.

It took me 2:00 hrs flat!

Okay, I had to stop at some traffic lights and to drink and to get another chewing gum, so I was probably a bit faster than that.

The first 90 minutes were fine, after that I had to push myself to keep going and to not take shortcuts. (I'm lazy.)
Next thing was, in the first quarter I found it pretty interesting how many Fast Food Stores were along my way. I mean over the whole 12 km were "uncountable" (told ya, I'm lazy) Fast Food Stores and bakeries, but only 3 fruit and vegetable stores!

Now I don't believe in these conspiracy theories, that the goal of the Fast Food Industry is to make us fat and fatter. They want to make money, alright, but they would provide whatever we want to eat, they don't care so much about what it is. For example, have a look at the big M, what do the people eat when they go there (and I'm no exception)? It's the burgers and fries, not the salad. They offer them and I don't think they are bad either (the salads, not the employees), but the people don't choose to eat them. And this is the way with all the Fast Food Restaurants.

Now at the beginning of the trip I found these food stores funny, at the end of my course I was so hungry, I could have broken with my diet right then and there, because I was ravenous. Luckily for my new lifestyle I had no money on me (useless weight, if you haven't guessed already: I'M LAZY!). So I had to get home and eat there.

When I got home at 4:30 pm, I made myself a wonderfull tossed salad with tomatoes and bell pepper and 3 (!) boiled eggs. Aaahhh, what a relieve! Interestingly, when I got home I had lots of energy, but after I had munched my salad I was totally worn out. I promised myself a special treat, but I had to go and buy it. It took me 5 attempts to get up. The conversation in my head was something like this:

"And off we go" "nah" (no movement whatsoever)
"common" "naaah"(still no movement)
"choooocolate, but we've got to buy it" "uh" (slight movement of the upper body parts)
"common it's not that far" "sigh" (you guessed it: no movement)
"chocolate now!!!" "uuuhhhh maaaaannnnnnnn" (I sloooowly got up)

I bought not only a fabulous treat, but I also got myself magnesium which I can "eat" on the run.

Okay, this is my treat:

Looks delicious, doesn't it? Dark chocolate is better than milk chocolate because it contains less sugar. Due to the Paleo Diet I shouldn't eat chocolate, but as I said before, no one gets between me and my chocolate! This box contains 6 pralines. I've decided that I grant myself one piece after my long slow runs. Therefore it should last for 3 weeks.

Sooo tasty. *sigh*

Okay, todays stats:
time: 2:00:39 hrs
in zone: 38:00 min (I was too slow)
heartreate: 119 bpm

Two posts today, wow, I'm chatty. (Good thing, I don't have an iPhone (yet), otherwise there'd be even more posts.)

KEEP RUNNING!

PS: Thankfully, it didn't rain! And Monthy Pythons "Always look on the bright side of life" at the right time.

Paleo food works and

sorting out too! I've sorted out tons of paper, socks, underwear (ahem) and CDs (63 in the first fast going through, and my racks are still not containing all of them. I guess thats why I don't have the money for a race bike or car or ... (fill in what you'd like).).

Anyway, I cut out dairy products yesterday and today my skin is a LOT better. Bloody Hell! This means no cheese anymore or hot chocolate with Baileys (not good anyway because alcohol sponges your magnesium out (is "sponging out" the right expression?)). This whole drink a glass of red wine everyday is just flapdoodle (hah, my new favourite english word "flapdoodle") to make you buy more wine! (And magnesium supplements and Aspirin afterwards to battle the hangover.)

Today I have to run / march 12 k and it rains! BUGGER!! First I have to write my applications though.

Mampf - Diary, Monday:
BF: 300 ml protein shake chocolate with water instead of milk, 1 sliced apple
Lunch: 1 Dream Apple (Cinnamon is good for your blood sugar. If you want to reduce it, take cinnamon.)
Dinner: Tossed salad with a red bell pepper and baked salmon, 1 Dream Apple
Snacks: 1 Banana, dark chocolate, a bag of nuts (50g)

Keep Running!