I am serious about my salads. Today when I was on the treadmill at the gym I was actually dreaming about the salad I would make for lunch today. It was a hard workout (6 miles total — 4.5 mile progression run followed by 6 x 60 second strides with 60 seconds recovery jog between each) and I needed some motivation to get me through it, plus I knew I would need to replenish my energy with a yummy nutritious meal. My salad did not disappoint!
Since I eat a vegan diet almost all the time so that means no dairy, egg, fish or meat in my salad. My daughter is in camp this week so I lunched with my my buddy Will while the baby slept. Will has lots of severe food allergies (egg, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, garlic, sesame, mustard, shellfish) so he and I eat very similarly. I like to make our lunches together with lots of the same ingredients but he does not like salad and he loves meat so this is what I did:
Step One: Gather ingredients for amazingly awesome vegan power salad, which basically involves grabbing whatever looks yummy in my fridge. Today this is delicious greens, persian cucumber, baby carrots, a roasted beet (which I roasted in the oven last night along with three others to be used throughout the week), sunflower seeds, cooked quinoa (great way to sneak in protein – this is leftover from my dinner last night), avocado, sugarsnap peas, pink lady apple. Fig infused balsamic vinegar and lemon oil to drizzle.
Step Two: Slice and chop everything up and sprinkle it all on top of the greens, saving half the avocado, half the apple and half the cucumber for Mr. Will’s lunch.
Step Three: Drizzle yummy fig vinegar and lemon oil on top of salad. It is ready to eat!!
Step Four: Put Will’s ingredients on his plate and add two organic Applegate Farms turkey rolls and some blueberries for him.
Step Five: Eat my delicious salad with my amazing son! Watch as he creates his meal into a satisfying masterpiece…
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| smashing avocado onto his turkey roll |
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| place apple and cucs in the turkey and roll it all up… |
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| deeeeee-lish!! |
This is a variation on how we eat lunch in my house every day. Simple, fresh and oh so good!!!
Now, about those strides…today is the first time I ever did a workout like this and I loved it! Strides are basically 30-60 second hard efforts at the end of your run. My coach says they are a great way to work on picking up speed at the end of a run and are also an opportunity to really concentrate on form and controlled effort. Because of the way my life is right now I had to do this at the gym today. I think it would be better done outside (but I kind of always think that!) but am grateful to have a gym membership for days like this! I did 6 x 60 second strides with one minute jog recovery between each one after a 4.5 mile run (for 6 miles total including recovery). It was awesome. My legs feel it now and I sweat like a beast. I am really loving mixing up my weekly runs with fun workouts like this.
So, how about you? What kind of speed work do you enjoy the most? Have you ever done strides before?
