Tiger Mountain, New Breakfast and Rowing PR

Happy Wednesday! I am excited to have a day off today! You know those weeks that are just never-ending?

I've pretty much felt that way since last Friday and just powered through work the past few days. Working in the customer service industry, sometimes I find it really hard to be "on" all the time. It's one of those things where every day before I go to the gym, I take a deep breath and put on a happy face no matter what I am feeling. I am naturally a peppy person, so it's usually easy, but these past few days I have been tired, so I have definitely utilized my deep breathing =)

Enough complaining!

I'm excited to head out to Tiger Mountain today to run the same loop I will be doing twice for my Pigtails 50k in December. I have every reason to believe this run will be better than the disastrous run last Friday, so I'm excited to redeem myself!

Trail madness love!

This morning I decided to try something knew for my pre long-run breakfast. I haven't been very consistent on this front, lately. I know, BAD runner! It is usually recommended to find a breakfast that works for you and stick with it before a long run. I used to be a big believer in toast, peanut butter and banana, but I actually hardly used that at all while I was training for the New York City Marathon (tear).

I was talking with another trainer at work who told me that he has found the best pre-endurance meal to be Grape Nuts Cereal and Strawberries. He said he had tried it before and recommended it to many friends who all had great PR's on this breakfast.

That got me thinking, why not try it?!

I always thought of Grape Nuts as an old fogie cereal. My dad eats it every morning. Enough said =) I also try to stay away from processed foods. Nonetheless, I picked up a box the next time I was at the grocery store. When I looked at the ingredients, I was surprised to see just wheat flour, malted barley flour, salt and dried yeast. And lots of vitamins and minerals, including 90% of daily iron needs!

Even the back of the box touted the use of Grape Nuts for endurance athletes.

So, this morning, I am giving this a whirl. I will let you know how it goes! Has anyone else tried Grape Nuts for pre long-run breakfast? Did it work for you? Of course, I added some banana and almond butter to my bowl because I can't get through breakfast without either!

Final news for today: I rowed 2000 meters straight through for time yesterday at Crossfit. I can't tell you how unhappy I was when I heard the coach yell: "WOD today is 2000 meter row for time! Grab a rower!".

Admittedly, I wanted to strangle him. But I got my rower, while grumbling under my breath, and told myself slow and steady wins the race. And ya know what?

I killed it. Level II goal time was 8:50, and I crushed that with 8:46. Maybe I'm not so bad at rowing, but it still hurts! My butt is just a liiiiiitttlllleeee sore today! =)