A Change of Plans, My Default "Power Suit" and Food Judgment

Good evening! Today was day one of my three seminar stretch for the week and I have to say, I'm exhausted! Putting on a seminar for two hours is more draining than a run! I had this fantastic plan all mapped out for my run today. My seminar was ending around 3:30, so I'd get home around 4:30, leaving me with plenty of daylight to run 3.5 miles outdoors in the glorious above freezing weather. Sadly, this got put to a halt as I was needed back at the office. Which meant that I wasn't getting home until at least six. To darkness. So my only option was going home, getting my gym gear and going to the track at the gym to bang out 3.5 uneven miles. I then realized that the only things I had eaten all day were greek yogurt and two oatmeal cookies at the hotel (I tend not to eat before a presentation). Soooo, I made the executive decision to instead come home, whip up a batch of Annie's organic white cheddar whole wheat shells with peas (loves!) and drink a green machine drink. Instead of running I did 30 minutes of hip opening yoga, and I'll get my 3.5 miles in tomorrow (outdoors, woot!) since I'll be arriving in Garden City around 3. Sweet!

Whenever I have to present I always seem to fall back on one particular suit. I think I own somewhere around 15 suits. Classic fashion advice seems to suggest that a woman should own at least one suit; I would up that requirement to three, even if your office is business casual. I purchased my new favorite suit last summer at Banana Republic- it was so new to the store that they had it available in my size in the jacket, pants AND skirt. If you ever have the option to purchase a suit with both the pants and the skirt, do it. It gives you more bang for the buck in the sense that you can work more outfits out of it!

I really love BR suits. They are cut perfectly for my frame! The only drawback is the fairly steep price; I try to buy them in classic cuts and prints so that they will be worth the investment.

My latest BR love:
You can't really tell from the picture, but it's a medium grey with a thin white stripe.

Close up shot of the color:

Sorry for the random weird picture of my leg. I'm going to wear the same suit on Wednesday with the skirt.

When wearing a suit I rarely (if ever) wear a button up collared shirt with it. That's what I typically did in the past and it is such a pain to finagle with the collar over the jacket. I generally wear thin shells, camisoles or thin sweaters underneath my suit jacket. This way I never worry about whether or not my collar is sticking out!


Do you have to wear suits for work? How many suits do you own?

So when I was at the grocery store earlier purchasing my Naked Green Machine drink, the cashier gave it a weird look and said "that looks healthy". I told her that it was actually quite good. She said that she could tell from the contents of my shopping basket that I eat healthily. I asked her if she evaluated customers' purchases on the regular (I always wondered that!). The cashier said that she did and that you wouldn't believe some of the stuff people buy. She said it made her the most angry to see families with overweight children purchasing a bunch of "crap", like oreos, ramen and the like.

I hate to say this but when I'm at the grocery store I tend to look at other people's carts to see what they are getting. When I see someone with a cart full of nutritionally void food, I get very judgmental. Why are they purchasing that stuff? Do they want to have a heart attack? Then I feel guilty, because who am I to judge? It's not like I eat perfectly. Do you guys find yourself evaluating other people's food choices?

Have a great evening everyone! I'm meeting up with one of my oldest friends tomorrow (she recently moved to Long Island) and we are hitting up a delicious Italian restaurant. I can't wait! Night!

When Life Gets in the Way of Your Training Plans

Good evening blog friends! I hope that your weekend has been fun and restful. Today has been fairly low-key for me; I've been running through my presentation, updating some blog stuff, reading blogs and eating. :) I added a link to my exercise log in the right-hand column of the blog, and figured out how to import my 14k training plan. I'm going to add an "About" page in the near future too. They are one of the first things I look at when I first stop at a blog so I should probably get on it!

Today started off fantastically (is that even a word?) with homemade blueberry pancakes topped with chobani pomegranate yogurt. I love adding greek yogurt atop pancakes- it makes them nice and creamy and gives you an added 14 grams of protein. Yum!


I also added a bit of organic maple syrup. I cringed at the price while purchasing this at the grocery store. However, the ingredient list sold me:Pure maple syrup. None of the HFCS badness. Do you pay extra for better quality foods? Or can you not justify the cost? It's frustrating to me that the items that are better for your body are more costly.

Today marked the start of week 4 of my 14k training plan. The 14k is only one month and three days away! I am hopeful that I will be able to do well (IT Band, I hope you're listening... stop acting up) and think that I am capable of reaching what once seemed like an impossible distance because I have following my training program consistently. With that being said, I have only finished three weeks of training and have already had to alter my schedule each week. By way of example, my training schedule provides that every Friday is a rest day. However, this did not coincide with what my "real life" schedule called for; my New Year's Day 5k was on a Friday morning! Instead, I swapped Friday's rest day with Thursday's three mile run. This past week I had my hair appointment on Thursday night (which I could NOT miss, Kisori books months in advance) so again, Thursday was my rest day and I ran 3 miles on Friday and 4.5 on Saturday.


I have missed one training day, unfortunately. Last Sunday I was going to cross-train at home (elliptical) once I got back from Virginia Beach. Instead of taking 8 hours the trip was delayed to a little over 13 hours, so by the time I got home at 11 PM I literally could not muster the energy to jump on the elliptical machine.


This week is a busy one for me. I'll be traveling a bit for work (hello Long Island), so I'm forced to take my training to the road. Tuesday is typically my yoga class (essential for stretching out my tight muscles), but I'll be driving and then checking into my hotel that evening. I adjusted my schedule and am prepared to practice yoga in my hotel room- I am packing my yoga mat and downloaded a new class from YogaDownload. Sure, I'd rather be at my class, but sometimes life gets in the way.


I think the key to any training program is flexibility. As long as you are getting in the requisite miles and aren't lumping all of your long runs together (so as to avoid injury), moving around your workouts isn't going to hurt you. Another key to training are scheduled rest days. Rest days are essential to allow your muscles to recoup and give your mind a chance to rejuvenate. Rest days are also good in the sense that having them in your schedule allows you to finagle it around a bit when something comes up.

Have you followed a training plan? If so, do you follow it to a "T"? What works best for you?

This afternoon I made it to one of my favorite places- Saratoga Coffee Traders:

I love this place. All of the coffee is fair trade and organic, and they have amazing lattes and delicious breakfast sandwiches. I pulled a little breakfast for dinner action and had egg and cheese on a bagel.


The counter in the coffee shop is really cool- it is covered in old coffee bean bags. Very green and somehow pretty chic too! I'm thinking of getting individual servings of the coffee to put into the out of town bags for the guests at the wedding. My co-worker thinks a gift card to the 'bucks would be better. While I get the appeal of the convenience of just grabbing a coffee with a gift card, I think it is more fun to get unique coffee that you wouldn't find elsewhere (plus, it goes with my Saratoga theme!) What would you do?

Lastly, I noticed that Target was having a sale on their champion sports bras, so I hightailed over there to pick some up. Anything to delay the doing of laundry (more sports bras= less need to do laundry) is A-ok in my book. The damage:

Okay so I have some beef with Target. The C9 bras that I usually buy were not on sale. I still bought one anyway (the purple one) but that was some misrepresentation in the flyer! I guess I shouldn't complain, because the polka dot sports bra (lovessss) was only ten dolla. I also snagged a yoga tank (17.99) to work out in. Hi, my name is Katie and I'm a gear junkie.

The rest of the evening will be spent prepping for tomorrow. I have to give presentations in front of large groups fairly regularly for my job. If you had told me in law school that this is what I would be doing I wouldn't have believed you; public speaking truly terrified me. Thankfully, I got over that fear (perhaps because I was forced to do it so much in law school?) but I still get on edge. Some of the tips I've learned in the past few years:

• Encourage audience participation. If you just sit there and talk at them, people are likely to get bored. During my presentations, I stress the point that if anyone has any questions to just raise their hand and interrupt me. The questions generally get a good dialogue going and gives you a chance to regroup.
• Know your audience and use real life examples to demonstrate points. In my line of work, I answer legal questions from our members on a daily basis. Oftentimes situations come up where while it may have only happened to one of our specific members, it may happen to another in the future. I use the past problems our members have encountered and explain how they dealt with it. Because, let's face it- the law is the law and all, but sometimes what happens in real life situations may, um, differ from what the law suggests. By the way, how many times can I saw real life in this post...yikes.
• Try to focus on each member of the audience at a different point. When I feel my eyes darting about the room I start to get stressed. Instead, I tell myself to relax and look towards a friendly face. If there are no friendly faces, run from the room screaming (kidding).
• Fake it. If you appear confident, people will be more receptive to what you are saying and are more apt to see you as authoritative.

Have you had to present in public recently? Do you enjoy it?

I'm off for some cross-training- have a great evening everyone!