The Weekend and The Race

It has been such an awesome weekend here in the city. Weather -wise, and life-wise. Right now I'm laying in bed after a busy morning, and when I finish this post I'm going to read my book and maybe even nap. I don't see how it can get much better!

Yesterday morning really started the beautiful weekend. I didn't set an alarm, eventually got up, had some coffee, read blogs, and got out the door to the gym. No rush, just a nice relaxing morning. I did 25 minutes on the elliptical and a quick mile on the treadmill. If I'm in the city on a Saturday morning, I usually try to do weight lifting class followed by a 60 minute spin class, but since I had a race today I wanted yesterday's work out to be pretty light. When I finished I walked around the city for a while doing a bunch of errands. I refuled with some ice coffee. I absolutely love ice coffee in the summer, I even have a koozie!

We love our Dunkin' here in Massachusetts!

One of the errands I had to do was to stop at the Lindt chocolate store. Tough life, huh? Two of our friends are moving to Switzerland in a few weeks, and we had a going away party for them last night. I bought a bunch of assorted truffles and chocolate to have at that party (we also had candy watches, since the Swiss are known for their watches, Swiss and American cheese for sandwiches, and we gave them Swiss Francs as a going away present). I had a good time wandering around the store and picking things out. The sales person kept offering me free samples, but I limited myself to one, which was DELICIOUS and an awesome post-work out treat. I'm not sure I'd be able to work in a place like that!

After the rest of my errands, the clouds started rolling in. I headed home as a few sprinkles came down, and minutes after I walked in the door it started pouring! It was perfect timing! I settled in a made myself a seriously good salad. I'm sure you're not all that interested in what my salad looked like, but I took a pictures, so you get to see.

The party last night was fun, but I had to jet early to see David Sedaris read! I LOVE him as an author and I've had these tickets for months. It was unfortunate that it all fell on the same night, but the show was good! He's such a hilarious man, and I love hearing him read his own stuff. It's so much better than when I read it to myself.

This morning I was up bright and early to run a 5k in my home town. Unfortunately, I work with some hip pain. I'm not sure what it was all about because I didn't do anything crazy this week, so I think maybe I slept on it funny. I was concerned that it was ruin the race for me, but once I started running, the pain was unnoticeable. On my way to the race I picked up my gma. She came out to cheer me on!

The race itself sucked. The course was a nice challenge, but the organization was HORRIBLE. One site said it started at 9, then active.com (where we registered) said 9:30. Turns out 9:30 was right, so we were more than a little early. The race shirts were not pink, and we didn't even get one! Only the first 100 runners were given shirt, which was not information posted on the race site, and they were BLUE. We could buy them, but since I already payed for the race and it wasn't pink I didn't bother. When we started running at 9:30, we were stopped a little ways down the street where the starting line was actually located. It was bazaar, but it also threw off the mileage. According to my Garmin, the race was only 2.98 miles. That aside, I ran a GREAT race. The first mile of the race (Garmin measured, not race markers) was the fastest mile I've ever run. The second mile was a bit slower, but still rocking for me. The last .98 was HARD. It had a big uphill that made me want to cry a little. But I powered through because I knew a huge downhill was on the other side. We finished the race in 34:14, which put us on pace to finish the whole 5k at 35:44-ish (the hubs likes math and was "crunching the numbers" for me). Now, to most people out there, this probably doesn't seem that great, but for me? THIS IS AMAZING! The finished a 5k in May last year (with the BFF!) in 43 minutes. This summer, my 5k time was 40 minutes. I am improving by minutes each time, and I RAN MY FASTEST MILE EVER. Needless to say, I'm SUPER excited about this. I would have liked to have my finishing time be more accurate, but I'll take it! I have my friend Emma to thank for this awesome feeling though. Running with her really pushed me to keep my pace up, and now I know I can do it. I felt badly holding her back, but she didn't care one bit. She kept giving me pep talks and helped me finish strong. Luckily, she's running the 5 miler with me in June too!

(Please note how she looks like she barely broke a sweat and I look like I might pass out haha).

It was an awesome weekend and I feel ready to take on the week. Happy Mother's Day to all the awesome moms out there. I don't get to see mine, but I'll see her on Friday when I head to VT with the whole family! My brother is graduating and we're going to party hard. Hopefully the work week goes by quickly!