From Blah to Hoo-rah!

How do you make a breakfast go from blah:

to Hoo-rah? First, place about half a small container of Fage Total in your bowl. Then, tear open one of these raw crunch bars and sprinkle all over.

Hoo-rah, indeed!

Kathy sent me some of these amazing bars about a week ago and I’ve been eating them absolutely everywhere! They’re 150 calories, raw, vegan, soy free, dairy free, peanut free and wheat free. And they taste AMAZING too! They have just enough sweetness to be tasty, but don’t get my sweet tooth jonesing for a pint of ice cream the way lots of other granola bars do. Even the chocolate raw crunch bar has the perfect sweet : salt ratio to keep it clearly in the mealtime, not dessert time, category. I think my favorite bar, though, has been the cranberry flavor, which I enjoyed first as a rushed out the door to two midterms and only had time to eat during my taxi ride over to Chelsea!

Basically, all four flavors are pretty much the nutritional bomb, and it’s kind of amazing that they taste so good too. AND, they keep me full for, like, hours! No joke. I had my first bar (see frantic taxi ride above) after a 6 mile run and before a Pathology midterm. It was in my belly by 9:45 and I didn’t eat lunch until noon! And did it help me on my test? Let’s just say I won’t need those little frosted mini wheats guys around me to remind me that I’m focused anymore. Aced the run, aced the class, aced my breakfast! Hoorah!

You know what else makes this morning’s breakfast particularly hoorah-worthy? Today is the opening of registration for the 2011 Marine Corps Marathon! Nothing puts a little Hoorah! in my step like remembering the commitment and conviction, not to mention the sheer excitement, of running this marathon in 2009. It was a race that seemed doomed before it even began. Between moving away from friends in Boston and injuring myself at my new gym during my first week in NYC, training started out with a thud. But then I started blogging, meeting other writers, runners and foodies, and got my footholds in this Big Apple. In the end, I did run the marathon and, in spite of a few grouchy days right after (probably just withdrawal from the endorphins!), I have some really incredible memories of this race.

Is this all a way of saying I’m running MCM again this year? Well, no. This year I’m finishing school and keeping my fitness up with my alternative exercise class experiments. I’ve also logged some miles, but I can honestly say I haven’t been within 10 feet of a treadmill in months and I’m a-okay with that! Instead, this is my way of saying if you’re sitting inside, bundled up away from the wind, cursing the icy piles of snow that still cling to our sidewalks, maybe take a few minutes this week to think about your running (and other fitness goals) for the rest of this year. If you’re like me at all, you probably wrote down some goals during the holidays. Call them resolutions, goals, projects, whatever. They were little gold stars you wanted to get during this year and they were probably all you could think about as we rounded the holiday bend(er) into 2011.

Now that we’re approaching March, though, that list of goals may be buried under grocery lists, bills, or, if you really are like me, piles  and piles of notecards. Spend some time today reviewing that goal list. Maybe you wanted to read a few more books this year, or learn to sew, or travel to a new place. Or maybe you wanted to run a marathon! Whether it’s your first, or your hundred and first, I can’t say enough about the Marine Corps Marathon. Well, I probably can, and have!, so you can look through all those old posts if you’re actually interested. What I can say now, though, is think of a way to make the training exciting. Take the ‘blah’ out of your mindless running and put some Hoorah back into it. Try running with a friend, running in a new location (with a map), or try a new training plan! One of many wonders of the internet is the bevy of resources we have at the click of a mouse. For starters, check out some of the blogs I’ve listed in my blogroll, or stop by Runner’s World.

Taking this time for yourself, to show yourself that you appreciate YOU, will pay off tenfold. Whether you make new running friends, find a new class you love, or just happen upon an unbeatable breakfast combination, I hope you can take your blah to Hoorah! too. Have an awesome Wednesday and be well!

PS To get a jump start on some future breakfast awesomeness, Kathy is offering all of your beautiful readers a discount on her raw crunch bars! Just enter BLOG1 for the rest of this week to receive 10% off your order!

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