If you haven't noticed in my last few running posts (specifically this one) my master plan to stay in good racing shape involves a lot of cross training. For me, that comes in two forms; yoga and body-weight circuits.

I am not a member of a gym and, even though I love me some free weights, I don't really feel like putting up the cash for something I can essentially accomplish at home (plus, I'm a spinning instructor on hiatus, and paying for a gym membership is completely foreign to me).

Well, I've got some news. It turns out you DON'T need a gym and weights or machines to strength train. This isn't the first time I've said this (ahem, 100 pushups) but I'm here today to give you guys somewhere to start if you're coming up empty on the "ideas for new workouts" gauge.

The following is a half hour body-weight circuit geared towards toning muscles. It requires zero equipment and about ten feet of floor space.

(that's my mom. isn't she awesome?!?)

In my post about homerewing, I posted pictures of a beer that was highly not my own because that is what I happened to be drinking at the time I was taking pictures for the post. I have been saving our homebrew for something wedding related (which I will not disclose at the moment since some of the people in my bridal party read my blog) and I didn't think I had any more to open and take pictures of.

Wouldn't you know it? I did.

I want to keep a record of the beers that we liked (or didn't like) and what was in them so down the line I can eventually conjure up my own recipes. You, my friends, are going to bear witness to my homebrew record. Hence, the homebrew review. First up, the Brewer's Best Summer Ale kit.


Name: Summer Ale
ABV: 4% - 5% (no idea if ours is anywhere near this, because I suck at reading the hydrometer)
IBU's: 18-20
Ingredients:

• 3.3 lb Pilsen LME (Liquid Malt Extract)
• 1 lb Wheat DME (Dry Malt Extract)
• 1 lb Pilsen DME
• 8 oz. carapils (the grains)
• a spice pack with bitter lemon and orange peel
• .5 oz bittering hops (I didn't write down what kind! Eff.)
• .25 oz. flavoring hops
• .25 oz. aroma hops
• Safale US-05 yeast

Package Description: Pleasant citrus notes come from the bitter orange and lemon peel. This beer finishes clean with lingering flavors of citrus and spice. Crisp and refreshing.

My take on it: It's definitely a bit citrus-y but not overwhelmingly so (like the Leinenkugel Summer Shandy IMO). That being said, this isn't my favorite on the beer flavor scale. It's a light bodied, blonde summer wheat, which I usually love in the summertime, but I think I want it to be a bit more hoppy or something, it's definitely not high on the hops scale. There is something about it that just doesn't pop. Since I can be a bit of a beer snob, I think the flavor is too "big box" for me. In truth, that could be for a number of reasons, so I'm not going to blame it on the kit or the ingredients - it's highly possible I could have done something wrong, after all, this was our first homebrew. All in all, it's not something that I wouldn't drink (I am sucking one down as I type this) but it's not my favorite. It sure does look pretty though!

•  Intervals – also known as speedwork, up to 6 miles of high intensity intervals; mile repeats at 5k–10k effort with recovery jogs in between; 800m repeats at a 5k effort with recovery jogs in between; 100m sprints; fartleks of any shape, size or flavor. Whatever kind of interval is singing to you on a given day, but keep switching it up to keep your body continuously improving.
• Frequent weekend races, or VO2Max runs (high intensity) – this is a sustained, unbroken efforts at 85-95% of your current best 5k effort, or a 5k or 10k race. The adrenaline associated with racing more often than not, causes you to sustain a more intense pace than you would on any normal run-of-the-mill run day. If you’re not racing, this might be a shorter, faster tempo run anywhere from 20-40 minutes long.
• Easy runs – slower, more relaxed runs anywhere from 30 – 60+ minutes that will make up the bulk of your weekly mileage.
• Midweek longer anaerobic runs – the second longest run of the week, at a moderate effort. I’d recommend running with a running group or a fast running partner or running hills for this one. Just so you don’t get sucked into letting this fall into the “easy run” category.
• Weekend long runs when not racing – this is your long, slow distance run when you’re not otherwise occupied with a race. Roughly at the same effort as your easy runs, just over a longer distance, just keep this run mellow.
• A true recovery day –the most important part of the stay in motion plan. Even if you do a short run-walk, walk, easy bike ride, hike, etc., our strength coach in college used to call this “active rest”.  Take this day for yourself (I use it to get my life back in order, cook, clean…) Something to get a bit of blood flow to your muscles on your recovery day is good, stretching is great, smiling is a must.
• Strides and accelerations – 50-150m hard efforts, but done without too much straining. I like to throw 4 or 5 of these “strides” in at the end of my easy runs to help teach myself to kick into gear at the end of a race.
• Cross-training – this is the second most important component of this plan. Give yourself a break from pounding the pavement, but stay active and get your heart pumping. I regularly practice yoga as a form of cross training and try to use my Nike Training Camp app for body weight circuits as often as possible. Whatever works for you.

In my post about the Make Vs. Buy price comparison, one of the items that I mentioned was more economical to make rather than buy was beer. Well, it wasn't up until the other night that I actually tasted my own brew.

I'll tell ya what, I was almost shocked that it tasted like real beer. We did it! Made our own beer. Not only is it more economical to make your own beer, but it's not all that hard either! It just takes some time, so if you're planning to do it - make an afternoon of it.

Better yet, make a cold afternoon of it.

We don't have a hood over our stove and, boy, does it get hot in our house when the stove is on all day! Beer brewing is definitely a winter sport.

So, we made a highly successful summer ale (and have creative wedding-related ideas of ways to use the brewski...but, more on that later). There is a whole science behind brewing beer, to which I'm not quite privvy yet, but I aim to be able to come up with my own beer recipes someday. Until then, I'm going to use the pre-made recipe kits and learn as much as possible about brewing.

Here are the brewing basics...

Step 1: Obtain all the essentials. Stockpot, fermenting vessels with lids (5 gallon buckets and glass carboy), siphoning tubes, airlock, stirring paddle, thermometer, hydrometer, bottle brushes, cleaner and sanitizer, and ingredients. You can get all the beer brewing equipment as a kit for about $130, not including the ingredients.

Step 2: Clean and sanitize!! Probably the most important part of any kind of fermenting process is the cleanliness of the brewing vessels. If they're not bacteria free, you could end up with mold, or you might even kill the wonderful yeast that is the orchestrator of the whole process; converting sugar to alcohol. I am lucky enough to have a fiance who works in foodservice and has access to a no-rinse sanitizer that they use in the store. I'm sure you can get a good sanitizer wherever you get your brewquipment from.

Step 3: Steep the grains. Some of you are undoubtedly homebrewing experts, but I'm still at the extract kit stage; so everything's packaged nicely and neatly in the correct portions for me before I even begin. Extract brewing is the way the fermentable sugars are provided to you (in extract form) so you just add them to your wort and go. Extract brewing = beginner brewing. Partial mash brewing = intermediate. All grain brewing = advanced. I'll talk more about the other two when I get there. Not yet.

So for now, I steep the specialty grains that come in my ingredient kit, which primarily provide color, flavor and body to the brew, but no fermentable sugars.
Step 4: Boil the malt extracts. This will probably take two people; one to pour, one to stir. Add all of your dry extracts and liquid extracts and get them mixed well into the wort. These are all your fermentables, so they're an important step. Just don't let it boil over from here on out, because you'll end up with a sticky mess all over the oven.

Step 5: Add the hops. If you have an extract kit, the directions will tell you when to add the hops and how long you have to boil them. Usually you add the bittering hops first, then the flavoring hops, then the aroma hops (the latter two in the last 15 minutes of the boil). A hoppier beer sometimes has the added step of dry hopping during the secondary fermentation.



A few weeks later...ta-da!! Beer. Real, live, carbonated beer. Homebrewing has become my new love.

I've run four half marathons in my running tenure and, although I love training  for marathons, the half marathon is where my heart is. It's my favorite distance. It's a much easier race to train for, in my opinion, than the marathon. Less of a time commitment, but can still be high mileage if you want it to be...or not. It's a very flexible distance.

Here's another "reigning in the budget" topic that I have not touched on yet: meal planning. I generally go to the grocery store with a shopping list, but it's not always that I go to the store with a meal plan in mind (and you know it's bad when I go with none of the above).

When I started this series of posts, I started saving grocery receipts. Whether or not I had a plan, a list or just wanted to pick up dog food, I wanted to see about how much I was spending every time I went to the grocery store. So here I am, armed with a bit of evidence, to tell you that meal planning is a really good way to keep your grocery bills under control.

exhibit A

• 06/02/11, grocery shopping @ Giant Eagle with shopping list but no meals planned: $78.16
• 06/12/11, grocery shopping @ Whole Foods with meal plan/shopping list: $32.94

peace+love,


Need to catch up on my Reigning in the Budget posts?

• reigning in the budget, part 1
• reigning in the budget, part 2
• reigning in the budget, part 3
• reigning in the budget: make vs. buy

This weekend was an experience and a half.

While I was on my bike on the way out to Sandusky, trying to find a comfortable way to sit on my bike that wasn't putting too much pressure on my sore butt, but also wasn't causing my shoulders to tighten up (not an easy feat), trying to keep myself from overheating and from chafing and from getting grumpy with my teammates, I realized something. The battle I was fighting through mentally and physically was representative of what people living with MS fight through every day.

That thought was completely humbling for me.

It suddenly dawned on me why we were riding 150 miles and not just running a 5k. It wasn't just to raise money for a great cause, or even to raise awareness by making people driving by wonder why there were 2,500+ bikers on the road. It's also meant to raise our own awareness. Not only did I raise money for those living with MS, but I basically fought the battle that they fight every day.

I am so amazed at what those people living with MS are capable of and the drive that they approach each and every day with; the drive to push on through.

Like I said, it was humbling.

We set off at about 7:45 a.m. on Saturday morning, without really knowing what to expect along the route. That was the toughest part about the ride out - apparently we missed the little maps they were giving away that said how far away each rest stop was. Between my garmin, Emily's speedometer and the signs along the way that said things like "Mile 26: if this were a marathon, you'd be finished!" (none of which told us the same mileage) we had an idea of how far along we were, but were never really sure. So, not being able to have definitive checkpoints - make it 4 more miles, that's where the next rest stop is - was pretty difficult.

I think we were all feeling good up until lunch. By the time we got to that stop, we were all famished. So the refuel was a much needed break and a chance to get out of my sweaty bike shoes. After lunch it got HOT. I couldn't put enough sunscreen on. Regardless, it didn't rain on us, contrary to what the weatherman was predicting. I was totally okay with that.

We made it to Sandusky by about 4pm, after being on the road for about 7.5 hours (with gratuitous stops, our ride time was closer to 6 hours). Ate at the high school, hopped the bus to our hotel, bought some beer from Walmart (where we almost couldn't get it because I had left my ID in the hotel room and they wanted to check ALL of our IDs), showered, ate more, watched TV and passed out at 9 p.m.


Sunday was much cooler and cloudier, which I was totally enjoying because my skin wasn't about to take another hot sunny day on the road. We knew we were going to get some rain, but had no idea that it was planning to stick around all day - so we were completely unprepared for it. Luckily we managed to make it through about 30 miles before we caught the brunt of the storm, but it hit us full force when we were about 10 miles from the lunch rest stop. Not only were we hungry, but Emily was muscling through some serious knee pain and we were getting buckets of water dumped on us while on a moderately busy highway in Oberlin.

We got to the lunch stop and Emily had already made the decision to take the bus to the finish - her knee just wasn't going to hold up. She couldn't even clip into her pedals at that point because it hurt too much to put pressure on the pedal. Brandon and I struggled with the decision for a long time; do we muscle through it? Or do we let go of our ego, and avoid a potentially miserable, wet and unsafe last 35 miles and call it a success anyway? We chose the latter.

I'm just not that confident in my riding to ride through those storms that we got yesterday. We weren't prepared to be totally drenched for the next 3 hours.

Even though the decision put me through a bit of emotional turmoil, I am so proud of what we did this weekend. I did not quit, I still accomplished the goal I set out to achieve - raising money and (more importantly) awareness for MS. I am so proud that I was able to go as far and as long as I did and was able to let go of my ego when I thought my well-being might be in jeopardy.

I learned a lot about myself this weekend, and I am truly humbled by my experience. I have so much to be thankful for in my life, and today, I am thankful that I have been given another chance to wake up and breathe, be happy, be healthy and be right here.

peace+love,

And just in case you are hosting a party and want to make sure you have enough chips and dip to go around. Here is the garden fresh salsa I made.

For the record, we weren't hosting a party. Salsa + guac was just for us!

It was with my hair-down hippie-dancing at the Dave Matthews concert where I wooed Brandon. Hook. Line. And sinker.

So, it should come as no surprise to you that we got engaged at Floydfest, where I had ample opportunities to let my hair down and get my hippie dance on.

Four days and many pictures later, I needed a way to document one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Foodbuzz Tastemakers Program to the rescue! As a Foodbuzz Featured Publisher, I have the opportunity to be a part of their Tastemaker program and sample/write about various products that they would like to feature. Just in time for Floydfest and the wonders that were about to be bestowed on my life, the Tastemaker program was offering to try out a KODAK Gallery Photo Book!

Full disclosure: as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program, I was offered a KODAK Gallery Photo Book free of charge. 


Knowing full well that I won't take the time to make a trip to target to buy a photo album, nor will I bother to get any of the photos printed...this is an awesome way to preserve your memories on paper without much work.

(My coworkers call me "the laziest active person they know")

Seriously guys, when I say this takes very little effort, it's takes VERY little effort. I'm already uploading pictures for blog posts, this takes about that much effort. Upload. Arrange. Order.

Easy peasy!

Now I'll have those incredible memories pretty much engraved in stone (in addition to on my hard drive). When we tell our story to our grand-children, we'll have a real photo album to show them, just like our grand parents did!

If you're really into design, it doesn't offer a ton of options, but for me that was the great part about it. No frills, and more importantly, not too many options. Too many options always makes it difficult for me to make any decisions. Here's the front page of my photo book:

At first I thought that title looked cool...but it actually doesn't. Dang.