Thursday, July 29, 2010

NASM Certified Personal Trainer!

I have officially passed my NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) Certified Personal Training Exam! I can now train all the people out there who want to lose weight and get in shape! I am ready to conquer the world...all I need now is a job. 
I have a workshop starting tomorrow that will help prepare me to perform all the exercises and instruct others how to do them properly. Can't wait to meet some other folks in the industry and hopefully learn from their experiences. I have been training one client, pre-certification, which has helped me a great deal in applying all the concepts I've learned from assessing his physical fitness capabilities to designing a workout and pushing him through it.


I plan to start applying for jobs next week and reaching out to the contacts that I have met in the past few months for their recommendations but until then here are some things that I have been doing:
Traveling to see Manchester United take on the Philadelphia Freedom with Brent...as you can see we sat in a boat load of traffic and we weren't happy about it.



But we finally arrived!
We also attended the Beach Boys Concert at WolfTrap.  Beach Balls Everywhere!!!

Another great thing about time off is all the time I get to spend at home with Brent and make super fantastic lunches like this one. 

Roasted Beet and Carrot Salad!


In a bowl combine:
- Chopped Carrots (About 15 Baby Carrots)
- Fresh Peeled Beets (8 Small)
- 4 Garlic cloves sliced
- 1 big handful of fresh parsley
- Sea Salt and Pepper to Taste
- 1 Tbl of olive oil
Put it all on a roasting pan for 25 minutes at 400 degrees.

Place on a bed of lettuce with a 1/2 a chopped orange and a 1/2 cup of cabbage

These days of always seeing each other will make it very hard to go back to working an 8 hour day out of the house. But the time will come....soon!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Kitchen Sink Bean Soup!

Yesterday I had to train a client at 6am in the morning and work from 6pm to 10pm. It makes it a really long hard day and I never feel like making dinner when I get home but I am always starved. Normally Brent will cook something but yesterday I thought I would make soup in the afternoon from all of our CSA veggies (we get a new load today!) and a bag of Mayacoba beans that I received as a gift from Mary B! I had never heard of Mayacoba beans but they taste like a pinto bean and are normally used in latin american cooking. They made a great addition to my soup! :)
I started out soaking the beans and because I didn't have all night, I covered the beans with 3 times as much water by volume and brought them to a boil, cooked them at med-high for 2 minutes and then let them soak in that water for 1 hr.
Soaking Beans

While the beans were soaking I chopped up 3 cloves of garlic, an onion, 1/2 a head of green cabbage, 1/4 of a head of purple cabbage and shelled about 1 lb of english peas.
After the beans were done I sauteed the onion and garlic (2 Super Cancer Fighting Foods!) in 1Tbl of olive oil, sea salt and pepper for 5 minutes. 
Next I added all the other veggies and sauteed them together for about 6 minutes along with a can of diced tomatoes, 3/4Tbl of cayenne pepper and 1Tbl of thyme. 
Lastly, I threw in 4 cups (a carton) of veggie stock, a cup of water and 2TBL of nutritional yeast and brought the whole pot to a boil. I then reduced it to a simmer and cooked it on low heat for 1 1/2 hours.


Yum! It was great to have dinner waiting for me when I got home!



Monday, July 19, 2010

Marathon Training in full swing

I have always wanted to run a Marathon and this year we decided we were ready to tackle the challange so we started with the National Half Marathon on March 20, 2010 with the thought that when we finished we would sign up for the Marine Corp. Marathon held right here in Washington DC! This year it's on Halloween and I hope there are great costumes out running to help keep me going. 

We recently ran the Ukrop's Monument Avenue 10K in Richmond which is ranked one of the top 10 races in the country and they had awesome costumes!! Looking at all the people you are running next too is  a great motivator to hurry up and catch up to some other great costumes.  Here is a little sample of a Tornado that we ran across!


Anyway back to Marathon Training, we currently just started week 4 today which is a total of 31 miles and consistently climbs over the next few months. Here is the training program that we are following, it is Hal Higdon's program with walking and circuit training added in.

It has been a little hard to get motivated to run in this heat with it being 90+ everyday but we are logging the miles we need too and hopefully this weather will give us a break soon. I just want a cloudy cool morning of 78 degrees.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Haircut Day!

The Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule of walking with Dad continues…it has been really nice to get to spend so much time together over the past month since I left my corporate gig. He has definitely been a great sounding board for me during this whole studying and planning process! So much to do and so little time...

Of course Cobber was there to see us out! He’s getting older and can’t quite pull off a mile let alone a 3 miler.

Pink Flowers in the front garden to match my awesome pink nike shorts! Running shorts are key to keeping cool and comfy during these hot summer months.

Got a long overdue haircut today…its been about 6 months! I got it cut right after we got married and have neglected it ever since. You know when your brush stops moving its time to get a cut :)

Off to work! The Husband is making dinner tonight...can't wait for his next veggie creation