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After Wednesday’s shortened workout and hellish DOMS I was glad to wake up feeling refreshed and less achy on Thursday morning. I did my Thursday morning yoga and core workout with a few changes for progression:

• Warm up – jumping jacks, bum kicks, running on the spot, skipping (5 minutes)
• 20 minute Yoga for runners podcast
• plank (as I didn’t do my plank last night – 1 min 25 sec)
• side planks (40 sec hold each side)
• v – ups (20 reps)
• twisting windmills (20 reps)
• stability ball leg raises (20 reps)
• stability ball leg curl (20 reps)
• Side to side (20 reps each side)
• Donkey kicks (20 reps each side)

I could really feel my core and shoulder muscles after this! Breakfast was a massive green smoothie containing 1/2 frozen banana, spring greens, 2 nectarines, 2 ice cubes, 2 tbsp of vanilla hemp powder, 2 tbsp of peanut butter, spirulina, matcha, ground flax, mesquite, xanthan gum, soy milk and water:

It was a bowl of absolute awesomeness! I topped it with half a bag of Bear apple crumble granola.

Lunch was a second portion of Quinoa, grape and walnut salad with lettuce followed by 2 plums and a kiwi.

Mid afternoon snack was one of my Almond and Quinoa Muffins I’d rescued from the freezer:

I made these back in December and froze some – they still taste amazing!

I then needed to do my 30 minute run I’d ditched from my Wednesday evening workout. I spent all day pondering one big question: to run outdoors for the first time in almost three months or to just go back on the treadmill. It got to 4pm and the weather was beautiful outside, a bright clear crisp day. I knew what I had to do. I rushed home, got changed straight into my running tights, vest top, thermal top and hoody and set off. I decided not to use my Run keeper App and just go out and run for the love of running, and boy did I love it! I had been so worried about getting back outdoors after such a long break, I thought it would be unbelievably tough, that I wouldn’t be able to run all the way, that I’d collapse with exhaustion after half a mile. But I didn’t. I ran for 45 minutes without stopping and it was wonderful, it reminded me why I love running so much. I have no idea what kind of pace I did but it didn’t feel ridiculously slow. I was just so chuffed!

Dinner was some Lentil Dahl with a big pile of greens with shoyu and mixed seeds:

Dessert was a full punnet of blueberries, a chopped pink lady apple with unsweetened soy milk and the other half of the pack of Bear Apple Crumble granola:

This morning I was in the mood for socca! I had socca filled with almond butter and fruit sweetened black cherry jam plus a big green juice:

The socca tasted amazing – I love nut butter and jam in any form and this was lush! The juice contained 3 apples, 1 cucumber, big bunch of parsley, ginger and lemon.

Lunch was some spicy sweet potato and leek soup with parsley and a gorgeous blood orange and pink lady apple:

I then hit the gym for my second strength workout of the week. I did a very similar routine to my home workout I did on Tuesday but warmed up for 5 minutes on the treadmill, used the gyms heavier weights and dropped the reps. I even managed 1 full push up! I couldn’t do any more after that though so went back to doing them on an incline. I also did my lateral raises and squat as two separate exercises so that I wasn’t dropping my form with using the heavier weights. Then I did 30 minutes of HIITs on the cross trainer, step machine and bike. 

To refuel after my workout I had a vanilla chai protein shake made with vanilla spiru-tein, cooled vanilla chai tea, soy milk, xanthan gum and ice:

As spiru-tein contains spirulina it came out a greeny colour so I thought I might as well add some matcha green tea powder to the mix. I also topped this with cinnamon, yummy!

Dinner was roast kabocha squash and adzuki beans with a huge pile of steamed kale with ume vinegar, shoyu, mixed seeds and chopped parsley:

Dessert was some vanilla freedom iced dessert with a teaspoon of graham cracker crumbs:

This was just as good as the chocolate version, it has a lovely vanilla flavour and a great creamy but light texture, I’m officially hooked on this!

I think I’m still buzzing from my outdoor run. I do need to try and find some good gloves as I suffer from extremely painful hands when they get cold – that was one of the reasons I took my runs back indoors in the first place but thankfully the weather is getting warmer. Anyone have any running glove recommendations? Has the winter affected your running schedule? If you moved your runs onto the treadmill how do you make the move to outdoors running again? I think I’ll be trying a few more runs without tracking my mileage or pace until I’m fully back into it.

Tomorrow is the hubby’s birthday, he’s not really fussed on big celebrations so we will probably just have a nice relaxing day and head out for lunch somewhere. Hope you all have a good weekend!