We’ve got a beautiful day here in Charlotte so I’m typing as fast as possible to get outside in the hammock and start a new book 8)
I went for an easy run this morning at a considerably slower pace than yesterday. I probably did about 9:30 miles? I love running in hot weather and really sweating. It makes the workout that much more satisfying.
Turns out the strawberry picking is over 🙁 It ended yesterday. Guess we’ll have to wait for blackberry season.
So we spent the rest of the morning hanging my grandmother’s painted Broomstick Garden in our token backyard tree. My grandmother is very creative and quite the painter. She collected old broomsticks and garden stakes, painted them and hung them in a tree in her yard along a hidden path. Since they’re moving this summer, I asked if I could have them and she shipped them down to me. I’m sure UPS had never seen a muddy collection of painted broomsticks before! As my grandmother pointed out, most broomsticks are made from plastic these days, so it’s a unique collection. They look really cool in our tree!
Monkey in a tree! You should’ve seen how fast he got up there.
My favorite one is red and aqua:
Lunch was just as colorful.
I made a sandwich on Rudi’s Honey Wheat with a little of this and that:
- 1/4 a cup mashed navy beans
- Avocado slices
- Zucchini, yellow bell pepper, carrot and radish
- Goat cheese
- Dijon mustard
- Fresh basil
- Drizzle of honey (the secret ingredient to any good sandwich!)
Leftover salad from last night’s dinner. Too bad I ate all the good stuff off last night!
Greek yogurt, half a peach, some granola –
From above –
This morning I also made some steel cut oatmeal for the week. We’re low on rolled oats so I’m trying to stretch them until next weekend’s grocery store trip.
I combined 1 cup of dry oats (4 servings) with 3 cups of water and cooked until the water was almost gone. Then I stirred in 1 cup of milk in the last 10 minutes or so. I packaged them as 3 servings and 2 half servings to mix with wheatberries and such.
I felt fine this morning without coffee, but I feel my afternoon shoulder ache coming on. Hopefully I’m past the worst of it by now.
See you for meal #3!
Hey Kath,
Love the broom sticks! When you pre-make your steel cut oatmeal and portion out do you then just refrigerate it for the week? Have you ever tried to freeze it? I bought TJ frozen steel cut oatmeal a couple months ago and it was really good. Your post reminded me that I have been wanting to try and make my own frozen portions for “grab and go” mornings.
Ahh, too bad about the strawberry-picking being over; but hey, it still sounds like you’ve had a fun afternoon. Enjoy the rest of your sunny Sunday! :0)
Hey Kath,
I think im going to be headed your way in the next few weeks and was wondering if you could recommend any great restaurants for me to try
Im really excited to head down there and maybe i’ll even see you at Dean & Deluca (one of my favortie stores) =)
Hey Kath,
I love your blog!!
I was wondering of you had a recipe I could use to make healthy waffles? Or if anyone else that visits here does? I just got a waffle iron as a gift and I would like to use it, but I would like the waffles to be a healthy filling breakfast!! Thanks!
BUMMER that strawberry picking is over. Blackberries are very tasty though =)
Your sandwich looks AMAZING. I have a question though… maybe the husband can answer it 🙂
I know he proved scientifically (and I completely agree with him on the physics level) that walking and running burn the same amount of calories per mile, however, I had an inkling that a mixture of the two would increase the calorie burn.
If work (energy expelled) is Force*Distance and Force is mass*acceleration, then if you varied the acceleration by a combination of speeding up and slowing down, could you in fact take advantage of the distance to burn more?
I would test this except I don’t have a HR monitor. 🙁
Thank you!!
I am a lurker who posts very occasionally, but Elizabeth’s post reminded me of an article I read awhile back. I am terrible at all things science-related (which is why I am sooo looking forward to the year of Chemistry classes coming up…I too am going back to school for my master’s to become an R.D.), but the explanation made sense to me, and Runner’s World is a pretty legitimate source. What do you all think, including the husband?
Ha! Forgot the link… http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-242-304-311-8402-0,00.html
Oops, forgot the link…and I can’t seem to post it in the comment section? Click my name I guess…hope that works…I’m not very computer savvy either! Sorry!
Elizabeth,
Nice question (and nice article Meghan). First, I’ve said it before that in general walking a mile and running a mile are very similar in calorie burn. But running is a less efficient use of energy than walking, so I’m not surprised to see evidence validating this fact.
In terms of what you’re proposing Elizabeth, I have two conflicting thoughts:
1) Sure, in those bursts where you’re speeding up, you’d be burning more calories, but you have to weigh that against the “coasting” effect of slowing down between bursts.
2) On the other hand, think about running suicides: sprinting, stopping, and turning around seems like it would be so much more tiring than sprinting an equal distance without stopping.
I don’t think the suicide example is a very good one because there’s more to it than just running and stopping – you’re squatting down and putting more strain on certain muscles, etc. In any case, the faster and harder you can run, you’re going to be burning slightly more calories per mile. This is entirely due to the efficiency of the human body.
So imagine this: think of your average time for a mile run. If you ran that same mile in the same amount of time, alternating bursts of speed with slower lags, my guess is that you’d barely burn more calories than running it at a constant pace. Maybe there would be no difference.
But imagine this: average mile time, but you ran it at a regular pace, adding in bursts of speed. Well of course your intuition tells you this would burn more calories.
Such an interesting activity, and it all comes down to efficiency. I guess the thing I really learned from the article (and was very surprised about) was the difference in calorie burn for running vs. walking.
Jessica ,
I just refrigerate. I don’t think I’d ever need to freeze, but it would be a good experiment. Let us know if you try it!
Jen,
What brings you to Charlotte!? I have a whole email I’ve typed before of restaurant recommendations – if you’ll send me an email at Katheats at gmail dot com I’ll send it to you. When will you be here? I’m up for lunch if you are!
Jenni ,
I have no waffle iron 🙁 But I think Jenna at Eatliverun.com has a few waffle recipes.
elizabeth + meghan,
This has always puzzled me. My dad (who is incredibly smart) has always sworn that running + walking are the same. But I’ve always wanted to side with the “more energy when running” school of thought. I’d love to know the truth once and for all! I guess the Syracuse study is pretty good proof.
Kath