Weekly review: Expedition to the South

So, let’s look at my week:

Monday
Monday was just as boring as ever, I hardly remember the day. My brother cancelled spinning class, so I decided to bail out as well, and have a rest day. I think I might have some issues with overtraining so I am going to take a step back on the exercise front for a couple of weeks and see how I feel. I will post about that soon.

Tuesday
Another day I don´t really remember,  I guess, it was a standard day. I really should make notes again, so I can remember the things I noticed. I only remember seeing another traffic light coming up on my way to work. They are really trying hard to double my commuting time.

Wednesday
My second week into strength training for my legs in the fitness room. On one side I like it, and feel like I can make a lot of progress, but on the other side it is boring and unsatisfying to do.

Thursday
I decided to work from home for the rest of the week, so I spent today in my sweats, lovely!

Friday
Another day in my sweatpants. BUT…at night I went to a Zumba class! I keep forgetting how much fun they are! I had a blast, also because there were a lot of songs that remember me of my time in Costa Rica.

Saturday
Today we went on an expedition to the South. The official plan was to go to a teaching institute to get some information about studies for a possible career path for the Boyfriend. We ended up having one of our weirdest expeditions ever.

You see, we like to go on road trips. If we go some place, we like to take the touristic route. We also see the funniest thing on the road!
First, we stuck with the plan and went straight to the college. We got stuck in traffic (on a Saturday, ugh!), but that was ok. There was supposed to be an open day at the college, but when we got there we saw nothing of that kind. We filled out a form and they promised us some coffee and then someone would come for us…Half an hour later we were still sitting in that hall without coffee. Then a woman came to get us and she talked a bit about the different studies. She led us to a room and we talked about what would be best suited for the Boyfriend. But the woman wasn’t enthusiastic about getting him on board at all! We also expected an information market, or try out classes or demonstrations, like on any open day.  But instead there was nothing… So we left quickly so we could have a big laugh outside. It was so weird!

We were superhungry. There was only one place to eat but it didn’t appeal to us. But there was a McDonalds close as well. At first we couldn’t find it (seriously, how hard can it be to find a huge yellow M on a pole), but when we finally arrived we saw this, located in between McD and a car dealer:

 

A giant statue of the former King of Pop! I thought it was hilarious.

After our lunch we went to a village close by to look for a bridge that had something to do with WWII (which is an obsession of the Boyfriend). We found several bridges but we are not sure if we found the right one, but it was fun looking for it though! Then we used a touristic route to go to another village on the way back home. We thought the name was funny, so we wanted to get coffee there. It was a really beautiful and sunny day so sat outside in the sun, it was lovely!

Later at night, I gave myself a nice pedicure while watching Move like Michael Jackson (how appropriate haha).

Sunday

Today was another lovely day! I went for a run/walk in the morning and spend the rest of the day relaxing and not doing anything interesting, loved it!

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What do you like to do on Sundays?

Weekly review

Back again with the review of my week!

Monday
I still wasn’t feeling well after my disaster race, so I did absolutely nothing after work.

Tuesday
Same, not feeling well, another rest day.

Wednesday
Went to physiotherapy and to my doctor. He gave me medicines for my lungs, and the rest of the week I was feeling much better! I went to the gym and did a strength work out in the fitness room.

Thursday
I felt that I went to the gym, my god I was so sore!

Friday
First interesting day of the week. I was very bored at work, so I went home early and finished my work sitting on the balcony with my laptop! The Boyfriend made a cozy spot for me with pillows and a blanket so I wouldn’t get cold, so sweet!
Later, because we were both still sore from our workouts on Wednesday, we decided to skip going to the gym and instead pick up our lease dog and head to the heath.

The dog is my parents’ and he is so funny! He is the opposite of a tough dog, but likes to act like it, for example by trying to pick up the biggest branch he could find.

It was such a beautiful day! With the sun out it was really nice. We had a lot of fun and walked and played fetch with ‘our’ dog for over an hour. It was ages ago since we had last done that, and we really should do this more often.

 

Saturday
Quite the productive day. I got the groceries, washed my car, had coffee at my parents’ place and went to the library (all this with all kinds of road blocks and traffic jams on the way) before 2 pm! In the afternoon I went for my first bike ride of the season. I plan on riding my bike more often. Last couple of summers I only rode a couple of times, but I really want to pick this up again and ride a 100k in June or so. The ride was lovely! I did about 20k in 46 min (not counting traffic lights) and in the meanwhile I got a little tan as well!

Sunday
I started the day by baking this baby:

Recipe and picture from here. Sorry, I was too lazy to take a picture, so I just borrowed the one that came with the recipe. It is coffee-cake. The creamy stuff is coffee-flavored mascarpone. It was delicious! Then I went for a run,m which sucked again. I don’t know what is wrong with me. From now on I really want to listen to my body, because in retrospect I wasn’t so thrilled about going for the run to start with. But I ignored that feeling, thinking that I would be ok once I started. I spend the rest of the day relaxing and watching some more House-episodes with the Boyfriend. It was a good weekend!

Nomen Race: no men, no oxygen

Last week I participated in a race. It was a ladies-only race, as the name of the race already suggests. Of course I was the only person who didn’t notice that, that until it was pointed out to me. I thought it was some kind of Latin name.

But anyway. It was a short drive to the location, where the Boyfriend and I met up with a friend from the gym.

After getting our race numbers, there was a warming up scheduled.

I don’t know why, but the whole thing lasted almost 30 min and it was tough! I skipped half of it, because I didn’t want to wear myself out. Several people did, you could see it on their faces.

Then, we lined up at the start….Find Wally! (Hint: you can only see my arms). The girls in the red and the blue tanks are young talented girls who probably will be going to the Olympics at some point. They both finished in 19 min, 4 min before the number 3.

Here is the warming up guy (some athlete) with the guy who commented on the whole thing. And I mean, the whooooole thing! Seriously, that guy did not shut up for a minute, even though you could only understand half of what he was saying.

And then we were off!!

At first I took it quite easy because I knew the course was all but flat. I was running a relaxed pace, planning to speed up during the race. However, I noticed my heart rate climbing rapidly, no matter what I did. I thought it were race-nerves, because I had the same thing during my other race. I just kept running and was feeling fine!

I don’t know why, but for some reason I hold my hand like I am trying to drink tea in a fancy way, holding one finger up, hahaha!

The whole race was through the woods:

Until the 3km marker I was doing pretty great, felt good, and was ahead of schedule. I even smiled for the photographer:

But by the time I passed this sign:

I was feeling awful! I knew that I was going to finish, but I just wasn’t sure how. I thought, hey, if I continue like this I will set a PR! But I couldn’t ignore the signals my body was giving me any longer: I felt exhausted, totally out of breath. My heart rate was sky rocketing. At some point I even considered walking for a while. Now, there is nothing wrong with walking, but it wasn’t in my plan! The weird thing was that I wasn’t really tired, if not just out of breath. I really felt like I couldn’t breathe well. About 200 meters before the finish: sheer exhaustion shows on my face.

And finally torture ended!! You can see that I managed to pass the person who was in front of me in the last picture.

I really felt sick afterwards. I felt light headed and nauseous. After I refueled and a showered I felt much better. Then it finally occurred to me that it must have been my allergies, I was still feeling short of breath, a weird feeling in my chest that I kept for the rest of the day. I also felt sick, like my system was fighting off something.

In the end, my time was 30.44 min, not too shabby given my physical condition and the tough course. But I never wanna go through this again, so I went to the doctor this week and got some medicine and now I feel better.

Despite feeling horrible, the race was fun! It was very beautiful and the atmosphere was nice and relaxed. I liked that they called each person by their name when they finished. Maybe next year I will run it again.

And now it’s on too the next race, I am sure that one will be awesome!

What was the worst race you even participated in?

Daisy Do Glow: recap

And finally it is time to see my Glow challenge went.

I must admit that it went pretty well! My skin went from pale, dry and with red spots and zits to not so pale, not so dry and fairly even. I think the turn around point was after about two weeks. However, I had a minor setback as a result of my allergies.

So what was the plan again?

1. Face rituals: Clean face every night with mild cucumber cleaning milk. Apply night cream before going to bed. In the morning use day cream as usual. Scrub face once or  twice a week.

2. Hydrate: Drink more water! What I liked about the last challenge is that I started grabbing water more often. Because I do like my tea I am not going to make myself drink 2 liters a day for now. But 1L would be nice. The plan is to fill up a measuring cup with the required amount and drink it during the day. At work I will use water bottles.

3. Sleep: This time I am more serious about getting the right amount of sleep. I will try to stick to 8 hours a night. If needed I will have a powernap during the day.

4. Food: What you eat and drink also influences how your skin looks. I have not been drinking many green monsters anymore. Since they seem to do miracles when it comes to making your skin glow, I will go back to drinking one every day. I will also keep limiting the amount of coffee I drink and exchange black tea for green tea and herbal tea more often. I don’t eat a lot of junkfood, but I will watch out for that too.

I did my face rituals best: I cleaned and hydrated my face almost every night and scrubbed once or twice a week. The water drinking part was a little harder, I think I averaged half a liter a day. Sleep was pretty good but the number of hours varied a lot. But I think that I slept more than I used to. Going to bed just a little earlier really helps. I also have been drinking Green Monsters at least four times a week. I feel so energetic when I do that!

So, overall we can call this challenge a success!

Here is to scare you again freshen up your memory of how I looked a little over a month ago:

I took that picture early in the morning, with flash (that was not really working for me at that point) and I was feeling plain exhausted.

And here is the after picture of this morning:

I cheated a little bit, because this one was taken without flash. But it does show way more improvement than can be accounted for by the flash. (I hope).

Okay, so now I have embarrassed myself more than enough with all those pictures of me in the early morning, without any make up or hairdo whatsoever. But to be hones, I do go outside without make up and hair fixed if I feel like it. Not to work, but definitely to the grocery store. How about you?

Weekly review: Spring is in the air

I know it is Wednesday, but I still owe you a weekly review. My laptop broke down, so I couldn’t post anything, which sucks because I have several things to tell you guy! I’ll try and catch up this week.

So here we go:

Monday
One of the thing I like most about Holland is that holidays are doubled! We have 2 Christmas days, 2 Easter days (I know it does not beat Semana Santa in Latin America, but still), etc. So I had the day off. It was a nice day, I went for a walk in the park and baked muffins.

Tuesday
The muffins were for the Easter Lunch I had at work on Tuesday. They were a big hit: I promised the Boyfriend I would take home the leftovers because I didn’t let him eat the muffins on Monday. But I could just salvage a single one! I went on a really tough interval run, I ended up crawling home, all red and bathing in sweat, haha! AND there was some good news: the Boyfriend is done with his physiotherapy after three years!!!! YAY!!!

Wednesday
I was barely dressed when 4 (!) painters suddenly showed up at my balcony. Why, hello and good morning! Bahaha, too bad they were not exactly the Coca Cola Light Break type. It was a lovely sunny day! I was finally able to work at home: the construction workers are done for now with making so much noise that you go out of your mind. So I sat outside on the balcony for a while.

Thursday
Thursday was very boring day, nothing worth mentioning happened. We currently have a House MD-addiction, so we spend most evenings watching episodes of that series.

Friday
I worked really hard today and got a lot done, yay! I went to the gym at night, it was nice to see one of my girl friends again and catch up a little.
Look what has been on my coffee table all week:

Spring is in the air!

Saturday

Fun weekend day: we actually went shopping for the first time in centuries. Don’t get mistaken: I Do shop, but the Boyfriend doesn’t. However, last week I bought him a jeans, but it didn’t fit well. So, I used is as an excuse to drag him into town to a)return the jeans in exchange for another one, b)shop for some more clothes for him while we were at it.

Sunday
Today was Race day! I participated in the Nomen Race, which was, of course, women-only. It was a fun run in the woods, but I sucked big time at it. Recap will follow!

That’s it for now!

Daisy Do Read!

Hellooooo! New month, new challenge. I know I have yet to give you a recap of the previous challenge, but I wanted to start with the new one anyway.

Daisy Do Glow will continue for about a week. My little soy allergy left my skin completely messed up again. But as soon as that gets better I will make the ‘after’ picture and give a full recap. But I can already tell you that it did make a difference!

On to the new challenge. One of my favorite hobbies is reading, but after reading most of the books in the library as a kid and teenager something changed. When I started university, I also started reading less and less. Nowadays, I do most of my reading during vacations and holidays.
I want to pick up the habit of reading every day again. Primarily because it is fun, but also because it is very relaxing for me. Lately I have been feeling a little burnt out and I really feel like I should slow down a little (or a lot) and make more time for fun and relaxing things in my life. Now, I could do a more elaborate challenge by saying that I have to read, but also do something fun and exciting every week. But I already know that I probably don’t have the energy for that. So, the new challenge will be nice and simple:

 

Daisy Do Read!

 

 

Until April 30th I will try to:

- read for half an hour each working day;

- read for an hour each day on weekends.

The last couple of days have been holidays for me. As I wrote before, I went to the library to pick up some books. And…I have actually started reading them! So the first few days of this month have been promising. Now let’s see if I can keep this up on regular days as well.

What kind of books do you like to read?
I like all kinds of books: but mostly I read chicklits (easy digestion, haha) and thrillers. I generally don’t like books about wars.

Manic days: Weekly Review

Monday
Just another manic monday…wish it was sunday, ‘cause that is my fun day… That old Bangles song was very applicable. I have a crazy busy work schedule until the end of the year. But my bosses decided to give me another project to work on, yay! Well, I guess I have no choice, bahaha.

Tuesday
A colleague came to show off her 5 week old baby, how cute! I am not that into babies etc, but this one sure was adorable! I also discovered an allergy for soy. Since I don’t like cow’s milk very much I decided to try soy milk in my green monster. But, that little experiment left me with a lot of itches and a swollen throat…. But I am glad I know now, because soy is probably what has been molesting me with itches during winters when there are no pollen etc.

Wednesday
Physiotherapy was hard because I had a relapse last week. But I am hopeful that next week I will feel a lot better! The rest of the day was pretty average.

Thursday
I felt so exhausted today! And again, my chest feels funny and I can’t breathe very well.

Friday
A Holiday! I definitely needed that day off! I just chilled for most of the day. Friday night we went to my brother’s Bday pary. Oh, and I went to the library and got some fun chicklits to read!

Today was also the end of the Daisy Do Glow challenge but I decided to extend it for another week or so. I have been making some progress ! But my soy allergy caused an outbreak on my skin and my difficulty breathing does not help me getting enough sleep. Be prepared though for my new challenge!

Saturday
I was supposed to meet some girlfriends from high school today, but the whole get together got cancelled last minute. I went shopping instead. I am in desperate need for some underwear but even after trying on a gazillion different bras I still didn’t find one that fit me well. I think I should get fitted or something, because my body is not shaped that weird that I wouldn’t be able to find a bra that fits :P

Sunday
Happy Easter everyone! Today was a very relaxed day. Didn’t do much. Went for a run with the Boyfriend and we watched several episodes of House together.