Dodging rain storms today - did this over lunch. Garmin didn't pick me up for the first 0.08 miles so I added that in. I love this distance of run - not to short, not too long. Took the hillier route and felt pretty good.

Nice after-work swim. There were zero people in the pool when I arrived, and it was so calm and peaceful and zen. Had 6x50 sprints today so another good pace for me. And I'm off work until Monday, so that's always a nice feeling.

Cool down with Ellie Mae

Evening walk

Amid rise in COVID-19 cases, Dane County tightens restrictions on bars, restaurants, indoor gatherings

Closely following Dane County's (Madison WI) response to changing situations ^^^

New recipe of the week - made a "loaded cauliflower casserole" last night and it was so good. Adapted it from a recipe I found online and then scaled it to one serving. My original inspiration came when I found a package of bacon in my freezer and decided to thaw it and figure out how to use it up. This entire recipe/dish was 562 calories (last night I added a Beyond Sausage brat to round it out). A bit more dairy than I eat normally, but it was nice and filling.

225g cauliflower florets (maybe 2 cups?)
3 slices bacon, cooked and chopped (mine was low sodium/no sugar)
150g plain nonfat Greek yogurt (an individual, 1-serving container)
2T cream cheese
56g shredded cheddar cheese (1/2 cup)

Steam or boil the cauliflower so it's fork tender, drain. 
Mix the rest of the ingredients in a separate bowl (but save a sprinkle of cheese and bacon). Add the cauliflower and mix well to coat; pour into oven-proof dish. Top with the reserve cheese and bacon. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes. 

Trainer - it's a recovery week!
Also, jokes on me, I thought my work project was done. But now I have another big round of changes to make to most of the reports. THEN I think I'll be done? Going to start on them tonight.

Hot lunch walk

Before bedtime walk as it was raining earlier

Don't know whether to laugh or cry at some of my Kansas friends' Facebook posts. Their Governor just mandated masks required in public starting Friday, and so many people are like "HELP where do I get masks for my family in the next 48 hours?!" 

Hold up, ya'll don't even OWN a mask?? Not one? And haven't this whole time??
***Blink. Blink. Face palm.***

And I've had to show so much restraint on the comments from those posts. Since I don't know those people directly I'm not going to insert myself, but reading so many "Nope, not gonna" replies is unbelievably disheartening. 

Just one walk today, I promised Ellie Mae I'd make it up to her this week!

PRAISE BE - I've completed all 23 of these long-ass, detailed reports (with the exception of going back in and adding specific maps to each of them and re-exporting). What a tedious exercise. 
7:30 p.m. update: Finally finished the additional edits and map insertions and sending final files to each leader (and their leader, and my leader) for a sign-off. I will say this is a great way to not eat a whole lot - for the past seven days I've been so 'heads down' in this work that I'm not thinking about food and just eating a bare minimum to shut my stomach up so I can keep knocking out the work. It's after 8 p.m. and I still have 400 calories I need to eat tonight - which is crazy rare.
Also, Beyond Sausage Brats are my newest amazing vegan find. They're SO GOOD!

And a weird morning with my family group chat. There was a homicide two houses down from my parents' home in Kansas early this morning , my mom watched medics perform CPR on the victim (he was shot in the driveway) and my dad was interviewed by the ABC news station - sounds so unsettling. I was surprised when my mom said that not one house on the street has home security cameras installed. Suspects are still at large, but it sounds like they know who it is? Not many details available.
My dad was on the news during this segment - it's so weird to see the street I grew up on on the news, let alone my dad! He did great though, he's always been even-keeled under pressure (think that's where I get it from). The house where it happened was the home of two boys my age when I was a kid - lots of childhood memories of running around the neighborhood with them 30+ years ago. I'm old!

Not surprised that I changed my plan a few miles in. Woke up tired, the air was thick and soupy, and I just couldn't get my legs going. After ~2.5 miles of thinking "man this would be SO much more enjoyable if I just walked" - I just walked. And it was great. I got rained on for the last mile and a half - that weird space where the sun is shining but it's raining. It felt good. Walking felt so, so good. I wasn't gasping for air, wasn't dizzy, wasn't depleted.

LOTS of debris and partial trees down after a storm rolled through yesterday. Had to maneuver around much of it on the first and last miles - very messy out there. And, kind of fun that a local brewery has established a pop-up beer garden on the Riverwalk. If I drank beer and if I had money on me, I very likely would have stopped. It looked lovely.

Recognizing that my brain has pretty much thrown in the towel for the Ironman (Linda and I are having DISCUSSIONS, nothing decided yet though), so I just want to enjoy what I'm doing. And I did today, for the first Sunday in a long time.

Ellie Mae walk

After dinner walk

I am down to THREE reports remaining - I see the light at the end of the tunnel! Except I have to go back into all 23 of them and insert a map, then re-export each of them. But that should be fast and easy as the maps were emailed to me Friday evening (I WILL have to chop and crop some of them, but the fact that I have them in my hands is a miracle).

AND I need to edit a video, edit and article and publish both tonight (standard Sunday night tasks). I've already informed my leader I'll be taking at LEAST Thursday off this week to have a four-day holiday weekend. She replied that I should also take Wednesday off if I wanted. Love her.

3,100 feet of climbing and hazy with the Saharan dust cloud moving in.

Once again didn't sleep much last night. Put an extra espresso shot in my coffee, but I don't think it helped. Just tired. Rolled out with my tri club group but was solo the entire time (everyone else was doing 14-mile loops).

It's been probably 2 years since I did the 68-mile loop, and it's nice - the first hour was filled with chicken processing air, which made me nauseous. It was worse today than it has been all summer, but that's part of riding these routes. After the 48-mile turn off, this route continues north, and there aren't any big climbs for a good 10-15 miles. It was really peaceful and quiet - just a tad breezy (which is rare) here and there. I stopped at the mile 39 gas station to potty and buy more water - a group of cyclists offered to let me ride/draft with them, but they were too fast (they had passed me a few miles back) - nice though.

Struggled in the last ~90 minutes of the ride. Not a lot of energy, sleepy and just wanted to stop and be done. I was sweating a whole bunch, heart rate felt high. My Infinite mix was strong today at 3 servings in a bottle, which made it not as palatable to drink. Got to my car and didn't feel so hot so ditched the brick run.

Really struggling mentally with doing longer rides than this, knowing the race is very likely not going to happen. This was too long to be really enjoyable, but with the race still on the calendar I feel obligated to get the miles in. It's a weird place to be in.

Late lunch run - warm and high heart rate. Thought I was hallucinating when right after my turnaround I glanced to a bluff on my left and saw a herd of goats?! Apparently there is a new rent-a-goat type of business, which is strange and out of context for this area. But funny.

Should have walked Ellie Mae before this because I got home to potty AND poop in the house. I can't figure out why she does this every now and then - she can clearly hold her bladder for 12+ hours, but sometimes will just act out and pee on the couch.

Evening walk. Decided to skip tonight's swim so I can work :(
I might swing by the tri club's OWS tomorrow, depending on when I get done with my ride. If not, I'm not sure it matters. No real reason to kill myself for a race that's 99% not happening.

Friday morning weigh in and I'm down 1.8 pounds this week for a total of 11.9 pounds since the beginning of May. Starting to think about what's a good number to stop at. My original goal is 4 pounds away.

In other news, some of you know this, but one reason I've had weight loss success this time around is tracking calories religiously. But another reason is that I've been making dishes that are only one or two servings. I have major issues with making a huge pot or casserole of something that's supposed to be 4, 6, 8 servings and stopping. I'll literally eat 4 or 5 servings at a time. I can cut something in half and put the other half away, but can't do the same for a large dish. In that vein, I've ordered a single-serve ice cream maker and it will arrive today! It was only $20, and has mixed reviews, but if I could make one serving of ice cream at at time ...? That would be so ideal. I looked into this after seeing a Pinterest recipe for vegan/coconut milk ice cream and the blogger mentioned a single serve machine. It sounds so good for the summer!

15 reports down, 8 to go. Got into one that took me almost three hours - it was the only one I got done this afternoon. Missing words, sentences that didn't make sense, frequent mis-use of and missing punctuation, etc. It was like no one actually read the document before submitting it. My eyes feel like they are bleeding.