Protein Shake in a Bun

I'm a wimp. 

Merely a shell of a hardcore Minnesota athlete. I pride myself in my desire to run outdoors in every season we face here. I try to avoid running during the daylight hours in the summer because I prefer the cooler evenings and night running. Anything above 55 degrees F and I think it's too warm.

Why am I a sham of the self-image that I hold of myself?

Because yesterday, the 16th of February, was my first workout outdoors since Halloween. Not one single workout outside below freezing (it was 47 degrees yesterday). 


A coworker and I have been talking about running over lunch for a few weeks after we learned that we both like running and endurance events. She's run 21 marathons in the last 5 years, Boston twice. We finally bucked up and made an official Microsoft Outlook calendar meeting over lunch yesterday, and stuck to it. 


Nothing fancy or grueling. We ran a nice 4-mile out-and-back route from the office. We're both pretty much just starting up our spring running routines, so we kept a comfortable conversational pace of about 9:00 min/mi. It was my first run with GPS watch outdoors, so I recorded the run and will post the data after I download and play with it. 


We were able to both get back to the office, shower (separately) and get back to our desks within an hour, so we decided that this is definitely doable and are going to reschedule our Outlook meeting to "recurring." 


Having taken two weeks off from running, my body didn't totally react well to going from running to sitting in my crappy office chair within 20 minutes, and I think my blood electrolytes took a weird hit as well. Ended up getting a decent little headache, but nothing two little magic blue pills (Aleve) couldn't take care of. 


Finished the day at the office, then went to meet the family at the in-laws for a couple hours to watch American Idol (go JC!) and wear out the boys by making a mess and chasing them around with a fun game of hide-and-seek at Grandma's house. 


Packed up the kids around 9:00 pm and hit the road for home and realized that I hadn't eaten since lunch, and was friggin' famished. 


While the boys were in the back seat of our family commuter/compact car, a manly VW Beetle (at least it's dark blue), attempting to sing along to a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah song, I started to weigh my different take-out/fast food options as we drove down 35E. 


Lee Ann Chin. 
KFC.
Panera.
Noodles.
BK.


Hmmm...they all sounded amazing as we passed the glowing signs. 


Before I knew it, our 1.5-year-old was passed out in back and the 5-year-old was already tired of the repetitive beat and was spacing out the window. A crinkle in my plans of stopping for take-out it became, as there's no way I was going to attempt to unload the car to head in to order. 


That left drive-thru. 


The image of the golden arches were etched in my retinas or something and I had an immediate craving for a burger. 


I ended up getting the new Chipotle BBQ Bacon Angus 1/3-pound grease bomb ("Plain," no pickles, mustard, onions, lettuce or ketchup) from McDon's; just give me the burger, bun, bacon, cheese and new sauce please! 

I compensated for the grease by only ordering the sandwich, a true test of my late-night will-power if one ever existed. 


I'm not going to lie, it was probably the most satisfying, 60-second-prep-time 800 calories and 2,000 mg of sodium I can remember ingesting in recent memory. It definitely had the most flavor in a burger chain burger that I can recall. I was expecting MdD's basic McNugget BBQ sauce on a slightly seasoned meat/filler patty, but I was pleasantly surprised to actually get a bit of zing with the sauce in the aftertaste that perfectly complimented the dunk of ketchup I applied myself (the "burger artists" can never get the appropriate ketchup to burger ratio when they pre-apply it behind the scenes, if they even try to...). The Angus burger "Premium" bacon that they use is well worth the extra few cents they charge as well.


Getting the sandwich alone also left me feeling satiated when I was done, rather than completely miserable if I had also downed a large fry, although those fries would have been delicious...like they always are...mmm...McDonald's Fries...


The only real side effect I've experienced so far, though, was going to bed with a guilty conscience. I decided to set the alarm to get up a bit earlier this morning and crank out a spin on the trainer before work. 


Sixty minutes of 6:00 am cadence work and I no longer feel guilty. 


Did I seriously admit to cheering for an American Idol contestant by name?!