Lately, I’ve found myself attracted to the color green, though I’m not sure why. Usually green is a spring color, not a late summer color. Coming from Texas, where late summer is characterized by brown, I’m very thankful that the Nashville area is still quite green.
Even my favorite recovery meal/breakfast is green: a Green Monster, to be exact. The green color comes from spinach blended into the smoothie. It sounds bizarre, but I promise you can hardly taste it. My Green Monster this morning wasn’t terribly green because I was a little low on spinach. After a weekend with relatives in town and a lot more eating than running, it felt good to run a few miles, lift some weights, and start off the week right with a Green Monster, appropriately in a pint glass.
My current favorite mix:
- 1 cup soy milk
- 1 scoop vanilla protein powder
- 1 tablespoon chia seeds
- 1-2 big handfuls of spinach or another leafy green
- 1 medium banana, frozen and cut into chunks
- 4-5 frozen strawberries
I whirl it up in the blender, and it keeps me full until lunchtime.
Friday morning, I had a couple of miles planned, but every fiber in my body was begging me not to run, so I moved the miles to Saturday and took a rest day. Now that we’re moving into the end of summer, kids are back in school, and summer fun is over, I decided to treat myself to a little present, as much to reward myself for running through the heat of summer as to motivate myself until the weather cools down. I purchased this little guy (with credit card reward points!) to accompany on my runs:
Isn’t he cute? I love listening to music on my runs because it motivates me and distracts me, but I’m not terribly picky as long as it has a good beat and is at least a medium tempo song. So I loaded my little iPod shuffle with everything from Jay-Z to Miranda Lambert, hit shuffle, and it surprises me while I’m out there. I can just clip it to my shorts or my sports bra instead of carrying around its older sibling on my arm.
It feels so much lighter, and I love that I don’t know which song is going to come on. Like yesterday, I was going to bail at a certain distance, but when a song I love to run to came on, I kept going to finish out the workout.
I’m not very good at rewarding myself in the middle of training. I’ll usually splurge on a nice pedicure or a massage after a big race, but little things like a new sports bra or running shorts in the midst of a training cycle make my daily runs just a little more exciting.
How do you reward yourself?
