No Excuses

Today was a hard day to get in a workout. When you check your emails first thing in the morning and get a string of urgent messages someone sent you from 3 AM, you can kind of figure it is going to be a long day. And it was.

Unable to get a workout in during lunch, heck barely able to have any lunch, I had to find a way to make time. I did have an hour at the end of the day that I yielded to my wife to allow her to go workout, while I tended the baby, and then when she came back, I helped feed and monitor the boys while she put the baby down. Next thing you know it is time to make dinner and end the day.

But one of the major tenets of my program is "no excuses". In the old days, I would always make excuses as to why I couldn't exercise, and it was easy to do that. There's always something that stops you if you let it, so I won't let anything stop me. Tonight, I forced myself to get out and go for a run later, and somehow got 4.5 miles in when I could easily have skipped it. And I was still able to get back in time to make dinner in a timely manner. It was chilly and quite dark when I got back, but I did it.

The run itself was miserable. The sunshine of yesterday is long gone, and it was about 50 degrees when I embarked ("bitter cold" to Texans, "slightly brisk" for us more hearty folk). And my body broke down head to toe during the run, like the Bluesmobile falling apart in Daley center in slow motion. First it was the bad shoulder throbbing badly, almost forcing me to stop. Then it was the back again, then the left hip, the left knee, and finally the right foot. Funny how each pain would go away before the next appeared. Oh, and because I was running late in the day, I was hungry and enervated. Fun fun fun. Nonetheless, I ran through it all, made good time (about 10 minutes a mile, actually feeling pretty strong despite everything), and finished. No excuses.

I started dinner before I ran. I took 5 parsnips, cleaned and cubed them, and sauteed them in a tablespoon of olive oil with a teaspoon of cumin seeds, and 1 tsp ancho powder, with salt and pepper to taste. I mashed 4 or 5 cloves of roasted garlic in about 1/4 cup of stock, and tossed that in the parsnips. About 260 calories for a healthy portion of parsnips, high in Vitamin C too.

2 cups of snap peas went into the pan afterward to pick up the residual flavors, with just a teaspoon more of oil, and a dash of balsamic vinegar, minced cilantro, and salt and pepper. About 50 calories per serving.

The meat was a pork chop, thick cut butterflied loin chop. Pan seared and then topped with a glaze of a tablespoon of preserves (I used blueberry jalepeno), teaspoon of garlic, and teaspoon of soy sauce reduced in a pan until nicely sticky. Total calories about 400 for a .4 pound serving (chop was .8 pounds, served two).