First Race of the Track Season

Hey guys! I hope you are all enjoying your weekends :)
[warning: marathon post ahead! ;)]

Last week was really crazy for me (hence the wordless WIAW post) and I found myself getting really stressed out over trying to balance everything. Sometimes I have really good weeks where I feel on top of everything, and other weeks I feel overwhelmed. Last week was one of those "how am I going to get everything done" kind of weeks, so I am really glad that I get to just relax today.

Yesterday was my first real race of the track season and it went fairly well!

Before I left my house, I had a banana with Barney butter (I never thought I would come to like this combo but it tasted really good yesterday!) and it didn't give me any stomach problems.

The race was part of a huge East Bay Invitational so there were a ton of schools there. Only bummer is when I got there, I found out that the meet was pretty far behind and my race would be at least an hour after its scheduled time.

I ended up sitting around for about 2 1/2 hours before I even warmed up (which made me really annoyed because I seriously hate wasting time, haha) and by the time we started our warmup I was starting to get hungry because I hadn't expected the race to be delayed so much. It was too close to the start to eat anything, but I could tell it wasn't going to be an awesome race. I'd been sitting around for too long, my legs felt really heavy during the warmup, and on top of that I was hungry!

[sorry in advance for the blurry pictures - my mom was snapping the photos and she had to stand pretty far away from track, so the camera was really zoomed in!]

at the start line - i'm in the yellow and green! 

There were supposed to be two heats of my race (I ran the 1600) but to save time, they ended up combining the two heats. Which meant there were 26 girls in my race - talk about claustrophobic at the start line! I was seeded 17th, so my goal for the race was to beat just a couple of girls. 

finally we're off! 

See the girl in the black and red directly to my right in the above picture? I made it my goal to stick with her and pass her by the end of the race.

By the third lap around the track my legs were seriously screaming at me. I think it was just the lack of fuel that made them feel so tired - but I kept pushing. 

I finally got close to passing the black and red girl...

And then I did [in the photo above, the black and red girl is behind me out of the shot]! 

Coming into the finish...

With a time of 6:01. Considering the fact that this was my first race this season and I wasn't adequately fueled, I was fairly happy with that time. 

Post race picture with dad [with portapotties in the background.. lovely, right?]

I was really hungry and thirsty by the time I finished, but we made a quick stop at Whole Foods to pick up some dinner before heading home.

I've been craving Panera's black bean soup for the past couple of days but since the one closest to me hasn't had it, I picked up a substitute at WF. 

I also got a sweet potato to try since I've been seeing them on lots of blogs for a long time now! 

While the sweet potato and soup were heating up I had some steamed broccoli to quiet my stomach. 

The soup was just okay - I was really looking for a thicker, more seasoned soup like Panera's. This definitely needed a little extra something, but I'm not sure exactly what. 

I also was not a fan of the sweet potato - I only had a few bites before I ended up tossing it (at least it only cost 87 cents!). I really like sweet potato chips, but the real deal was too sweet and mushy for my liking.

Since I tossed out the sweet potato, I was still hungry after the soup and whipped up a Simple Berry Smoothie which hit the spot. 

A little bit later I had some peanut butter cheerios while Skyping with my older brother. Then I plopped on the couch to watch a little bit National Treasure that was on TV, but 15 minutes later my eyes were drooping so I headed upstairs (total party animal, I know ;) ) 

This morning I woke up naturally around 7am with plans to hit up the 9am BodyPump class. I know you're thinking I'm crazy right about now - strength training after a race? But I'm going to be out of town next weekend and really want to stick with my goal of strength at least 1x a week. I planned to take off some weight on the leg tracks to let them recover a little bit. 

Then my mom came downstairs and asked if I wanted to go to the 8am BodyCombat with her, which is always a blast, so I ended up saying yes [ok, now you're thinking i'm really crazy]. I loved the BodyCombat class because it focused mostly on the upper body and the instructor was awesome! 

BodyPump wasn't as great - it definitely was hard to not lift my usual weight. I knew that it was going to have to come down sometime, since I'm not able to go as often as I used to, but it still was hard to accept that I'm losing a little bit of strength. 

I left the gym sweaty and exhausted, but with a smile on my face. Tomorrow is definitely going to be an easy day since I pushed myself pretty hard this weekend.

I came home and made myself another berry smoothie with a new kind of protein powder that I bought a packet of to try. 

I was definitely a fan of it [minus the cheesy muscle man on the package, heh] - it is sweetened with stevia, has 25g of protein, and made my smoothie extra thick and creamy. I think I definitely will be buying more! 

Don't you love it when your smoothies are so big that it fills up two cups?? This was one of my biggest smoothies yet and it was delicious. 

I'm off to clean my room, do some laundry, and possibly hit up the mall (starting to look for a formal dress for my senior ball in may!). 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!

do you like sweet potatoes? if you do, how do you prepare them?

tell me something fun you did this weekend!