My little big day

Today was my big running day - I had to run 20 minutes this morning with no walking, except for warm-up and cool-down walks. Considering that the most I have run before without stopping is 8 minutes, I was a little nervous and anxious about it. But I did it, it was successful, I felt good - now it's on to the next week which will conclude with my running for 25 minutes. Truthfully, after 20 minutes, I felt like I could have kept going but I was glad to settle into my final 5-minute cool down walk. And another good piece of news - no pain! No foot pain, no knee pain -nothing! I felt and feel great!!
Now on to food, glorious food. Last night, I made a really yummy ediets dinner. Believe it or not, I still follow the ediets meal plan; some of their recipes are pretty good. I started ediets back in December of 2006 and by summer of 2007 I had lost all of the weight that I had set out to lose. So here it is one year later and I am still holding off the weight-gain monster. Okay, getting back to last night's meal. I made crispy baked fish or whatever-it's-called from ediets. I used tilapia, coated it with panko bread crumbs mixed with a small amount of parmesan and a teensy bit of paprika to give it a nice color. Then I baked it for 5-7 minutes at 450 degrees. So there really wasn't very much to it but tilapia is such a meaty, non-fishy fish - it was very scrumptious (can scrumptious be "very"?) and probably pretty good for you too. I made this for my mother who never really commented on its scrumptiousness but did ask for the salt! Grrrrrr! Oh, I forgot, she did say that her friend had told her that tilapia was her favorite seafood and now she could see why. But I don't really count that as a compliment to my dinner that I prepared for her. It's just a comment on how flavorful that particular fish is. Oh well, she is moving on to my bro's house tomorrow so now he and his wife can haggle over what food to serve her for a couple of weeks. Then, when she comes back, possibly I will have some new goodies for her.
Having my mother here with me has really made me see how important it is to take good care of yourself, especially if you are a woman. This morning, before my run, I saw a memo on the bulletin board at the YMCA regarding the importance of weight training for women over 30. The gist of the memo was that weight training can be more important than aerobic exercise. I'm really glad that I have incorporated weight training into my weekly workout routine and I encourage my daughters to do the same except they probably already are way ahead of me! In fact, I know they are because they are the ones who told me to resume weight training.
That's it for now. Remember - take care of your muscle mass because you will probably need it down the road!!