Brie Fit

Today was a day of celebration!

It was Tim’s last day at his job. 

His co-workers are a capital group and I drove down to go to lunch with all of them at Michael Smith.

I was a little underwhelmed by the food and the service.  I had high expectations, but it was just kind of meh.  I also found it odd that the portion sizes on some of the entrees were wildly different—I had a burger that was massive, but Tim’s gnocchi dish was teeny tiny.  It was odd.

They got him a very nice plaque commemorating his time at the office.  And then we had delicious Costco cake (seriously, yummy). 

Afterwards, I went home to have, erm, “reading time.”  Which is code for “naptime.”  I didn’t sleep well at all last night—working out from 7:30-8:30 really keyed me up, so I stayed up until about 1 am, and woke up every hour because I was so terribly sore.  And I was up early.  So, yeah, I napped.

I also finally pulled the trigger on a few shopping items today!

I bought this dress that I’ve been coveting for probably a month now (40% off this weekend at Ann Taylor, use coupon code FALL40):

And a new pair of black heels, since mine had to be repaired with Sharpie last week and are falling apart:

And a pair of minimalist-esque shoes (for $15!) from RueLaLa (disclaimer: referral link), for CrossFitting and casual fall wear:

Then, Tim and I got ready to go on our official celebration date.  I insisted on some self-portraits in our bathroom.

We went to Grunauer, and it was probably the best “nice” meal I’ve had in Kansas City. 

We shared the wiener schnitzel and spaetzle, and a cheese strudel and coffee for dessert.  I also had a delicious glass of wine.  We both loved the atmosphere and we practically licked our plates clean!   I can’t wait to go back.

It was a lovely night in Kansas City.

The weather here has been gorgeous and my mood matches.

Tomorrow, I have to go to a picnic for work (boo), and I may see if I can drag Tim to CrossFit with me if I’m not too sore (which…I may be.  I’m kind of waddling right now).  I’m looking forward to a fun weekend!

What was your most recent purchase?

Guys, let me come clean.

I’ve been struggling with stress eating lately and the scale hasn’t been kind.  Specifically, I’ve put about half the weight I lost earlier this year back on. 

I say this because I want to be honest.  I’m human; I struggle.  It’s a rough time for us and I find comfort in eating my favorite foods.  Which sucks. 

This stressful thing I’ve been alluding to (which I cannot share with you guys specifically, at the request of someone I love) has been going on for several months now, so I’ve been coping with it for quite a long time.  I’m still working out, which I consider a success, since I really don’t have much interest in doing that lately, either.

People always say, “throw your stress into a good workout!” which works maaaybe 40% of the time for me.  And I can’t just up and go exercise in the middle of a workday when I’ve gotten more bad news, or something someone has said has set into a panic spiral.  But I can grab a Dove chocolate from my secretary’s candy dish and escape into something that makes me happy for a minute.  My pants are a little tighter than I’d like.  I swear to God I’m trying, but I just have little strength left for awesome food choices when I have to be strong in so many other arenas right now.

Anyway.  Needed to get that off my chest.  I’m not perfect and I don’t claim to be, and I’m sorry if you think I’m a perfect healthy living blogger, because you’ll be disappointed. 

For breakfast I went back to my trusty Kashi.

For lunch, I went to my trusty Sahara and grabbed a grilled chicken and hummus meal.

And I ate way too much of it.  Plus two Dove chocolates.

Because of my lunchtime gluttony, I skipped an afternoon snack.

I also skipped a workout because it was Friday and I’d done four days in a row and I just wanted to go home.

When I got home, we had our traditional Friday night pizza.

Then I went to do a little shopping.  It’s tax-free weekend in Missouri, meaning that there’s no sales tax on stuff like clothes and school supplies.

Last week I bought a bunch of Soma underpants after hearing lots of people rave about them, and deciding that it was time to expand my horizons beyond underwear bought with a Victoria’s Secret free panty coupon.  But they came, and they had rubber on them to affix them to my ass, and were kind of pricey, and ugly, so I decided to return them.

So, I went to Kohl’s with a 20% off coupon in hand.  On my way into the store, some nice man handed me a $10 off coupon, and they allowed me to stack them, meaning I got 9 pairs of underwear for $40.

It was pretty exciting.  Which is why I’m showing off my underpants in the first place, yes?

Then I went to Target for grocery shopping, and made this S’mores Ice Cream Terrine for my brother-in-law’s birthday tomorrow, and now I am relaxing.

Do you deal with stress eating?  How do you stop it and make saying “no” a priority when things get rough (and stay rough)?

It was an unexpectedly late night last night and I didn’t sleep well.  Bear with me.

I fancied up my Greek yogurt breakfast today with flavored raspberry Chobani instead of plain yogurt. 

I’m liking the yogurt for breakfast thing lately, but I think I’m actually ready to bring back breakfast cookies, which I ate pretty much every day for an entire year.  Maybe I will pick up the supplies at the store next week and mix things up?

(For those of you who want to know how I make a breakfast cookie—roughly 1/2 to 2/3 cups old fashioned oats, 1 tablespoon-ish of nut butter (snort), 1 scoop chocolate whey protein, a few splashes of milk, and mix-ins like dried fruit, coconut, etc.  Splash in the milk bit by bit until the mixture is crumbly, not wet, press into a plate/container and refrigerate overnight.  Voila.)

Anyway, for lunch we were going out for a co-worker’s birthday today.  At 1 pm.  Which meant we wouldn’t be eating until at least 1:30, which is way too late for me, so I had a morning snack today.  Unorthodox!

For lunch we went to Blanc Burgers.  I had a turkey burger with spinach and swiss, and sweet potato fries.

Burger was excellent, fries were underwhelming, service was terrible.  It took us two hours to have lunch, and the restaurant was half empty.  The server was very nice, but forgot several things and was slow as molasses.  I think I’ll opt for takeout next time.

The upside of a two hour lunch is that the afternoon went by really fast.

The downside of a two hour lunch is that I was too full to run.

The upside of not being able to run, and eating a protein packed lunch, is that I had an excellent lifting workout.

I don’t remember what I did, exactly.  I think I did supersets of overhead squats/lat pulldowns, shoulder presses/dumbbell snatches, deadlifts/lateral raises, and step-ups/bench press.   I don’t remember the weights I used, but it took about 45 minutes and I was sweaty afterwards.

The weird part was that my left side felt very weak.  When I did Crossfit with my buddy a few weeks ago, my thumb and forearm felt numb and tingly for about two weeks afterwards and is just now starting to feel normal again.  Today I had a lot of trouble keeping that side under control and it felt very weak.  And I also have a very twitchy left eyelid for the past two days.  Hmm.

For dinner, we had chicken tacos, to which I added a few blue corn chips and fresh cantaloupe.

I have decided that I’m terribly bad at figuring out how much produce we need for a given week.  It’s Wednesday, I shopped on Saturday, and I’ll run out of fruit tomorrow.  Blech.

Anyway, I’m exhausted and I’ve instructed Tim to tuck me in at 9 am.  Hopefully some good snoozing tonight will send my twitchy eye away!

What was the worst service you ever got at a restaurant?

First things first.  I’m not pregnant.  At least, I don’t think so, although I’m not at a stage in my cycle where I could accurately pee on something.  I’m just having some tummy issues lately!  (Although, they may be hormonal in nature—my main PMS/ovulation symptom is always nausea rather than cramping.)

Second things…second?  I remembered my camera, but forgot the cord, so you get iPhone pictures until I go home on Saturday.  You will also have to imagine my lunch really hard.

Anyway, I woke up at four freaking thirty to get to the airport in time for my flight.  I had plenty of time, thanks to the fact that the Kansas City airport is the size of a postage stamp.

Every time I have a morning flight out of KCI, I think some magical delicious healthy breakfast item is going to appear out of thin air.  It never has.  You would think I would have learned to pack something by now, but nope.

Not entirely true, because I always keep peanut butter packets in my bag, which I supplemented with a “bagel” (not at all like a real, good bagel) and some water.

My flight got off the ground late because of rain and gas.  I wasn’t really paying attention because I was conked out in my seat.

Anyway, we landed in Atlanta and I got a giant iced coffee, of which I ended up throwing about 2/3 away because a) it was too damn big and b) I had two bags and only have two hands.

Anyway.  I hightailed it to my hotel and pretty much was worthless for an hour, and then I got lunch at the hotel bar.  Which sucked, because the description of the item I got was “flatbread with mushrooms and goat cheese,” but it actually contained a metric fuckton of caramelized onions, which is not what you want to eat right before working out. 

I also had an underwhelming side salad.

Then I went to work out.

The facilities were nice—bright, clean, airy, and deserted.  Just how I like my gyms.

I ran three miles on the treadmill at a 9:40 pace and then spent 20 minutes on the elliptical.  The run was kind of tough—I think the combination of my oniony lunch and my general weird feelings lately and being tired just didn’t work for me today.

I realized while running that I’ve run in a lot of states.  Ten, to be exact.  (Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Illinois, California, Georgia, and Florida.)   If I run on all my trips this year, I can probably get to fifteen or twenty by the end of the year!

Then, I did my work thing for awhile.  I kind of got lost in a rather unsavory area, but made it out unscathed.

The important part is that I then had an awesome dinner at Flip Burger, Richard Blais’ burger place in Atlanta.

I went basic: bacon cheeseburger with fries.  Before and after.

The burger was pretty much perfect—not too big, not too small.  High quality meat.  The bacon was fantastic—incredibly salty and chewy and really nice.

The fries were just okay.  I left a lot of them.

I finished my meal off with a bang: the Nutella-burnt marshmallow milkshake.

Exactly as perfect as it sounds.

All in all, I would definitely recommend Flip Burger.  I loved my meal, and I particularly appreciated the reasonable portion sizes.  Plus, the server at the bar was really attentive and nice.  The only thing I didn’t like was the atmosphere, which was kind of intense.  I watched weird performance art videos and listened to irritating music throughout the whole meal, and it detracted from the experience quite a bit.

Just…not my scene.  At all.

But the food was certainly solid.

Anyway.  I am exhausted.  Tomorrow’s plan is to sleep in a bit, work out, and maybe go do some sightseeing!

How many states have you run in?

So, today, I was craving hummus from my favorite Mediterranean place.  I had packed my normal healthy lunch, but was grumping because it wasn’t REALLY what I wanted.

And then, my boss was like, “Hey, Brie, business lunch with a colleague, let’s go.” 

And so I was like, “Uh, okay.  Where are we going?”

And she was like, “I don’t know, what do you think?”

And then I was like, “MEDITERRANEAN PLACE.”

And she was like, “Great choice!  Way to be decisive.”

And then I stuffed myself silly with hummus, pita, and lemony chicken, and all was right with the world.  Except I still have a stabbing pain that is kind of harshing my mellow. 

I combined a few elements of my lunch that I didn’t eat for my afternoon snack—a delightful summer fruit salad with watermelon, strawberries, and pineapple.

I’m taking a rest week this week from the gym.  It’s been so long  since I’ve taken a rest week that I’m just going with it.  I actually wanted to run after work today, but my…issue…was not cooperating, so I went home.

I immediately saw these and knew they needed to be turned into banana muffins.   Specifically, Leah’s recipe, found here.

They are totally as good as she says they are.  Tim and I split one after dinner…

…which was this very unattractive, but delicious, crockpot salsa chicken over brown rice.

I was all good and tracked calories today, but the lunch out threw me off and I just feel like tracking calories for meals out is an exercise in nailing Jell-o to the wall.   My meal was healthy—grilled chicken, olive oil, hummus, and pita—and that’s really all I care about.  Also, I was so satiated that I did not do any random snacking today, which is usually something I really struggle with.   So, anyway, I’m happy with how I did food-wise today, and I think I’m going to start focusing on goals like “no more random pretzel vat drive-bys” rather than tracking calories, since I’ve burned out on that a bit lately.

Also, I bought Buckley a new collar today, since he broke his, presumably while “fucking with shit,” which is one of his main hobbies.   I’m kind of obsessed with how cute and appropriate it is, given that he is the master of destruction.  (It’s from Etsy seller SweetPicklesDesigns—check her stuff out!  It’s all super cute.   I had a hard time passing up this adorable robot collar, too.)

Unrelated: Susan is basically my Canadian twin, and we’ve “known” each other online since 2008 through our blogs and various forums and Twitter.  She received some devastating news today, and could use some extra support and love.  Please hop on over to her blog and leave her some hugs and prayers.

Day 3 of conference-ing was yesterday.  I got in late and was exhausted so I didn’t post.

I mostly wanted to post because I am in love with this Target dress.

(I got it on the clearance rack for $17!)

Anyway, yesterday was kind of a healthy living fail.  At one point, we were bribed with Dove ice cream bars to attend a REALLY boring meeting.

It worked.

I had a spare hour before I had to go out to dinner with some colleagues, so I TRIED to work out.  I was tired and didn’t really want to, so I went to the 10 minute rule—if it still sucks after 10 minutes, I can leave.

Well, I ran a mile, and then got on the elliptical, and after five minutes, was just DONE.  So I quit.

At least I tried?

Here is the remains of my dinner plate.  We went to Loteria Grill, which was apparently on The Hills.  Exciting!

It was a fantastic, reasonably priced meal.  I had the most delightful carnitas soft tacos with black beans and rice.  And also a Bohemia beer (my favorite Mexican brew) and some sangria.

Oh, and for that, I wore:

This dress, in black.  Target strikes again!

(I promise I’m not becoming a fashion blogger, you guys, but I got some cute new stuff that I want to show off!)

Southie update: Tim picked her up from the vet this morning, and although it took extra-long for her liver to metabolize the anesthesia, she’s doing great now and has been eating and drinking!  She had TWENTY teeth pulled altogether, and is down to ten teeth total.  It looks like she’ll be eating soft food for the long haul now, but we were hoping to switch to pre-mixed raw anyway, so hopefully that will work out.

Moral of the story: take your cats and dogs in to get their teeth cleaned regularly!  I’m not even joking—I had no idea how important this is.

Anyway, off to another day of conference fun.  See you later!

99.9% of the time, as you guys know, I pack my lunch for work.  Today, a few co-workers and I decided to detour out for lunch, so I tossed my bag in the fridge for tomorrow.  And boy, am I glad I did!

We went to Sahara for Mediterranean food and it was simply the best $8 lunch I can remember in a long time.

For $7.95, I ordered their grilled chicken and hummus plate, which also came with two small, pillowy bits of heaven pitas.  I don’t know how to accurately describe this other than that it was perfect.  The chicken was not greasy, but seasoned well with lemon and garlic and good olive oil, and the hummus was incredibly creamy with just a little bit of a tahini kick to it.   I ate all the chicken and pitas and about a third of the hummus (though I wanted to faceplant in it, I restrained).

Anyway, I can’t wait to go back and try the rest of their menu.  So. Freaking. Good.

Also, apparently today was “comment on my weight” day at work. 

Conversation the First

Coworker A: Have you lost weight recently?

Brie: Oh, yeah, thanks, about 12 pounds this year.

Coworker A: (concernedly) You can really tell in your face.  Are you stressed?  Are you okay? 

Brie: Oh, no, it was intentional. 

Conversation the Second

Coworker A: Brie is such an athlete.  I doubt she needs to do stuff like Zumba!

Brie: Oh, hahaha.  I don’t really consider myself an athlete!

Coworker B: But you’re always heading to the gym after work!  Have you always been athletic?

Brie: Oh, no.  I used to be pretty seriously obese, though.  I gained a lot of weight in law school and then lost it my last year!

Coworker A: I cannot believe you used to be big.  No way.  You ran a marathon!  You had to have been athletic in college.  Uh-uh.

Brie:  (whips out iPhone and loads the following picture on Facebook, passes it around)

Coworker B: Whoa, you really used to be a chunk-a-lunk.

Coworker A: Oh wow, yeah, what a difference.

…and scene.

I don’t really mind talking about my weight, weight loss (and gain) and fitness in public.  (Exhibit A: points at blog)  So, conversation the first didn’t really bother me, other than that I interpreted it to mean that my weight loss this year is becoming apparent (yay!) but that I look stressed as hell (which I am).

But the second conversation, especially the “chunk-a-lunk” comment, kind of stung. 

I was really surprised that that made me feel so bad!  It’s a 3.5 year old picture, for pete’s sake.  I guess I’m still protective of Fat Brie in a lot of ways?  I’m not her anymore, but she was kind of the seedling of who I am now and I don’t want her to get hurt. 

/armchair psychology 

Moving on.  Pre-workout snack.

Ran 4 miles after work.

Then, praise the Lord, we finally (I THINK—I’m probably jinxing it just by saying it) found something Southie would eat that we didn’t have to forcibly shove in her mouth—stinky, cheap, crappy grocery store dry food.  Who would have thought?  (I suppose I crave junk food when I’m sick, too, so it makes sense.)   She didn’t gorge herself like I would have liked, but she ate a meaningful serving of it.  I am crossing my fingers this sticks.

Dinner was leftover tortilla soup and corn muffins.

I wasn’t really feeling the soup so I left some in the bowl.

Deets:

Do you ever talk about weight issues at work?  Have you ever gotten any hurtful comments?

I’m not in the mood for much of anything today. 

I went out to lunch with a friend and ate an entire order of pesto cavatappi and chicken from Noodles and Company  and I wasn’t even full afterwards. 

On the plus side, I have a friend now.  I think.  This is news because I have zero friends in Kansas City that aren’t Tim.  We talked about boys and shopping.  I think that counts.

I had a great workout today.

I wanted to swim, but I forgot my flip-flops and the idea of wearing ballet flats in the pool shower was not appealing.

So, I lifted.  Each set of 2 exercises was a superset.

• 3 X 12 barbell squats at 135 lbs.
• 3 X 12 deadlifts at 70 lbs.
• 3 X 10 dumbbell shoulder press at 30 lbs.
• 3 X 10 dumbbell bent-over row at 30 lbs.
• 3 X 10 lat pulldowns at 60 lbs.
• 3 X 10 step-ups at 20 lbs.
• 3 X 10 barbell bicep curls at 25 lbs.
• 3 X 10 upright row at 25 lbs.

And I finished it off with 10 hard minutes of intervals on the treadmill—alternating 1 minute running easy at a 10:00/mile with 1 minute running a hard 8:03 mile. 

I burned about 450 calories and I have a feeling I’ll be sore tomorrow.

I’m having some serious trouble coping with life lately.  I hate to sound like an emo asshole, but it’s true.   I’m tired of just saying I’m stressed here on the blog; I’m a basketcase.  Southie has stopped eating again and has the dry heaves and I’m freaking out about that and I am in a constant state of panic about where our life will be in August.   I miss my family and I just want to go out for a margarita with my best friend, who is halfway across the country. 

So…I apologize for my lack of gusto lately.  It’s a rough time for me and I’m having a hard time getting it up for blogging.  I know it’s temporary, and I’m trying to trust God but the worry is just sucking every bit of emotional energy I have.

What do you do when you’re feeling completely overwhelmed?

So, on Friday night, we left for our romantic weekend trip to Omaha, Nebraska!

I’m just going to start this out by saying that we were pretty gloomy for the trip, even though we tried desperately not to be.   Tim was able to see Southpaw at the vet on Friday, and she’s still jaundiced and had an IV cast-type contraption on her leg and basically, she’s not out of the woods yet.   We tried to make the best out of it but, sadly, we were preoccupied.

We checked into our hotel on Friday night and to our dismay, they only had rooms with two double beds in them.  Not conducive to a romantic anniversary trip, especially considering that the allegedly nice hotel was as loud as a college dorm room.

Anyway, we got up and had breakfast on Saturday at Starbucks.  I tried one of their breakfast sandwiches and an iced coffee and was pleasantly surprised.

Tim had a danish.

The main destination on our trip was Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo.  We both love visiting zoos.  Yes, we are five.

Anyway.  The weather was perfect and we saw lots of animals.

The giraffes are my favorites.

They had some beautiful gardens and we posed for pictures.

We spent a long time checking out the koi and the monkeys on the nearby island.

They had a very cool lemur exhibit, where, like, the lemurs ran up to you.  At one point one came running at me and I swore loudly in front of a group of children.  Sorry.

Also, lots of cool birds.

Tim found a kindred spirit in the primate house.

We stopped for a basic zoo lunch.  There really was pretty much zero choice in food—they had hot dogs and chips, hot pretzels, candy, and popcorn.

I insisted on petting the goats in the petting zoo.

There was a baby goat, who was just two days old, and was pretty much the cutest thing ever.

Then we went in these two exhibits that were very claustrophobic and I hated.  One was focused on the desert in a giant dome.

It was basically a single file line with 54903543 people with gigantor strollers ramming my ankles the entire time and not enjoyable.

Then we went downstairs to the Creatures of the Night exhibit, which was like the desert thing, but in the dark.  Not awesome.

We finished up the day with a trip to the aquarium and the jungle area.

That is a baby monkey in that monkey’s lap.

We went back to the hotel and relaxed (I napped) and then got ready for our fancy anniversary celebration.

For dinner, we visited The Boiler Room restaurant.

It was one of those dining experiences I really wanted to love, but didn’t.

We were seated right by this picture.  I’m not exactly a squeamish person, but I did not enjoy staring at a gutted-out pig’s eye socket while eating.

Tim in action.

We split a pork belly appetizer which was quite good, but it escaped the camera.

I ordered the chicken, with carrots, golden raisins, fiddleheads, and a barley risotto.

I think my taste buds are off because of the cold I’m fighting, but I found everything overwhelmingly salty.  I liked the barley risotto, but wasn’t impressed with anything else.

Until dessert.  We started with lattes, and mine was incredible—rich and bold and delicious.

I went to the restroom and had Tim order me the chocolate almond torte…except they were out of it, which was annoying, because it was only 8 pm or so.  But, he ordered me the butterscotch trio, which wound up being amazing.

Left to right: coffee ice cream, caramel smear, coconut biscotti, butterscotch semi-frozen pudding substance.

Totally worth every bite.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the night being mopey about Southpaw.  This morning, we got up and had a quick breakfast at Panera, and headed out for one last thing I’d insisted on.

Cake!

The top tier of our wedding cake is in my mom’s freezer in Chicago, and all I wanted for our anniversary was to consume cake that I didn’t have to make.  So we went to Jones Brothers Cupcakes on our way out of town.

We got a four-pack.  Tim picked out a mini New York cheesecake and a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting, and I picked out a strawberries and cream cupcake and a chocolate cupcake with salted caramel filling.

We plan to dig into these soon!

Anyway, we made the drive home and arrived to an adorable anniversary gift from my mom: a collection of the letter H, our last initial.

I’m not sure how to organize these yet, but I think they’re pretty cute!

We also got even more crappy news that I don’t really want to talk about here when we arrived home, and we are still worried about Southpaw.  And, between my horrible cold and some tears, my head feels like it’s going to explode. So, unfortunately, it hasn’t been a very happy anniversary for us. 

But, I am very lucky to have Tim, and no matter what happens, we’ll get through this together.  One day at a time, one foot in front of the other.

So…sorry to be kind of a downer on what was supposed to be a happy day.  I’m off to drown my sorrows in some cupcakes.

If you can spare a few…please send your thoughts and prayers our way, especially in Southpaw’s teeny-tiny direction.  

And my body feels absolutely trashed.  More on that later.

Yesterday after the race, my stomach was kind of meh.  I had a grilled cheese and a Greek yogurt for lunch, and then went down for a two hour nap.  It was epic.

Then I followed Tim to get a haircut because he said he’d take me out to dinner wherever I wanted.  Before his haircut, I went to Marshall’s and picked up a Nike swimsuit—originally $72, on sale for $19.99.  It’s pretty plain—just black with red accents—but will get the job done.  I’m determined to get in the pool by the end of this week, guys.  Hold me to that.

Anyway, I had a hankering for beer, so I picked Granite City for dinner. 

I started with their American Wheat.

Tasted about like you’d expect an American Wheat to—filling and refreshing. 

Tim’s haircut was delayed for awhile, so I was starving with runger by the time the waitress came.  I insisted we order an appetizer, which we never do—soft pretzel sticks with cheese.

I ate two and they were amazing.  I love all things pretzel.

I ordered chicken parmesan for dinner, but I wasn’t crazy about the pasta.  It was overwhelmingly onion-y.  I ate the chicken and went back for a third breadstick instead.

I commented to Tim—immediately after eating this huge meal I felt stuffed.  But for some reason, within a few minutes I felt normal again, like my body was metabolizing it really quickly.  Who knows if there’s anything to that, but…it was odd.

We went home and watched 127 Hours.  I hated it.

I went to bed pretty early.  We decided to sleep in a bit and go to 11 o’clock church instead of an earlier service, which was a good choice.  I had an egg sammich and coffee for breakfast.

And for lunch, I treated myself to some mac and cheese.

For dinner, we went to a barbecue at Tim’s aunt’s house, where I ate entirely too much again.  I’ve been starving and thirsty all day today.

Anyway.  Back to the “my body feels trashed” thing.

After my last two half marathons, I’ve felt relatively normal the day after—yeah, a bit stiff and sore, but nothing too overwhelming.

Today?  I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.  I slept for 9 hours overnight, then took another long nap this afternoon, and I’m still exhausted.  I think I tweaked a tendon or something in my left foot, too, because it’s been hurting to put weight on it.   My hip flexors and calves are on fire.  I can’t drink or eat enough.  And I still feel like I’m on the verge of getting the flu—generally achy, tired, stuffy and just icky.

I don’t know if it’s because I ran extra hard yesterday, or because the weather was  so cold and windy, or because I felt crappy on Friday anyway.   But still…freight train, meet Brie’s face.  Ugh.

I’m sorely tempted to call in sick tomorrow.  I feel like I need another day in bed with a 40 of Gatorade and chicken soup, even though I suppose this is kind of self inflicted?

Do you call in sick to work a lot?  What’s your policy on sick days?  Should I ?