Fall Favorites

I've had the pleasure of finding some awesome new items (and let's face it, most of them are food) this fall that I had to share.

 Elli Quark

As Ben said, "I'm going to eat this, and know it tastes like yogurt, but I can't get over the fact that its' cheese!" I found Elli Quark at Super Target after seeing it on Instagram, and they were kind enough to send me a variety pack of a dozen of their flavors to explore it further, and both Ben and I agree, delicious!

Here's how they describe their product, "Elli Quark is a spoonable FRESH CHEESE with a creamy texture similar to Greek yogurt, but with a richer, LESS SOUR taste. It also has a better protein-to-carb ratio than Greek yogurt, with HIGH PROTEIN and NO ADDED SUGARS or artificial sweeteners."

 

Frankly, I love it! It's two Weight Watchers points. Tastes great, and has fun flavors. I love putting some Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips on the Mint Chocolate flavor. Ben enjoyed the lemon flavor. 

 Crockpot Paleo Cookies

These are delicious, hands down delicious. They are made with real ingredients you can feel good about, but don't fool yourself, they're not good for you, and it will require A LOT of self-control to not eat half the pot yourself (I may have done that...) if you make them. Austin loved helping me make them, and they were great with some vanilla ice cream on top!

Pumpkin Puffins

Pumpkin Alert! Love finding new, gluten free, pumpkin products in the fall. These are delicious. They're not very filling for a serving, but most the time the shelf is empty at Wegmans or Target where they sell them, so I always grab a box if I can! 

Ibotta App

I LOVE the Ibotta app for getting rebates on everyday grocery items. You can find some good deals on here and do some nice stocking up! The key is to only buy the things you need and not get caught up in the fun of the bonuses and whatnot and buy extra things you don't need. You can collect a big balance, and once you're at $10 or more (very easy to get to), you can cash it out into your PayPal account. 

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Diva Half Recap

I'm going to keep this race recap short and sweet. I'm not even sure I mentioned on here that I was training for a half-marathon, but thus, I was, and boy am I glad I did this race.

The race itself was meh. Not bad, not great. I did a race in the suburbs thinking logistics would easier. They weren't. You had to park early, you had to buy a parking pass to do so, and the parking lot closed an hour before the race started. It was a nice race, but not one I'd be rushing to do again.

Luckily, I went with some awesome friends and we all caravaned there together, and I ran various miles of the race with a couple of them.

Pre-Race Selfie

This race was hilly as heck. I knew the course would be hilly, but the announcer at the beginning of the race (who, for the record, was an idiot saying bone head things about women doing their make up before an all women's race--huge eye roll), said that the worst hill was at mile three, and you'd be good after that, WRONG. There were many hills after that, maybe not as steep, but longer, gradual ones that hurt just as bad, if not worse, later in the milage.

Here's the kicker. I PRed at this race. I was not planning to at all. My longest long run was ten miles, my foot had been hurting the week of the race, so I hadn't run in a week in order to rest, but it happened.

Around Mile 11 I realized I thought I could PR, I had been feeling amazing up until this point, but around then I started to feel like crap, hips hurting, feet feeling heavy, but I knew if I kept it up, I could get a nice PR. So, despite two quick stops to stretch out my hip, I booked it to the finish as fast as my tired body would carry me.

When I came to the finishers shoot, I was light headed and wanted to puke, but I grabbed some food, water and tried to suck it up.

All the ladies from our caravan post race

I still felt pretty crappy after the race, but then our friend Kate pulled out surprise mimosas in the van. I was no way in shape for the awesome looking Prosecco she brought along, BUT, the orange juice did the trick, and a big glass of that had me feeling back to my old self. Thanks Kate!

Kate tailgating with Post Race Mimosas

Check this out below. My last PR in 2011 at age 27, over four years ago. I remember being thrilled I could run a race at under a 12 minute mile! And here we are now, two kids, two surgeries and a lot of life later, a PR! Woo hoo! However, I really think I can do better, if I push myself harder with training. So now the question is, do I do a spring half and test that out?! Ben is doing his first half this spring, so his training will take up a lot of time, so we'll see...

Previous PR Race:

New PR Time at Diva:

(Harder to read, but says: 2:32:14)