Intervals with the Moravian Women & A Birthday Dinner

Good morning!  I'm a little slow-moving today after a long, relaxing weekend and yesterday's interval workout.  In the morning, I met Moravian's XC team and Jesse at a local park to do some quarter mile intervals.  Jesse planned them to be slightly faster than race pace because he wanted the team to get used to the feeling of going out a little faster and sustaining that pace longer into the race.  Here I am...ready to run on grass...      

The team did 14 x 400 on 1:30 rest.  Initially he had me down to run 86-88 second pace, but I started with an 82 and pretty much maintained that throughout the session.  At the half way point, he gave us a 5 minute break where he wanted us to jog/walk to recover.  By interval #12, I was exhausted.  This was the most I've done for a workout in a while and I needed a longer break.  I recovered while they ran interval #13 and finished with the final lap.  

Here's the workout:

2 mile warm-up plus drills

13 x 400 on grass -- 
89, 82, 83, 81, 82, 82, 81 {5 minute break}
80, 81, 81, 84, 82, 82

2 mile cool down and stretches 

The girls did an amazing job throughout the workout and I was so happy to have had the opportunity to join them.  Here we are, a very sweaty post-run picture. 

On the way home, I stopped at Panera Bread for chocolate milk.  Two, to be exact.  Chocolate milk is a great post-workout or post-race snack.   

When I got home, I made Ina Garten's Orange Chocolate Chunk cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting.  The recipe calls for an orange/sugar simple syrup to be poured over the baked cakes.  Once out of the oven, I punctured the cupcakes with a toothpick so the liquid would seep into them.

The finished product...

The cupcakes were very tasty, but I unfortunately baked them about three minutes too long.

The reason I made cupcakes was because we celebrated our friend's {Jolene} birthday.  My husband has been good friends with her since 1996, when they started teaching together.  To date, he has never remembered her birthday so as a joke, he bought cards from the dollar store and labeled them by year...starting with the present.  

  
It was hilarious...

For dinner, I marinated a sirloin and Fred grilled it to perfection.  Sides of green beans, red quinoa with feta cheese and peas, and a salad completed the menu.   

The salad was simply romaine lettuce, dried cranberries, shaved fennel and Parmesan, raw pumpkin and sunflower seeds and a dressing of yesterday's oil and vinegar with salt, pepper and fresh basil.  The lime infused olive oil and coconut white balsamic vinegar balanced each other extremely well.  So good!  

As for running, today is my off day.  My body will be happy for the break....

Have a great Tuesday!