Healthy Friday Finds and My Legs are Fried!!

Happy Friday everyone!!! I hope that you all get to enjoy an amazing 4th of July weekend. Keep me posted on what you are up to! I have a couple of healthy Friday Finds for you all… but don’t worry. Enjoy the burgers and beer this upcoming weekend because you know I will ;) 1. I’ve always wanted to try making cauliflower fried rice or substituting rice with cauliflower but the idea of chopping and pulsing the cauliflower myself was not very appealing. A teammate and good friend of mine then told me Trader Joe’s sells riced cauliflower!!! Hallelujah! I was so happy to find it in their vegetable isle and love the texture and flavor it brings to a dish. 2. Which leads into the above recipe of cauliflower stir fry! Instead of rice, I tossed olive oil, riced cauliflower, and assorted vegetables into a pan. Let it cook for 15 minutes and viola! The perfect healthy and filling dinner :) I’ve also used riced cauliflower to make fried rice and Anthony couldn’t tell until a couple bites later that it wasn’t rice. Even the pickiest eaters will love it :) 3. Summer means some of my favorite fruits coming back into my diet like grapes and strawberries. Currently my favorite thing to snack on when I’m at work. 4. And of course, more berries and watermelon. If it were possible, I would just live off of fruit and ice cream. 5. Elle isn’t a “healthy find,” but she sure brings a whole lot of healthy habits to our family! Since we’ve gotten Elle, we find ourselves outdoors a lot more and multiple times  a day getting fresh air. Even though the majority of my workouts are outside, I didn’t go outdoors after I was done riding, running, and swimming and spent the rest of the day cooped up inside. Now, we take Elle to the dog park, go on morning and evening walks, and spend a lot of time playing fetch with her. It creates quality family time, more exercise and moving around throughout the day, and helps us disconnect from electronics the rest of the evening. And of course, Thursday night traditions with the team at the track. My legs are fried.

What are some healthy Friday finds in your neck of the woods? 

If you’ve tried riced cauliflower, what do you think? Yay or nay? 

4th of July weekend plans?

Why I Started Blogging About Running and Fitness

Recently I was asked why I started blogging and after a long-winded explanation full of passion, excitement, and enthusiasm about how RunMileswithSmiles was born, I realized I wanted to put the condensed version on the blog itself. Blogging is one of my favorite ways to express my creativity while reading other people’s blogs offers motivation, inspiration, and support that is hard to find in other written pieces in my opinion. There is something organic and authentic that I really love about blogging. I truly love the blogging and fitness community and was very excited to join it with my own.

4 years ago (holy cow, has it already been 4 years?!), I realized I was in a very unhealthy place in my life. I had gained beyond the freshman 15 after my first year of college, I was staying up way too late, eating too much junk food, and it would honestly take me some time to try to remember the last time I ate a vegetable. While dorm food wasn’t the healthiest, I bypassed the salad bar way too often for one too many meatball subs with a side of curly fries.It also didn’t help that Anthony is a string bean and when we first started dating in college, I tried to keep up with everything he ate and drank. Needless to say, it was not a very good idea. I was feeling lethargic and struggled to walk from one side of campus to another (in my defense, our campus is HUGE). Don’t even get me started on how often I exercised because I didn’t want to walk to the gym. I was also going through a tough time emotionally. My father passed away unexpectedly from stage 4 cancer the first quarter I was in San Diego and it’s true. Everyone copes with grief differently and I coped with food and unhealthy habits that kept me from thinking about just how sad I was.

Sometime that summer after my first year of college, I decided I needed to make a change. My initial goal was just to lose some weight and start eating healthier. I started the Insanity 60 Day fitness challenge with Anthony and I was instantly hooked to the challenge and hardships of the fitness program. I don’t know what it was but something about how the physical pain of each 45-60 minute workout was greater than anything I was feeling about missing my dad or how everyday, it gave me a new obstacle to focus on, really drove me to push myself. No matter how hard the workout was, I was also having a ton of fun and also  made it a little competition with Anthony to see how far we could get without taking a break in between each interval. I guess I was always competitive!

When the challenge ended, I started to look for new ways to stay active and thought I would try running. I ran track briefly (like for a hot second) in middle and high school but for a long time, hated it because who wants to run in a 100 degrees with a 110% humidity in Florida?! Not this girl. In the very beginning, I had no idea how to get started. Do I run a mile? Half a mile? Go as long as I could until I passed out? Clearly all of the thoughts of a noob runner. I decided to start reading articles on Women’s Running Magazine, Competitor, and Runner’s World to get advice on how to get started. Then I started reading blogs and boom! Everyday I was inspired by the women in the fitness community with similar stories as mine and how now they have qualified for the Olympic trials or BQed or PRed their latest race. I loved reading their stories and it would constantly push me on my runs. I started to love running and pretty soon in that year, won my first local 5K and went on to run my first half marathon, the San Diego Rock ‘n Roll 1/2 in 2012.Distance races really hooked me from the start and since then, I’ve completed three marathons, multiple halves (including the San Diego Triple Crown Challenge), a Ragnar Relay (favorite running memory to this day), a duathlon, and joined a triathlon team to start making the transitions from just running to cycling and swimming as well. I wanted to start tracking my fitness journey and the improvements I made along the way, plus inspire and help others starting their fitness journey. It created RunMilesWithSmiles and opened up amazing windows of opportunity- hello blogging for Chobani and freelance writing for Women’s Running Magazine. I’m so happy I started this blog and hope to continue to grow and connect with more people through this amazing community. :)

Los Pensaquitos Canyon Reserve

This past Easter Weekend, Anthony and I went to Los Pensaquitos Canyon Reserve! I have been there one other time on a run with Brandon but we entered in some weird way since he forgot where parking for the entry way was. We got a 4 mile run in that day of hills and seeing the waterfall, but there was still a whole other half of the reserve I hadn’t seen before!  And it was flat! We originally had plans to go to Elfin Forest but maybe hilly hikes the day after a 20 miler wasn’t a good idea.  We loved this hike because it was a hike for people of all ages and levels. It was really simple and flat for families to take their children on and had ridiculously beautiful scenery along the way. Look at all the green around me! Always be a little careful where you are walking because this trail is for hikers, runners, bikers, and horse-back riding. Listen to cues to move over and make sure you don’t step in any of the horse poop along the way ;)  From where we parked at the start of the canyon to the waterfall was 3 miles, then we had another 3 miles back, making the hike a total of 6 miles. If you enter through other parts of the canyon, it can be longer or shorter. There are also many trailheads to take once you are in the canyon. I really liked how well the reserve was labeled. Made getting around super convenient! Anthony: Why are you taking so many pictures?

Me: It’s for the blog!!

Anthony: I’m going to go climb these rocks.

Me: You give me anxiety.

You know, the normal boyfriend/girlfriend conversation.  The waterfall is small, but sure is beautiful to see a random patch of water in the middle of the canyon. I am still determined to go on a hike with a massive waterfall! Finally being cooperative with the photo taking. I highly recommend this hike for anyone who is traveling in San Diego and wants to take their children somewhere, for athletes to come train along these trails, for friends and significant others to take a stroll through the canyon, and for anyone recovering from a long run with a hike… normal, right? And you can sit in trees! I know I sold you on that one.  Til next time!