Since I last wrote to you on the tangential subject of frozen dairy treats, I went to Maine and ate perfect ice cream. It was my first trip to Maine and I don't have any damning things to say about it. I loved the place. My hot take on lobster is that it's just fine; it's a lot of work for a little bit of meat and generally I could use more substantial sides, like a burger or onion rings.
Anyway. Let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming.
My endorphins are through the roof today because I did a nine-mile tempo run at marathon pace this morning. My friend is training for the Berlin Marathon and I occasionally I hop into his workouts to see what my body can do. We can do hard things, it turns out. It was humid and I was operating on six hours of sleep (an Oura Ring sleep score of 73—HORRIBLE!), so my body had to work harder than usual to hit the paces.
A tempo run is basically when you run at a comfortably hard pace for longer than 20 minutes. If you’re marathon training, you might do a tempo workout of 3x20 minutes with a short (2-minute) rest in between, or you might skip the rest and run for 60 minutes straight. I find tempo workouts to be mentally daunting as I struggle with where to focus my mind during the time. The goal is to ward off any negative thoughts that give me an excuse to slow down (“I didn’t get enough sleep”, “my stomach hurts") and be present in the moment. They’re also just physically hard.
Today, I spent most of the time comparing the pain of running fast to a dentist appointment. It occured to me in the first mile that the time I would spend running was equal to the time I spent having my teeth cleaned yesterday. I know for a fact that at least 10% of my readers go to the same dentist as me (disclaimer: I get a king-size toothpaste for every person I refer), so they understand how painful a standard dental cleaning is with Dr. C. She is a thorough dentist who leaves no plaque behind! Would I rather spend 67 minutes having my tartar annihilated or running a tempo workout? That really put things into perspective. Working out hurts but not like a dental scraper hitting a tooth with a receding gum line. Ow.
The morale of the story is that I had a very accomplished week because I ran a hard run today and got my teeth cleaned yesterday.
Before we part ways, don’t think I’ve forgotten about BAKED GOOD OF THE WEEK. My run was fueled by the zucchini bread I made yesterday. Some of my highbrow foodie readers will scoff at this but it's a family tradition to see how little sugar you can put in a baked good and still have it taste good. Don't hate me, diabetes runs in the family. I put one-fourth cup of sugar and used a variety of flour (whole wheat, white, oat, almond) to keep it spunky. Tasted great, haters!
See you back here sometime soon.
Elaheh
Ooh, definitely trying the recipe. Thanks for including!