RTB MA {relay recaps} Part 1

Where to begin... I never really jumped on board when everyone started calling everything "epic", but now I get it because that was seriously an EPIC adventure this weekend participating in the Massachusetts Reach the Beach Relay!!

I will remember this amazing weekend with these amazing women always!  

Need a refresher?  Here’s the list of ladies in our running order:

Team Off Balance

Gretchen – Honey I Shrunk the Gretchen
Jess – Fit Chick in the City
Melissa – Fitness NYC
Patricia – Run Foodie Run
Me!
Sarah – Sarah Fit
Tina - Carrots ‘n Cake
Monica – Run Eat Repeat
Theodora – Losing Weight in the City
Elizabeth – On Tap for Today
Anne – Fannetastic Food
Ashley – A Healthy, Happier Bear

There were also our unbelievably amazing drivers Nicole and Monica!!  They easily became part of the family this weekend too!!! 

I need to rewind a bit back to Thursday though. I left work early, made a quick stop at Whole Foods for some last minute provisions, and headed to the New Balance headquarters in Brighton to meet the team.

We quickly packed up the vans and headed north to Lawrence for a tour of the manufacturing facilities and the lab where they test all the shoes.

I used to work 5 minutes away from the New Balance in Lawrence for over 5 years and I never knew everything that actually took place here.
Some fun facts:

• NB created it's first shoe in 1982 with their 990, which is still their top shoe.
• This was also the first athletic shoe to break $100 and no one thought it would sell.
• Whoever said that is kicking themselves now though, because as of today their have been 14,000,000 pairs of the 990 sold!!!
• NB is also the only athletic shoe company that still manufactures shoes in the USA! 25% of their shoes are made in the county.

(material waiting to become shoes)

We were lucky enough to tour the manufacturing floor and actually see these 990's being made. I've never seen anything like this before. Its crazy to see the shoes go from pieces of materials all the way into sneakers!

A shoe is made about every 22.5 seconds!

 
After that tour we headed downstairs to visit the  Sports Research Lab.

There were a few desks, but also a treadmill, basketball hoop, lifting bar, and other equipment that made me thinks they don't have onto sit behind their computers all day.

 
We saw and tried out some of their technology that analyzes how you run, if you pronate, how your foot strikes the ground, and how they test their shoes against competitors.

I learned that I strike the ground on my mid foot, which it what I had thought. Apparently striking mid-food helps avoid injury. But we also talked about how being a heel striker is not necessarily a bad thing if you do it right. However most people don't do it right and that's why it has a bad rep.

One of the guys that worked down in the lab also was telling us his theory about how when other parts of the body are injured you keep them in a cast/sling/brace for the short term and then get them back to their natural range of motion.  However, if someone pronates, they get a corrective shoe and that’s that.  Basically saying that being an over-pronator may just be how some people naturally run and as long as their not in pain or injured, why correct it??  Interesting…

We then headed back to the vans, and headed to the Wachusett Village Inn, where we would be spending the night before the relay. 

We checked in, had a few minutes to relax and then we gathered by a campfire outside while we had our first interaction with the videographer.  We had a videographer with us the entire time, and not just filming…but he is creating 5 episodes for the Reach the Beach facebook page about our journey.  We talked about what we are nervous about, what our thoughts were going into the race, and our goals. 

When he first talked about creating “conflict” I started thinking Real World: Reach the Beach.  But in reality it was more our own conflicts with what we might struggle with over the course of the relay.

Then it was dinner time!

Maybe nachos aren’t the best pre-race dinner…oh well!  I also had a big salad, and a few bites of mac and cheese that was passed around the table.  I love people who share :)

Just like the HLS, Elizabeth was my roomie and partner in crime…sadly we weren’t in the same van but we kept in constant contact via the twitter machine.  

In fact…twitter + group texting = the most action my cell phone has seen in a 2-day period EVER.  If you’ve  never group texted…get on it.  Its life changing.

After breakfast Friday morning we all headed to Mt. Wachusett to register, go through orientation, and get ready to send Gretchen off on the first leg!!

I love these girls!

Team Fast Food Nation:

Loved some of the costumes we saw!!

Gretchen getting ready to tackle the first leg…basically up Mt Wachusett!

And they’re off!   

I’m guessing by now you’ve read some of the other re-caps, and we were all trying not to do TOO many posts but there is just SO much to share.  I’m going to stop here for now, but I can’t WAIT to talk about the actual race!!! 

Mom’s Tea and Relay Week!

Another rainy day here in Boston, but at least we were gifted with a gorgeous weekend to celebrate Mother’s Day!

My Saturday morning started out with a beautiful run with Elizabeth! We did one of my favorite running routes in South Boston along the water.

It was a tad warm as far as ideal running conditions go, but I couldn’t complain…it was so nice to feel the warm sun!

We did about 5.5 miles.

That was probably my last run before the Reach the Beach Relay this Friday!!!  I seriously can NOT believe it’s here already and I’m getting SO pumped!  The total of my 3 legs is 15.5 miles.  I haven’t had too many long runs these days but I’m confident that I’ll be just fine :)

Came home, showered, came out of the shower to find this furball on the living room chair…where he is NOT allowed, and he knows it.  Sly little guy.

 

He made himself quite comfy. 

That afternoon was my mom and my annual Mother’s Day tea!

Mother’s Day 2009 – The Taj
Mother’s Day 2010 – Boston Harbor Hotel
Mother’s Day 2011 – L’Espalier

And for Mother’s Day 2012 we did a repeat and went to L’Espalier again! 

We’ve gone to most all of the high teas in Boston…years before I had the blog of course, and once at Christmas Time.  So I feel like we now can repeat our favorites or go to another city :)

Honestly though, what made me pick L’Espalier again is their cheese tray!

In addition to the usual tea sandwiches and pastries you can also order a sampling of 5 cheeses with their accompaniments.

One new aspect of the tea this year though was that they now employ Tea Sommelier Cynthia Gold!  I remember her from tea at the Park Plaza hotel and at the time she was the only Tea Sommelier around.  So it was a nice surprise to see her at L’Espalier.  

The presentation started with a waiter pouring hot water into a wine glass at each of our table settings.  Confusing at first.

But then Cynthia came over with a hand tied flowering tea satchel/pod.  We were instructed to drop it into the hot water. 

We were told it would slowly open and gradually release 3 different type of flowering teas.

It was quite fun to watch it change over the course of our tea service.

 

For my  first tea from the menu I ordered the L’Espalier Afternoon Blend – This signature tea consists of a blend of Darjeeling and three Sri Lankan Estate teas as well as two Chinese green teas lightly scented with jasmine, Italian oil of bergamot, and grapefruit peel.

I loved this blend!

Although I think my favorite of the day was the Chefs Blend my mom ordered later.

 

Tea Sandwiches

As good as they were I was pretty disappointed we were missing the warm ham and cheese sandwich that was on last year’s plate.  But the crab salad was a nice change and I’m always happy when there is NO egg salad ;)

Cheeses:

All were delicious except for the one on the far right.  It was a VERY strong blue cheese…clear your sinuses strong, and just not very pleasant to my mom and I.  Otherwise there was a mild creamy cheese made from a combo of goats, sheep, and cow’s milk; a soft goat blue, one in a gruyere style, another in the raclette family, and another sheep’s milk cheese I can’t remember. 

Accompaniments:

After the cheese and sandwiches were done it was Sweets time!

Very similar to last year, but delicious none the less.  At the top of that picture you can see the scones as well.  Served with Devonshire cream and jam.  I could just eat the scones and skip dessert entirely…so good. 

Delectable and Cute…

 

At this point we’re usually pretty full so we ended up bringing some leftovers home to Brian…lucky guy! 

Somehow missed a shot of mom and I :(  But did grab and outfit pic!

• Blue Dress – H&M
• Neon pink belt – Express
• Sandals – Nine West (via Macy’s)

Loved that it was warm enough for bare legs AND arms!!

Speaking of mom… she’s going to be spending a LOT of time in Seattle this summer and into the Fall!!  No one in my family has ever been so we’re no help but do any of you know any good places out there??  Restaurants?  Must-see sites?  Stores?  Bakeries ;)?? 

Hope you all had a great Mother’s Day!  Especially my friends (blog and “real life”) who celebrated their first Mother’s Day this year!!

Balance: Crossfit + Running

Earlier this week I contributed to the official blog of Reach the Beach, where my teammates Tina, Patricia, and I talked about how we were balancing our RTB training with our love of Crossfit.

This is what I had to say about that…

I’ve been Crossfitting for 4 months now. I’m hooked and I love it… the Kool Aid has been drunk. I don’t remember ever jumping into something so fervently in such a short period of time before in my exercise history. Now, even with Reach the Beach only 6 weeks away, I’m still trying to figure out the balance of Crossfit with my training runs. I’m sure it doesn’t help that Crossfit still has that new and exciting feel to it… I don’t want to cut back! But on the other hand, I know my body, and I know that I need to get in those runs.

Gotta love my “I’m dying” face haha…(Source)

Currently my plan has been to maintain Crossfit 3-4 times a week, as I had before, and get in a longer training run on the weekends. When I trained for my very first half-marathon last year, I was having some issues with plantar fasciitis so I had cut out my shorter mid-week runs, leaving just my long runs, so that I wouldn’t be running too much on my foot.

I was just looking to be able to (somewhat) comfortably finish the half-marathon, not go for any particular times, and I did just that. So, for me, I know my most important training goals are to make sure I get in the longer training runs once a week. I’m confident that those runs, plus the metabolic conditioning aspects of Crossfit will be enough to get my through my 3 legs and Reach the Beach!

In addition to that, I think I want to try doing 2 runs “back-to-back” to mimic what the relay will be like.  And by “back-to-back” I mean 8-12 hours in between runs. 

In other news, my Crossfit box is starting a big 60-day “Paleo Challenge” starting next week.  I’m still on the fence about this whole Paleo thing, but I’m always up for a challenge…especially when it involves keeping better track of my food intake!  Plus we’re going to be broken into teams and there are other ways to get points aside from eating…

(Cauliflower “rice”…really liked this!  Will have to experiment with recipes more)

1 point each for the following:

• getting 8 hours of sleep
• 20 min stretching/mobility
• taking your fish oil
• completing the WOD (workout of the day)
• water: drink half your body weight, in ounces, a day
• eating Zone (the zone diet is also a favorable way of eating for Crossfitters) This PDF has a great breakdown of The Zone diet

But you get 4 points for eating Paleo, losing points as you decline from 100% (4 points) paleo to 85% (1 point).

I’ve already made another batch of Paleo Brownies…mmmm.  This time baked them for only 20-22 min.  Much better consistency if you like your brownies on the fudgy/gooey side :) 

As much as I do agree with many aspects of the Paleo diet, I just don’t see myself going 100%.  I find I get too resentful/angry when, in my head, I “can’t” have something.  Plus I don’t want to stress over it.  My focus during the challenge will be to incorporate more Paleo-friendly meals, keep my carb intake down, and keep it clean!  Plus we’re doing some baseline workouts to compare at the beginning and end…I love seeing improvements, and not just in my appearance! 

I’ve been doing a pretty good job of this lately anyways, so I just need to keep it up!  Can’t hurt for my Vegas trip next weekend either ;) 

Red Sox home opener tomorrow!

I think Bromley could teach them a thing or two ;)

 

Tomorrow’s Friday!!!  The weekend is going to be beautiful, I just feel bad for the marathon runners on Monday…great weather for spectators but it’s going to be a warm one!

10K by the Sea

Sunday I ran my best 10k yet!!

This was a last minute decision when Tina emailed me about running the Cohasset Road Race by the Sea. I figured a 6-mile run would be good for my training, and I was free, so why not?!

(photo from Tina)

In typical Bridget fashion I was running late….Cohasset is a lot farther off the highway than I had thought. I barely had time to park, use the porta-potty, and get to the starting line. I didn’t even have time to pick up my number!! So sadly I didn’t get officially timed, but I used my Garmin and it matched up with the clock at the finish line so I’m confident in my time.

It was a fairly small race (less than 15oo people), so I easily found Tina, Patricia, and Patricia’s friend Ro at the start. Patricia is also on the RTB team in case you forgot!

Well, I’m not as fast as those girls so they easily left me in their dust ;) I didn’t mind, I was not about to try and keep up at their pace! I’ve only done a handful of 3 – 5 mile runs in the past couple months, so I wasn’t exactly trained (but I do believe Crossfit helped me greatly!).

According to my Garmin (the race was over 6.1 miles actually…grrr), I ran 6.27 miles in 1:02:20! Average pace of 9:57. FOR ME…that is GREAT! Considering I’ve only ever ran a sub 30min 5k ONCE, I was not expecting this…because the course was actually very hilly!!  My only other 2 10k’s were around 1:10, so I shaved off almost 10minutes! 

I’ve decided I like rolling hills (did I really just say that??). There were lots of hills, but none were too long and they all had a downhill afterwards…which is where I made up some speed :)

Plus the course was beautiful…some of the houses I saw were insane.

The race was very organized as well and had water stops at each mile!

After the race I found the girls + Tina’s husband Mal and we headed to the Red Lion for some food and drinks.

(photo from Tina)

I was planning to get a beer, but their selection was less than stellar so I stuck to water and food.

Lobster Bisque And split a flatbread with Artichoke, Spicy Aioli, Arugula, and Mozzarella.

Mmmm that flatbread was goooooood.

Fun time with fun ladies…and Mal! We had a blast talking Crossfit as we all do it except for Patricia’s friend Ro….but I think she’s convinced now ;)

In other fitness updates….I did handstand push-ups!!!  Like numerous handstand push-ups!!  If you’re just starting you put 1 or 2 small ABMATs under your head so you don’t have to go all the way down, but STILL!  I was psyched!  Luckily handstands came back to me easily as I used to do gymnastics back in the day.

(p.s. that is an ABMAT.  Source)

I also climbed a rope…not all the way to the top, but over half way…crazy.  That is definitely something I never thought I’d be able to do. 

So yes, I’m still loving Crossfit. 

This post started with a post about dinners, and then the 10k but it was getting crazy long…so 2 posts done tonight!  Holler!  Dinners to come.

Monday is done folks.