Deva by Definition

Top Seven: Gear For Running

I originally took up running when I was thirteen. That was nearly half my lifetime ago. When I originally began running, I used the most basic of gear: running shoes, shorts, old cotton tees, and comfy sports bras.

Over the years, as my running habit has grown, I’ve become more enthralled by some of the still-basic, but more advanced running gear. I’ve acquired gait-specific shoes (I pronate), tech tees, cold-weather pullovers, running tights, shorts, capris, and pants, and even running-specific apps for my iPhone.

With that in mind, I’ve definitely discovered that there are a few articles of my running gear that I reach for more often than others – whether it’s an article of clothing or accessories. Here is a list of my most-recommended running must-haves.

1. My SPIbelt. I wear this every time I am running outdoors, and love it. I use it to carry my inhaler, energy gels, change for water, even my keys. It took me a little while to figure out how to wear it so that it wouldn’t shift, but once I got the hang of it (low, with the pack on one of my hips), I completely forgot I had the SPIbelt on. If you need to carry things with you while running, I definitely recommend this pack!

2. Tech tees. I have a small collection of tech tees and don’t know how I ran without them. They are incredible at wicking away sweat to keep me dry and comfortable on a long, hot run. I’m far more comfortable running in a tech tee and shorts than I ever was running in cotton.

3. Running tights. Ever since the weather got colder, I’ve discovered a great affinity for cold-weather running tights. Mine are from Reebok, and I can tell a difference in how warm I am when I wear the tights, versus when I wear pants. If you run outdoors in cold weather, I definitely recommending picking up a pair.

4. My RoadID. I bought this a few weeks before my my first 5k. I was running outdoors more and more frequently, and carrying ID in my SPIbelt, while doable, didn’t seem to be the most practical option. I love that my ID is right on my wrist while I’m out running, easily accessible to first responders should I ever need help. I feel safer knowing that all my information is right there on my wrist, and I encourage anyone who enjoys outdoor activity to invest in a RoadID.

5. The Nike + GPS App. I don’t have a Garmin, so instead, I use the Nike+ GPS app on my phone to track my pace, mileage, and routes while out running. I put my phone into an armband holder, press play, and get to running. It definitely helps me to push myself and get out there, and I love watching my cumulative mileage total continue to increase. I even use the app while on a treadmill at the gym! For $1.99, it was a great investment and I get excited every time I set out for a new run – to see where I go, where I’m fastest, and where I need to improve.

6. A reflective vest. I do a lot of running really early in the morning, when the light is dim and visibility is low. To increase my visibility, I wear a reflective mesh vest. I also work hard to ensure I have awareness of where I am, looking around and scanning my surroundings often, and not running with headphones. While I do take my phone with me, when I’m running outside, I don’t run with tunes.

7. A pullover. I love pullovers for layering in the cold weather. They help keep me warm, and if I get too hot, well, I have them layered over a tech tee, so I can pull them off or roll the sleeves up! My pullovers are from UnderArmour and Reebok, and both are designed to wick moisture away from my skin, helping to keep me warm when temperatures drop below thirty.

Well, there you have it, seven favorite items of running gear. As you can see, it includes things for comfort and safety, as well as fun. As much as it is important for me to get my mileage in (especially while half marathon training), it’s equally important for me to be safe.

What is some of your favorite athletic gear?

“We should try to make Japanese-style curry sometime.”

Back when The Boy went to Japan, he texted me lots of pictures of the various foods he was eating while there. He ate a lot of sashimi, sushi, Okonomiyaki, Oyakodon, ramen, and curry. Yes, curry.

Since his return, I’ve definitely made efforts to recreate some of his favorite Japanese dishes. I’ve had a lot of success with Oyakodon, and it has become a regular addition to our weekly grocery rotation. Eventually I want to try to make some ramen, as he described it as very different from the ramen I buy in the grocery store – full of big medallions of beef or pork.

Most recently, though, we’ve been enjoying Japanese-style curry. You see, not too long after The Boy got back, I made Indian-style curry for dinner, and after we finished, he said to me “we should try to make Japanese-style curry sometime.”

I was very intrigued, and after asking him dozens of questions about the Japanese curry he enjoyed while away, he told me about Coco Ichibanya, the curry restaurant he went to. Upon Googling, I discovered that their curry looked very different from the curry I was used to – it looked more stew-like, less tomatoey, and very good.

More searching led me to discover that there are several brands of Japanese curry mixes on the market, and I was eager to see if we could find one at the grocery store to give it a try. We were both excited when we found some, and a few days later, we made an attempt at making the curry.

The instructions were simple: saute together a pound of chicken or beef cubes and diced onion, simmer with two-and-a-half cups of water, add the curry, and serve over rice. The curry mix was interesting to me because it came as a bar – not a powder – and once added to the water and simmered, it would thicken into a rich, smoky and spicy sauce.

Following the directions on the box carefully, a half hour later we had thick, rich curry, ready to serve over sticky rice. We each filled our bowls with rice and a generous helping of the curried chicken, and, using spoons, dove in.

It was delicious, salty, smoky, with a hint of spice. The onions added a depth to the sauce flavor, and each chicken-and-rice filled bite burst with warm, comforting flavor. It was like the pictures suggested: stew-like and definitely different than the curries I grew up enjoying. We had lots of leftovers once our bellies were full, and reheated they were just as delicious as they were fresh off the stove.

If you can find Japanese Curry Sauce mix in your supermarket, I highly recommend you try it out. It’s delicious, filling, and incredibly easy to prepare. The medium-spiced curry has enough spice to give it heat, but it’s not overwhelming. I’m happy to have this dish in my meal-time rotation.

What is your favorite way to enjoy curry?

Vlogging Half Marathon Training: Week Four

Just a few things:

1. I typically run in a pullover, tee, and tights.

2. My asthma was acting up today, so the video is a little shorter and more random than normal.

If you missed any previous videos and want to go back and look:

Vlogging Week One
Vlogging Week Two
Vlogging Week Three

As always, if you have any questions – please leave them in the comments!

Top 5: Foods While Half Marathon Training

All of the running involved in my half marathon training is making me hungry. On days I run, I often find myself looking to eat the contents of my refrigerator, and this has meant some higher grocery bills in an effort to satisfy my hungry runner's appetite. If you looked in my refrigerator and pantry right now, you would see a variety of foods intended to keep us both happy and full. Some of my favorite snacky foods are ones that are high protein, but I'm enjoying my cookies, granola bars and chocolate as well. That being said, here are my top five foods (and drinks) for keeping post-run hunger at bay.

1. Greek yogurt. I love Greek yogurt, especially Fage 2%. It's creamy, thick, and high in protein, and is delicious mixed with some cacao nibs, honey, and shredded wheat. I like to keep this on hand for breakfast, snacks, or as part of lunch. The combination of fat and protein definitely help keep me full and it's versatility (I love using it like sour cream), keeps me from getting bored!

2. Cottage Cheese. I tend to be hit-or-miss on cottage cheese. When I want it, I really want it, and when I don't, I really don't. Lately, I've been on a big cottage cheese, especially as a snack. I buy the lowfat kind and enjoy some whenever I feel like some cottage cheese. I like it plain, but I've also used it combined with or in place of ricotta in lasagna and stuffed shells!

3. Almonds. I used to keep almonds or walnuts on hand all the time, and stopped. I don't know why I did, because almonds are one of my favorite snacks whether I am training or not. One ounce is really portable, and a small handful holds me over when I get hungry between breakfast and lunch.

4. Mini Pretzels. I love pretzels. They're salty, crunchy, and fun to dip into melted cheese, peanut butter, and hummus. On days that I want something salty, pretzels are my first choice. Tortilla chips are my second. I love them!

5. Gatorade. I know it's not necessary, but as someone who sweats a lot while running, I find that having regular Gatorade or G2 available - especially while training - is essential. It helps to keep me hydrated, and I can definitely tell a difference after runs when I don't have some Gatorade, compared to when I do. My beverage of choice is water, but after a long or a particularly grueling run, I reach for Gatorade.

While I know the list is a little dairy-heavy, that's what I've been reaching for most since starting to train. Greek yogurt and cottage cheese help keep me satisfied after a run, without making me feel weighed down or sluggish. I reach for the others less often, but still frequently enough to include them on our weekly grocery list, where they weren't before.

What are some of your favorite snacks to help with post-workout hunger?

Cooking from Everyday Food

My mom recently got us a subscription to Everyday Food Magazine. I love it because it's basically like a small cookbook in my mailbox every month. In fact, my favorite cookbook is an Everyday Food compilation, and I'd say we use it more often than any of our other cookbooks. The pages throughout my cookbook are spattered from cooking, and the book often falls open to our most-frequently-made dishes.

Our first issue of Everyday Food arrived not too long ago, and after I eagerly read through it, I bookmarked a few recipes for us to try. The most recent issue is filled with a plethora of lighter recipes, which I am finding perfect for after-the-holidays (and going into Valentine's Day!). The recipes that stood out to me were a Chicken Tortilla Soup, Braised Chicken Thighs, and a few recipes for desserts!

The Boy and I decided last week that we wanted to try one of the bookmarked recipes, and settled on this one: Braised Chicken Thighs with Winter Vegetables. The recipe looked fairly easy, and even though the cooking time was a bit longer than I'd prefer, it sounded like a good and filling one-pot meal.

When we went grocery shopping, we were able to find all but one of the ingredients: the savoy cabbage. We made the decision to make the recipe without, rather than change plans. Because of the amount of time needed to put this meal together, we made it for Sunday dinner, after I got back from a seven-mile run.

The recipe was easy enough to follow, and I was lucky to have an oven-proof skillet. There was a lot of sautéing and taking the pan in and out of the oven, but overall, I found the recipe to be more hands-off than anything else. While the chicken was braising in the oven, the house smelled incredible: like bacon and chicken, onions and carrots, mustard and garlic. We couldn't wait to dig in once the pan was out of the oven and on the table.

My first bites were incredible: the chicken was tender and flavorful, with a hint of the Dijon mustard used in the braising liquid. The potatoes and carrots were perfectly cooked - soft, without being mushy. Neither The Boy or I liked the apples - they seemed to absorb a lot of the Dijon flavor, to the point of being overwhelmingly mustardy, but everything else was lightly flavored. The bacon added a rich, almost smoky quality to the chicken and vegetables, and was a nice compliment to the chicken. I would absolutely make this recipe again.

Have you made any fun recipes lately?

Late to the Party

Have you ever had the feeling that you were late in realizing something, or just late getting somewhere? What about feeling like you were late to the party? Well, that’s how I’ve felt as I’ve discovered a few new apps, books, and sites around the internet. Like I was late in finding them – and now I’m wondering how I lived without them! Here are just a few of the fun things I’ve been enjoying lately!

Zite. From its description, Zite is a personalized magazine for your iPhone or TouchPad. Zite works by taking a look at what you Tweet about, as well as blogs in your Google Reader, and along with your own selections regarding topics that interests you, pulls together a great magazine for you to read while on-the-go. The articles in my Zite run the gamut from the NYTimes, to department of health releases, to blogs, graphs, and beyond. The fun part: the more you use Zite, the more it gets to know you, and the more personalized your articles become. If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably noticed me Tweeting articles that I've found through Zite - and those articles are also ones I "like" in Zite, helping the app find similar articles for future "editions." Zite updates hourly, so you'll have an ever-changing list of articles, right at your fingertips.

The Hunger Games. I've been hearing about The Hunger Games trilogy all over blogs and in real life for several months now, but didn't pick it up and read it until after I saw the movie trailer at the end of December. The length of time it took me to pick up the first book and read it surprised almost everyone I know, because The Hunger Games trilogy falls within the realm of books I like to read: it has a sci-fi/fantasy element, lots of suspense, and definitely kept me turning the page. I was impressed when I finished the first book, and immediately ordered books two and three on Amazon. It took me 12 hours to read the entire trilogy, and the author definitely left me wanting more at the end.

Pinterest. Surprisingly, I was an early adopter of Pinterest, but when I first got access to it, I had trouble understanding the point of it. Was I just supposed to pin stuff to boards? What was the purpose? It wasn’t until recently where I sat down and really explored Pinterest that I started to get the hang of it. I've found recipes, crafts, and fun photographs by simply exploring the "recently pinned" section of Pinterest. I've even had a few of my own pins "repinned" by others - mostly recipes, but yummy ones for sure! Now that I "get" Pinterest, I'm definitely using it to my advantage - and finding more and more uses for it every day.

Even though some of these things have been around for a while, and I’ve been using one for a few months now, I feel like I’ve just discovered what everyone else already knew – how awesome they are. For now, I am going to keep exploring Zite, eagerly await the Hunger Games movies, and enjoy Pinning!

What about you – what are you into lately?

What else would be making that noise?

I was standing in our bathroom, bundled up in pants and a hoodie and had just finished drying my hair when our heat kicked on. Through the ductwork, I could hear this odd scraping and banging noise. My first thought was that something was wrong with our furnace – because what else would be making that noise through the ductwork?

Making my way downstairs, I poked my head into the toasty living room. The Boy had the pocket doors pulled closed and a space heater on, making our living room the warmest room in our house. Leaning in, I asked him what the noise was. He thought it was someone scraping their car of the ice that had accumulated over the weekend, until I told him that I was pretty sure it was coming from the basement.

Curious, we both set off downstairs, where the dryer was running – and scraping and clanging. We immediately turned it off, pulled all of the still-damp clothing out of it, and attempted to work out the issue. While I was grateful it wasn’t our furnace, I was a little taken aback that it was my dryer: all of my socks were in the basket full of still-damp clothing, and we had no clue what was wrong.

The Boy popped the top off of the dryer, exposing the drum. Looking inside the dryer housing offered no clues, and neither did looking inside of the dryer itself. Rotating the drum manually led us to determine that something was scraping the side of the drum, but we couldn’t figure out what – or where it was being scraped. After a half hour of investigating, we decided to let it be for the night, to Google, and to see what we could to do fix it on Monday. I knew I’d have to rewash the clothing that was in our dryer, but I didn’t want to risk further damage trying to repair the dryer without first determining how.

Monday came and The Boy and I spent a good bit of time on Google, searching for solutions. After dinner, The Boy set off downstairs with his laptop and our toolbox to see what he could do to repair it. After an hour passed, he came upstairs, where I was napping, and asked if I wanted to come down to assist – he’d found the problem and needed to put our dryer back together so we could finish our laundry.

I quickly gathered up what I needed to go downstairs to help out, and as I was heading into the basement, I saw just how much the dryer had been disassembled, and just how simple of a machine the dryer actually is. The dryer was completely opened up, with the drum gingerly placed on the mat by the washer. The Boy was double-checking the reassembly before putting everything back together again.

When I asked what the problem was, I was told that a screw had managed to go through the washer, and got stuck between the drum and the side-wall of the dryer, which was what was causing the scraping as the dryer tumbled. Fortunately, we caught the issue before it caused any damage, so all we had to do was remove the screw and put everything back together.

Reassembly was a little more complicated than I thought, but eventually we had the dryer all back together. Finally, we were able to plug it in, and then, it was time for the final test: turning it on. We were both thrilled when it turned on and there was no scraping and no wobbling. It sounded exactly how a dryer is supposed to sound.

I’m eager to finish up the last of my laundry for the week – I need some clean kitchen towels and socks! I’m grateful that the repair was something relatively simple, and not something more involved. Mostly, I’m learning just how much we can do on our own – with the help of Google.

Vlogging the Half Marathon: Week Three

Just a few things:

1. I’m a little chatty in this video

2. I really like sleep!

Our First Gathering

Last night, we hosted our first gathering in our house. The Boy’s group at work has an after-the-holidays party every year, and this year, because of the central location of our house, we offered to act as the hosts.

We had eleven guests in total, and The Boy’s manager and wife provided us with the majority of the food for the night, all that we had to do was clean house and ensure that everything was set to have everyone over for a fun night!

The evening began at four, when The Boy’s manager and wife arrived with the foodstuffs: steak, jalapeno corn, cheese dip, buffalo chicken dip, bagels, chips, wine, and beer. While we got to work getting everything set up and showing The Boy’s manager where the grill was and how to operate, the other guests slowly began to trickle in.

By five-thirty, we had a full house, all of our guests had arrived and the steaks were on the grill. We were spread out over the entirety of our first floor enjoying appetizers, drinks, and chatting. One of The Boy’s coworkers has an infant who is positively adorable, and I spent a lot of time holding and playing with her throughout the evening.

We kept the cats in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Enzo came down to explore a few times but was scared of the baby, who was very interested in him – so he ended up hiding upstairs as well! Over the course of five and a half hours we watched basketball, talked about sports and the half marathon, child-rearing, marriages and weddings, and lots more. And, of course, there was delicious, chili-rubbed steaks that we devoured almost as soon as they were finished on the grill.

By the time everyone went home, we were stuffed full of delicious food and were talking about sharing recipes and future gatherings. We have many parties planned for the upcoming year – for Reds games, football games, fireworks and movie nights. I loved the togetherness of our gathering and enjoyed having a full house.

I’m already talking to The Boy about hosting next year – I cannot wait.

Catch-Up Day

Earlier this week, I climbed into my bed at ten-thirty, setting my alarm for an early morning run before work. Three days of no more than six hours of sleep, plus my activity levels had caught up with me, and I was exhausted. Normally, I'm up for The Daily Show, but that night, I was out before eleven-thirty.

I should not have been surprised that when the alarm clock went off the following morning, signaling to me that it was time to get up and go running, that I was still tired. My feet dragged to the clock, where I stared at it for a moment, mind blank, before resetting it, climbing back into bed, and going straight back to sleep. There was going to be no workout for me - sleep was more important. I woke up later in the morning feeling refreshed, instead of exhausted, and knew that I made the right decision.

Choosing to skip my training run earlier this week meant - for me, at least - making it up. I want to push myself throughout my training period, and my runs are very important to me to build my mileage and endurance. What would normally be an off day for me, then, became an "on" day. That meant setting my alarm to get up this morning to go running before work. I had four miles on my agenda and was extremely excited to get out there and get it done!

Then, I checked the weather. Yesterday was chilly - in the low-to-mid-thirties. Overnight, the temperatures dropped into the teens. We had two blankets on our bed last night to battle the cold. When I climbed out of bed this morning and saw that the wind-chill factor was six degrees? It was enough to make me want to climb back under the covers, pull them up around my ears, and stay where it was warm. I do not like being cold. I probably overdress for cold-weather running, but I don't mind being a little bit warm while I run.

Fortunately, I talked myself out of crawling back into bed. I have a gym membership for just that purpose (and of course, to lift weights) Yes, I still had to go out and brave the painfully cold wind, but it was only for a few minutes, not four miles. At the gym, I had to stuff my cold-weather layers into a locker before I could start running - I definitely layered up before leaving the house, but as soon as I got on the treadmill, I was off and running.

I'm not the biggest fan of treadmill running. I don't like running for what seems like hours, and not seeming to get anywhere, but today's run honestly did feel like it flew by. I was surprised at how early it still was when I finished running and stretching, and was excited to complete a brief upper-body circuit in the weight room. It's been too long since I've lifted, and it was nice to get back to it!

Skipping my workout earlier this week could have been just that: skipping it. But I decided to rearrange my schedule to accommodate my run, and couldn't be happier with the outcome. I got to run and to lift, and sure, I had to brave the cold weather, but honestly? It was worth it.