Belated Donut Celebrations and Back to the Long Runs!

Happy Monday! Ready to start a great week? I am so excited to get through Monday-Thursday because from Friday- Sunday, I am going up to San Francisco! I am going up for a work event and Anthony is coming. When I’m not working, I’ll be visiting all of my friends that moved to San Francisco after graduation. Favorite city with my favorite friends- it’s going to be a good time!! The lines for all donut shops on National Donut Day were crazy!!! I postponed the celebration until Saturday morning. After an hour and twenty minutes on the trainer, this coconut chocolate donut sure hit the spot. The rest of Saturday consisted a lot of relaxing, time on the couch, and with my good friend, Netflix. Bo Burnham just came out with a new comedy piece that Anthony and I found hilarious. Near tears at some of his jokes!! This Snapchat was pretty accurate with a cute snoozing pup next to us:) Sunday ended up being a lot more of a productive day, starting with an early puppy training class, then acai bowls in Pacific Beach. Does anyone else have problems with their name being spelled correctly? Happens to me all the time no matter where I go. Post acai bowls was time to go up to Encinitas for a new bike helmet at my favorite bike shop, Nytro Multisport, and then a visit to the best dog park I’ve ever been to. Anyone in San Diego with a pooch, I highly recommend the Encinitas Community Park. It is family and kids friendly with baseball and football fields, play areas, and a skate park!Does anyone know how we can get a puppy to look at the camera? Since we don’t end up in Encinitas very often, we wanted to take advantage of local hot spots and of course, had to cross of a brewery on our list, the Lost Abbey. And finished off the day with 7 treadmill miles. Great way to end the day and I’m so happy to be incorporating long distance running back into my schedule 5 weeks after surgery. I was feeling pretty bummed when I woke up this morning because it was the first time in 4 years I wasn’t doing some version of the Rock n Roll 1/2 Marathon or Full Marathon. Excited to get back out there soon stronger than ever. Had to sit on the ground for awhile after that one. Thank goodness for a cold bottle of water and Miss USA playing at the gym to keep me entertained during my stretch and cool down period.

Carlsbad 5000 Race Recap- Back to Back Weekend Races!

Good morning and happy Monday! It’s the first day back at school for me and also sadly, the last first day of school for me as I start my last quarter!! It is crazy to think about how time flies, but I enjoyed my last day of spring break the best way I know how: at a race! I decided to do the Carlsbad 5000 pretty spur of the moment and one of my friends was volunteering that day, so it made it easy to get there and back. It was an amazing race and I took home a 5K PR! One of my few races without Anthony aka my support crew, so that meant having to figure out how to take selfies to get in the cool start line as well as wearing a trash bag as a jacket for easy disposable reasons. My coach was running the Carlsbad 5000. This was his seventh year running it and each year, he sets a new PR on this course. He copied my outfit but it’s okay, since he leads and trains me to most of my victories!

I accidentally ran in the wrong age group that morning. I didn’t realize the 5K was split into waves by age group and ran with the Master’s 40+ Men……. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it earlier and I emailed Competitor to see if they can move my time over to the right age group, but boy did I feel silly!! I kept wondering why I didn’t see Jason on the course or at the finish line, not realizing he was coming for the RIGHT age group. Woops.

Regardless, the course was beautiful and fast. I love the city of Carlsbad and I haven’t gotten to spend a lot of time there in the past. It’s a few cities away in San Diego and after almost 4 years of living here, I am just starting to realize just how big it is and you can drive up to an hour and a half from one end of the city to another, depending on traffic. So running there was such a happy and refreshing change of pace. My legs and lungs felt really good the first two miles with a 7:06 average pace. My goal that day was to break 23 minutes and I figured 23:00 would make me happy enough. Surely, at mile 2 and a half, I started to fall apart. I forgot why I enjoyed longer distances more and to this day, the pacing in a 5K throws me off. However, I finished in a time better than I dreamed of: 22:36! A minute faster than my past 5K time a little over 6 months ago! I was beyond thrilled. 10th in my female age group too… once they move over my time and all :) I had 13.1 miles on the schedule that day, so after the race and hanging around a bit, I went to finish the rest of the 10 miles. Seriously, go run somewhere new. It is so good for the soul. I did a few miles along the Pacific Coast Highway, then swung back into town to see if I could see Jason during his run. He wanted to sub-18 this time around on the course. Just in the knick of time, as he’s getting to 2.5 miles! My favorite way and time to drink beer: at a beer garden post race and post long run. So thankful that my sisters were med tent volunteers. Both of them are alum and it’s been way too long since I’ve seen them or hung out with them. After my run, it was jumping between talking and catching up with them, hanging out with Jason and one of his teammates, and snagging free things at the Expo! And the moment I’ve been waiting for: watching the elite women race at the Carlsbad 5000! There were three women in particular I wanted to see, Stephanie Rothstein, Deena Kastor, and Juliet Bottoroff. I was so sad when I missed Stephanie in another wave but seeing the rest of these awesome ladies was so inspiring! Looking great, in that hot pink, Deena! Then the elite men. Hey there, Ben Bruce! It’s crazy to see all of these athletes I follow and admire, just a few feet away from me. They have some pretty intense pre-race traditions too, like dumping bottles of water on their heads to keep cool. Caught a photo with Juliet! She is a recent elite athlete with B.A.A. and their training team is out in San Diego. Not to mention one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, even though I talked to her for less than 5 minutes. Sometimes, you can just tell! This is Genzebe Dibaba. She won the Carlsbad 5000 for elite females and was 2 seconds short of breaking the world record for the 5K!!! Second fastest 5K time in history!After all the elites ran, my friends and I were so hungry so we walked to Pizza Port, which was a major sponsor of the race. In the middle of eating, I almost choked because Dibaba and Lawi (the winner of the male elites) came through the door. I couldn’t believe my eyes and they were walking to right where I was sitting!! Thankfully my friend knew more than anything I wanted a photo with them and had her camera ready.

I could not think of a better way to spend my last day of spring break and probably my last spring break ever! So happy to have ran, PRed, and met so many amazing people yesterday!

A Weekend of A Few Words

Hello! How many of you Southern Californians (and I mean primarily, San Diegians), wish the architects here foresaw over 90 degree weather in the middle of March and installed air conditioning in your house? So hot! But hopefully the weather holds up for when I’m not longer taking finals and can enjoy it properly on the beach. Until then… due to finals, it was a weekend of a few words.This is my “I can’t believe I am running my long run on a treadmill because it is too hot to run outside, but I’m going to be positive about it” face. I was originally scheduled for 18 but decided to switch next week’s long run to this week’s long run and do the 18 next week. 14 treadmill miles because over 80 degrees kind of scares me. Have you ever tried one of these foam rollers?! I almost cried when I put my calves and IT band on it, but I was surprisingly less sore the next day and after my run than when I use my normal foam roller. No kidding when they said deep tissue… Anthony ended up getting one of his really bad migraines on Saturday morning and didn’t want to eat until dinner. Besides him being sad and sleeping all day because of it, we got to go to Sammy’s Woodfire Pizza that evening for his first meal and for my “I just ran a lot so feed me” meal. We split the Garlic Shrimp Pizza on Whole Wheat Crust and a Spicy Thai Chicken Salad. Sundays are my rest days but I was getting so restless with just sitting around, typing, studying, and memorizing study guides. I decided that while I read one part of my study guide, I would plank while doing it. 3 minute plank- maybe finals will be the time I can go back to my 5 minute planks? I miss being able to do that! More of what my Sunday looked like. Lots of snacks and lots of studying. I didn’t get to go grocery shopping until later that night, so dinner was Subway while I procrastinated by reading about the LA marathon! So many speedy people in 80 degree weather and loads of humidity. I’m excited to hopefully add that marathon to my list one day and happy that they moved it to Valentine’s Day next year so more runners can avoid weather like this on race day!

What is your favorite weather to run in? 

Best part of this weekend?