{My reviews of the DVD’s listed above can be found here}

I started off this week of workouts absolutely destroying my upper body (in the best way possible.) That Bob Harper DVD is no joke. My chest, biceps and shoulders were sore for 2 days after. Love that burn! Sunday I was able to do my first ‘long’ run since my injury a few weeks ago. It felt incredible! I naturally had to come home and indulge in my favorite post-run snack:

Tuesday I ran again, 5 miles, and it was hot and humid. I forgot what running in that type of weather was like. My hair was stick straight before I left the house and this is what it looked like when I got back:

Don’t get me wrong, I love the natural curl in my hair, but I keep it straightened during the week as I feel it looks more ‘professional’ for teaching. Wednesday I did the Killer Ab’s DVD which, if you’ve read my DVD reviews you already know, I’m not a fan of. At all. I like level 1 and I decided to give level 2 another shot. Not loving it. The moves seem scattered, ineffective, and I only burned about 100 calories during the 30 minutes (versus 150 when I do her 6 week 6 pack.)

This week I’ve been able to try out a few products that were sent to me to review. First up, these divine smelling dish soaps from Palmolive.

My favorite is definitely the lemon scented one. It takes me about 2 months to go through a bottle of dish soap so I may be nice and give my Mom one to try. I looked at other reviews of this stuff online and apparently it’s flying off the shelves and people are having a hard time finding it!

Next up, the seriously mind-blowing good chips from Food Should Taste Good. These actually arrived the day after I watched Hungry for Change and I decided to start trying to cut out as many chemicals and unnatural ingredients as I could. I was scared to look at the ingredients of the 3 bags I got to try but imagine my surprise when I saw there were only a few ingredients and every single one was a natural product! My favorite was definitely the Multigrain:

 Ingredients: Stone Ground Corn, High Oleic Sunflower Oil and/or Safflower Oil and/or Canola Oil, Brown Rice Flour, Flax Seeds, Evaporated Cane Juice, Oat Fiber, Sesame Seeds, Sunflower Seeds, Quinoa, Soy Flour, Sea Salt. See anything in there you can’t pronounce? Nope. Delicious. Even better? They were on sale at Everman’s last week. I may or may not have gone through the 3 bags already. Don’t judge me.

Another thing I became totally obsessed with this week was microwaving sweet potatoes. Since it’s been on the warmer side again I’ve hesitated turning the oven on and I decided to dice up potato and try putting it in the microwave for 5 minutes (with a damp towel covering the bowl and stirring halfway through.) It worked! It definitely didn’t taste nearly as good as roasted but I’m glad I found a way to enjoy one of my favorite foods without having the oven on for 45 minutes.

It should shock no one that I covered it with honey and cardamom.

The big race is tomorrow and I hope you all will be sending me positive vibes! I’m pretty nervous my knee will randomly give out and I won’t be able to finish it. I’m taking the day off from working out and will spend a decent amount of time stretching, rolling, icing and heating my glutes. My time may be crap but I really don’t care as long as I can cross that finish line!

I’ll leave you with this photo I shared on Twitter yesterday when someone asked me why I like to plank:

Of course that’s not all due to planking, but they sure do help! Don’t forget to enter my Plank challenge that starts Monday!