Training Week 7: Finding the Right Fuel

On April 22, 2025 By Bethany DattoloIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Happy Patriots’ Day/Marathon Monday! I have to admit, listening to all the local commercials for the Boston Marathon and hearing a variety of runners share their “why”–what they’re running for, what charity they are supporting, etc, has been inspiring. It’s also left me feeling a little inferior while training for a mere HALF marathon. But I am glad there is such a thing! It’s definitely more accessible to the average, busy mom who doesn’t have ample training time at her fingertips. (Me!)

During week 7, I logged about 22 miles of running for the week spread over 45-minute, 60-minute, 30-minute, and 75-minute runs. It was a great week weather-wise and I felt really good overall. Since ditching the weighted vest for my runs, the training has gone smoother. I’ve noticed more gains and just felt stronger overall. This could also be due to the training work finally “kicking in.” I do love the weighted vest for walking and increasing strength in other areas–it’s especially good for women as it helps mitigate bone density loss as we age. But for running? It just wasn’t working for me. You can read my previous posts if you want to know more about that.

Last week I mentioned wanting to figure out my plan for pre-run fuel. I have been an early morning workout person for years. I get up, workout, THEN get ready for my day and have a little post-workout-something. Lately it’s been a protein shake made with raw milk and chocolate protein powder. It’s worked for me; or so I thought. The truth is, I am often starving by the mid-morning which can either lead to over-snacking or undereating if I’m really busy and then my attitude plummets along with my blood sugar and it just isn’t good for anyone. I also wanted to have a plan to eat something before my longer runs that would sustain me, so that’s what I’ve been practicing. I’ve read that bagels are a popular choice for runners but as someone who bakes all her own bread products, bagels are not always at the ready around here. Instead, I’ve been making overnight muesli and loving it. I take a pint-sized mason jar and put in about 1/3 cup of oats, some flaxseed, chia seeds, coconut, a little brown sugar, and some diced apple. I top it off with milk and stick it in the fridge overnight. In the morning it’s ready for me to enjoy right when I get up. I noticed a big difference in my workouts this week. I ate the muesli before my 45 and 60 minute runs and then didn’t have anything before a bootcamp on the bike and my 30 minute run and I really noticed a lack of energy during those workouts. I also noticed it staved off mid-day hunger when I started the day with fuel before a workout. (I still have my protein shake after.) I think this is going to be my new routine for all my workouts. But I’m curious about what works for others as far as pre-run or pre-workout snacks? If I get bored of this, how should I mix it up? In the past before a long run, I’d have half a banana but I’m really not a huge fan of bananas in general so I would just choke it down. But maybe if I mix it with oatmeal? Let me know what you do!

As far as mid-run fuel goes, I’ve gotten pretty good at sipping water from a small bottle I bring with me, and sucking down an energy gel. I love these gu packets from Amazon and am especially partial to the raspberry lemonade flavor. If you’re a runner, I’d love to know what you prefer for in-run energy!

Week 8 is the big one. Essentially the climax of the training, week 8 ends with a 2-hour run and I’ll be targeting around 12 miles for that one. At the beginning of my training I said I hoped to complete the half-marathon in about two hours. That has become more like a dream than a hard goal. I’ve stated before that I’m not fast (obviously) and this is my first ever big race. I’ve never even seriously run a 5k or 10k race. And all of the coaching I’ve had through this process has stressed letting go of time goals if it’s your first race. “Just complete it and enjoy it.” So that has become the goal. I know the race course is much less hilly than my neighborhood where I train so I have some hope that I’ll achieve a faster time than I’m used to. But I also know that race-day jitters are real and that can also impact my time. So for now, I plan to just complete the race and enjoy it. My husband and kids have finished my playlist and they are so excited for me to hear it on race day. (I am too!) This week is going to be crazy as it’s my son’s birthday, I have a homeschool convention, and the 2-hour run to prepare for. If I survive this week, I know I can crush the actual race.

Meanwhile, enjoy some pictures from our week and Easter weekend! The spring weather brought us outdoors for school to collect pond water and study it under the microscope. We delighted in seeing tiny micro-organisms look like monsters as they zoomed across the petri dish! My oldest likes to hold painting classes for her siblings in her bedroom and the boys and I had a fun game night one night when both girls were away for the night. If you’ve never seen the 2014 documentary “Fed Up”, I highly recommend it. I had my oldest two watch it and write a paper on it for school. We’d already been on a journey to limit added sugar and make more things from scratch but this film really solidified some of our ideas. So in that same vein, I made Easter candy at home–peanut butter protein “eggs” and homemade peppermint patties. Of course, they got some traditional favorites during their egg hunt. Easter weekend was a large order weekend for my cottage bakery and a successful one! I also have pictured one of my favorite methods of recovery: an epsom salt bubble bath.

Half-Marathon Training Week 4: No Quit Zone

On March 31, 2025March 30, 2025 By Bethany DattoloIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Finished off week 4 with the first 60 minute run of the program. My goal was to get in 6 miles during that run but I only covered 5.5. I was pretty bummed but also tried to give myself grace because I was running against strong winds most of the time (yay for early spring in New England) and I was running on tired legs. I don’t ever plan to do all four of my runs for the week in four consecutive days, but that’s what ended up happening last week due to weather and scheduling conflicts. So it was my fourth run in four days and the wind was not in my favor. But I got it done.

I’m calling this time the “no quit zone” because I feel like here, at the end of week 4, is where things are getting tough. The novelty of the training program has worn off. The runs are getting longer overall so it takes more mental fortitude to get out and go. And my body is feeling it. There is soreness and blisters and lots of athletic tape. But I’m also learning that not only can I run on tired legs, but I can push my pace at the end of runs. Continuing to strength train regularly, cycle, stretch (something I often struggle to fit in), and incorporating epsom salt baths twice a week are helping! The weighted vest is becoming somewhat of a hassle as it’s caused some sores where it “hits” me in the front of my chest during runs. If you’ve ever watched The Office–I feel a little like Andy on the “Fun Run”! 🙂 BUT, I’m planning to continue wearing it to train, just not on my walks until after the race and I can let myself heal. Then it will just become something to wear on walks and hikes and probably not for regular runs after this. Next week I have some easy 30 minute runs, a 45 minute interval run, and a 75 minute run to close it out. My goal is to get 7-7.5 miles in during that run. I’m not dreading it. I’m actually looking forward to it! And I can sense the morning temps rising just a little which makes me smile. Running in 3 layers and gloves is getting a little old.

Lots of pics to share this week! It was “France” week in our homeschool. Our focus this school year has been world geography: ecology and cultures. It’s science and history combined and it’s been so fun to “travel” around the world. I’ve tried to make at least one dish from each country we study but for France, I wanted to do so much more! I have Ina Garten’s “Paris” cookbook so it was my companion all week. Not everything is pictured, but we made baked eggs and herbs, omelettes, and French toast for breakfasts. And of course, crepes! I made Julia Child’s “boeuf bourguignon”, a provencal vegetable soup, croque monsieurs (basically a ham sandwich with a gruyere sauce on top), and tried a new recipe for sourdough baguettes–still needs work! One of our absolute favorite desserts is creme brulee so it was really fun to make it again! I like to tell the kids about the first time I ever had it in Paris and didn’t know what it was at the time but loved it!

baked eggs & herbs — the kids have requested we have this more often!

A few more pics from an animal-filled week… I brought the kids to New England Wildlife Center in Weymouth, MA to meet an injured hawk and take a microscope class. It was really fun! Reminded me of Animal Adventures in Bolton, MA; another place we like to visit. For three weeks in a row, we have been trying to get chicks to add to our chicken flock. We currently have 12 egg-producing chickens and want to add 6-8 more chicks this year. But the poultry industry has been hit hard lately and chicks are scarce and in high demand. We struck out twice by being too far back in the line when the farm store opened. But the third time is a charm! The kids and I waited in line (with our camp chairs) for 90 minutes Friday morning and got four chicks (the current customer limit). Abby and I plan to go back one more time to try for four more and then we’ll be done for the year. Wish us luck! After last week, I decided to go for my long run when we got home which was a physical test. I was nervous about running after drinking my morning coffee (a latte, at that). Ha! I generally prefer to run first thing in the morning, after eating maybe half a banana at most. But I pulled it off so I plan to do my 75 minute run this Friday after getting our last four chicks. It’s good prep for race day since the race is at 9:00, not 6:00 when I generally run. After a fun night out in Boston with Randy Saturday night, I am ready for week 5!

24 Screen-Free Spring Activities for Kids

On March 8, 2025 By Bethany DattoloIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Spring Into Action: 24 Screen-Free Ideas for a Fun and Refreshing Season

Spring is the perfect time to shake off the winter blues, breathe in the fresh air, and get outside. As much as we love our screens, it’s nice to take a break every now and then and embrace the simple joys of the season. If you’re looking for some creative, screen-free activities to enjoy with your kids this spring, why not try something a little different? To make it even more exciting, I’ve created a Spring Bingo Card packed with 24 fun, nature-filled activities to help you unplug and make the most of the season.

It may not feel like it right now where I live (today we had chilling 45mph winds and freezing temps) but spring IS around the corner so get ready now! Before we know it, the mild weather will be here and our kids will be clamoring to get outdoors. See how many of the squares you can check off! Can you get BINGO, 5-in-a-row? Or go try to cross off every square! The choice is yours.

Here’s your ultimate screen-free spring bingo card, with 24 fresh ideas that will leave you feeling refreshed and reconnected with nature:

DOWNLOAD NOW

Beautiful Feet Books: Africa

On November 24, 2019 By Bethany DattoloIn homeschool & learningLeave a comment

I am loving the Beautiful Feet Books curriculum, “Around the World with Picture Books” which we are using this year. With this post, I hope to highlight some of the reasons why…

Once we finished North America with My Father’s World (you can read about that here), it was on to Africa. This is where I put down MFW and picked up Beautiful Feet Books. MFW’s “Exploring Countries and Cultures” curriculum walks through the continents geographically: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. But I wanted to travel based more on the ecosystems we are studying. So while we were talking about deserts, Africa was the next logical choice; that way we could continue our desert mural we started while in Mexico.

MFW only covers Kenya in detail, but Beautiful Feet Books has units on Morocco, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania. These units are so beautifully done; using quality picture books as the backbone to almost every lesson, incorporating educational videos from online, and encouraging artistic notebooking on everything learned from geographical features to samples of cultural artwork to indigenous animals. The book, Maps* by Aleksandria and Daniel Mizielinska, that is used is a unique “atlas” that presents the special features of each country with lovely artwork that resembles something like an “I Spy” book. I think that’s why my kids love it so much! They can spend an hour or so just staring at a country’s page and finding all the fun features (animals, cultural costumes, geographical sites) it shows. Each page is as interesting as the country it’s representing.

For me, the notebooking has been the most fun. I bought three Japanese notebooks* of high quality and I am loving adding to my own! And while my kids don’t necessarily appreciate the value of the notebooking process yet, I’m confident that one day they will! For now, they really enjoy practicing water colors and making their own maps of each country. I believe they are learning so much more by creating their own maps than by simply studying one in a book. They get to pick which features of the country are most interesting to them and add those to their map. And in the notebook it goes, along with their own examples of artwork and animals from each country.

Some of our favorite books from Africa were Mirror* by Jeannie Baker (Morocco), The Day of Ahmed’s Secret* by Florence Parry Heide (Egypt), Emmanuel’s Dream* by Laurie Ann Thompson (Ghana), and Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears* by Verna Aardema. Our favorite crafts were recreating Kente Cloth (using paper) from Ghana, and painting animals in the Tanzanian “tinga tinga” paint style.

If you know me and my love of food and cooking, you won’t be surprised that I set out to make a meal for each country we “visit.” While studying Africa we made a lot of chicken and rice and enjoyed some fried plantains. We even had an elaborate Moroccan feast and invited my parents over to sit on pillows in our living room surrounded by candles and Moroccan music while we enjoyed a five-course meal.

African animals are fun to learn about! And although we didn’t add as many details to our desert/grassland mural as I would have liked, we took field trips to the zoo and Worcester’s EcoTarium, where they have the African Communities animal center. Our pastor and his wife go to Rwanda every year and she agreed to talk to us about their trips and what life in Rwanda is like. She even brought in lots of trinkets, jewelry, and native clothing, which was awesome! I gave us an extra week in Africa to wrap up any unfinished notebooking and fit in our field trips. (I’m determined to not keep a super strict weekly schedule so we can take extra time in interesting places if we want.)

A Brief Word on Nature Walk and Collecting…

Even though we are not studying forests anymore, we are continuing our weekly nature walks. They are their own entity. I find that scheduling and making them a priority has helped all of our mental and emotional healths. So rather than say we’ll try to fit it in after school, we often do it almost first thing on Thursday mornings. (Thunder Thursday, remember?) Then we come home and drink tea and do the rest of our school work. Because we had an extra week in Africa, it also allowed us more time to do nature art. We had a great time collecting interesting things in nature and then putting them together to form animals and designs. We’ve also started listening to Chopin’s piano concertos but haven’t talked about his life, yet. We’re easing into our music study while we do other things. This is why we homeschool. Days like this are beautiful.

Here are just a few extra photos from our time in Africa… playing a geography game, Mancala (believed to have originated in Africa), and an afternoon movie party of the “live-action” Lion King complete with animal cracker snacks and spicy popcorn!

*Affiliate links; as an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Zooming In on Our First Units: North America, Forests, and Author Studies

On November 20, 2019November 20, 2019 By Bethany DattoloIn homeschool & learning1 Comment

I’ve always been a fan of unit studies, so I love that this year’s curriculum lends itself easily to unit style learning. I know this goes against everything Charlotte Mason advocated, and I’m okay with this area of disconnect. Though I do find it funny that while she disliked unit studies, she did advocate for the study of a single artist or composer at a time… sounds a little “unit-esque” to me. 😉

In a previous post, I outlined what curricula we’re using for which subjects, and what our days look like. In my last post, “What’s in a Name“, I touched on how our weeks are structured as a whole and how we’re managing to fit in all the “fun stuff” on a regular basis. If you read those, you know I spent a significant amount of time over the summer planning out our school year. Though not necessary for all homeschoolers, I like to get a big picture of our year and then zoom in on each piece or unit, and enhance it if I can. I rearranged the countries that were outlined in My Father’s World to suit my preferences. (I wanted to study Antarctica in January rather than late spring–call me crazy–which led to rearranging the other units as well. I was happy with the result, though!) Then I added in the units from “Around the World with Picture Books” from Beautiful Feet Books, the combined 3rd and 1st grade sciences, and the author studies for first grade.

So here’s a “zoomed in” look at our first units: studying the countries of North America, forests and deserts, and author studies on Laura Numeroff plus the start of Eric Carle.

We started in the U.S.A. with a review of what we were learning last year through our exploration of United States history. We also began our unit on forests. Both curricula we’re using this year call for quite a bit of notebooking and rather than try to make it all work together and exasperate my children with an intense amount of writing and recording, I decided we’d make a mural out of butcher paper for each ecosystem studied in lieu of an ecosystem notebook. It makes a nice addition to our homeschool decor and it’s fun to see the scene come together over time.

While studying deciduous forests, we used our home field advantage and took several nature walks and field trips around the area. We’re attempting to take a nature walk every week this year but in addition to that, we climbed Mt. Wachusett, hiked Quabbin Reservoir, and took other walks off the beaten path…

To help keep Emmalyn included in our studies, she had her own “units” on trees, leaves, autumn, and the changing colors. I also found these cute “cut & paste” papers on ecosystems for preschoolers. They are a great way to practice those scissor and glue skills and make a nice addition to our mural! We did lots of nature collecting on our walks and made these neat field guides with leaf prints on the covers. In the end, we had a pretty awesome forest mural happening…

After the United States, we hit Canada, while staying within our forest unit. This allowed us to expand to talking about coniferous forests as well. (You may have noticed the very hastily completed “pine tree” that graced our forest mural…) While studying Canada, we made “Inuit sculptures” out of soap, and “poutine” for dinner one night!

Before I talk about Mexico, I should mention our author studies. When Abby was in first grade, I split the curriculum into two years because I started her schooling at a young age. So with only half of a one-year curriculum to complete, it was easy to fit in monthly author studies with their own lessons. This year, we are essentially trying to do 3 different curricula in one year PLUS the author studies, so it’s not as easy to do all the lessons. But just as Charlotte Mason saw the value in studying a single artist or composer at one time, I still see the value in zooming in on a single author to study their voice, style, and genre. We may not do all the lessons and activities that I wrote a couple years ago, but we still learn a little something about each author as we go. We began with Laura Numeroff and transitioned into Eric Carle when we started Mexico because his books are easily found in Spanish and I thought it would be fun to do some side-by-side reading! Eric Carle’s art is really fun, too, so we did find a way to fit that in! To find out how I structured those author studies when Abby was in first grade and to download the material for FREE, click the links for Laura Numeroff and Eric Carle.

On to Mexico! And deserts! We finished up North America by spending an AMPLE amount of time in Mexico; reading Spanish picture books, studying deserts, making plenty of tortillas and churros from scratch, blasting mariachi music while we cleaned the house on “Work Wednesdays”, and I even found an old movie I watched as a kid called “Friendship’s Field” about a family who hired Mexican workers to help them on their farm in the 1960s–that brought back memories! Capped it off with a family dinner at a local cantina and decided our homemade salsa was just a little bit better. 😉