Thursday, April 30, 2015

I love me some Olives

When I was little I remember my grandmother putting dishes of olives on the table at family dinners. We would all get together for holidays or just random weekends and my all my cousins and I would put olives on all ten of our fingers and play with them. It was the one food everyone would let us get away with playing with at the table. It is one of my fond memories of childhood, those dinners and playing with olives.

So when SweatPink contacted me to see if I was interested in doing a review for Pearls Olives I jumped on board telling Alyse my fond memories of Olives as a kid. I promised her I would include finger olives haha. I received a pretty awesome care package from the folks at Pearl Olives. A couple packages of each kind of Olives they offer- sliced, black, kalamata, and pimento. They also sent a little insulated lunch box.





The olives come in pre measured cups. I am a big fan of lunch I can just throw together in the morning. Little packing, little time. I like my sleep so getting up early to do the lunch work is not my big thing. So I would grab a little container of the olives each day to add to my lunch or as a snack throughout the day.

The whole olives were quick and easy snack to grab when I came home from work and I was cooking dinner. The kalamata gave some great option for salty craving! I also threw them in my lunch bag and took them to work for an easy snack while working.

The sliced olives were so great over a few different things. Nachos!  I love throwing together a quick plate of nachos as a snack or adding some meat and having it for dinner. So nice not to half to slice them up and measure out the right amount of olives for my serving. I also like to make this recipe for Hillbilly Tacos- lentils and rice cooked together. I make a big batch and use it for lunches. Usually I put it in the container and just warm it up at lunch. I am not a huge fan of warm olives when I have put them on the recipe before. But with the Pearls I could just open up the separate little container of sliced olives and add them when the taco was warmed back up.

The Boston Globe will have an add for a sale on the olives this weekend! And I have a coupon left over too if anyone wants one let me know! You won't be disappointed with the olives! They are a great snack and add to recipes!!

**I was compensated and provided product for this post by Pearl Olives**

Friday, April 17, 2015

Growing ...

I have come to a few realizations as I explore more about myself and learn. I have been continuing to listen to Brene Brown and learn about vulnerability and shame. Realizing I really want to live a whole hearted life not this half assed-ness a lot of people do.

1. I think I see every negative comment and every thing that might be guilt embarrassment or harassment to someone else as shame. I take it not as I did something bad but I am bad. Experiencing this level of shame all the time keeps me from letting things go to actually grow. Time to fix that bad boy!

2. I have become an A+ at foreboding joy. Just when everything is going great I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. I try to keep myself from thinking that way but I didn't have any tool with which to replace those thoughts. Finally I learned a little trick. Focus on what you are grateful for in moments of foreboding joy.

3. Fake it till you make it. I was really trying to work on being joyful and happy for a while. And I went with the fake it till you make it principle. If I keep trying to act happy eventually I will feel happy. Well I must have faked it long enough because between that and the fact that I have been doing some work I finally feel like I am getting to a place of happy.

Some great videos by Brene Brown at TEDx and TED:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psN1DORYYV0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o

I figure the only way to grow is to share my stories... so I share.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Doing some work

So when I was on my little staycation over Christmas I decided to do a little reading. I sat for hours in a local coffee shop reading Find Your Happy. I had bought the book months before but never slowed down enough to take the time to read it. I am a triathlete. I am an Engineer. When it comes to somethings I can be type A++. Other things I just hope things will fix themselves. Like hard emotional stuff. Please dear God- let that fix itself. I don't wanna do the work.

I have always considered myself to be fairly happy. Note: I considered myself. I had ex's that told me how miserable I was at times. And to be honest I was starting to hear my own tapes play over and over again. At one point I thought maybe I am depressed- and tried acupuncture for that. I found I love acupuncture. Not sure if I was really depressed but it helped with stress and anxiety and a thousand other things.

Reading Find Your Happy started me down a path to find my true self again. I know that is something that is thrown around a lot but I needed to find what makes me tick. What is is I enjoy. I took a bit of an inventory of my life to figure out what was working and what I might want to let go. I have a few things I know for sure. One being- I really enjoy training more to get me to the racing. I am competitive and I need something to measure myself and see my gains. Two- It is time to embrace my inner nerd and geek. I hid from it not wanting to be that kid for so long. But look I am an engineer. I didn't get that way not being a bit of a nerd.

 I asked my Dad and Mom when I was talking to them about it "Am I going through mid-life crisis early?" They kid of laughed and suggested that it is part of growing up. You are still figuring stuff out in your 20s in your 30s is when you do the work and grow up.

As I work through this growing up- which I am happy to call it now. I have done a lot of listening to books on Audible. It also helps that it fell as winter training was in full swing so I had plenty of time to listen and learn. I heard an NPR report on a morning before a swim meet with Brene Brown. I immediately needed to find her books. I started my Audible with Gifts of Imperfection. I started learning about shame and vulnerability and living whole hearted. Things I had never really thought about. Things that most people consider to be dirty words. And to be honest have been dirty words to me.

So I am reading these books, I talk to my coach. She tells me how much she loves Brene. And then someone on my Coeur Team site posts about another book and we all start raving about our books we are reading to help our growth and I quickly realize this is not something I am going through alone. This is a struggle of some others. I am not unique in this look at myself. And maybe it is time I start talking about it. So that is my plan I am going to talk about it. If you talk about it shame loses its power! So time to bring this into the light of day. The work I am doing to improve me and become a better person moving forward!

Monday, April 6, 2015

Mentally Finding Training Again

Last post I was saying how winter seems to be never ending in Massachusetts, well we seem to be getting close to the end. MAYBE! Then again they keep saying we might get snow again in April. URGH! After some life things taking over for a bit and the weather not really helping me want to train I think I just might be finding my training mojo again. I do winter computrainer classes and I had to take 3 weeks off to spend my weekends coaching. I came back and felt like I was staring from zero. To be honest with my long coaching days I didn't get much training in. But after a few weeks of huffing and puffing my way through class I had one class that felt better.

I finally was able to up my watts for the whole class and maintain the cadence. I walked out of there feeling invincible. Like I finally had training mojo back. I was able to get through the next week of training feeling good. I even got in a fun hilly run with Lisa for about 10 miles. Coach wanted to give me the next week as my recovery week but I suggested we keep going. I felt like I finally got into a mental space I needed to be and needed to push again.

I am hoping this is the start of spring and getting back on the mental and training train! Getting close to my 3 months till my first 70.3 of the season. I am comfortable with 2-3k in the pool, 2 hrs on the bike and 10 mile runs. Not a bad spot to be in 3 months before race season even kicks off. I am excited to see what this level of pre season work brings me for the season!