This morning I had a really fun treat – my annual early morning run/walk adventure around the DC cherry blossoms with a few of my favorite ladies!
I do an early morning cherry blossom run (or two) with the girls every year and it’s one of my favorite things – so fun and a great way to see the cherry blossoms without a thousand people in the way (like on the weekends/anytime after 7 a.m.).
I’m not back up to comfortably doing longer runs at this point as you guys know, but I really didn’t want to miss out on this, so the girls and I came up with a plan that worked out for everyone distance-wise, since we were all coming from different spots!
Phase 1 of the plan was picking up my friend Chelsea at 6:15 a.m. (actually, phase 1 was feeding Riese at 5 a.m., then putting her right back to bed, pumping while eating a snack, and then getting changed before heading out) and driving to Iwo Jima in Rosslyn, where we left my car. We were supposed to meet our friend Sokphal there, but she had to bow out due to an early morning work meeting that popped up – bummer! We missed you girl!
From there, Chelsea and I ran over Memorial Bridge, stopping for a quick photo of the early morning rowers…
And then met up with my college friends Kathleen and Sarah at 6:45 at the Lincoln Memorial! Sarah lives a couple miles from there so she ran it from home, and Kathleen is about 4 or so miles from there but needed to get in a long run for half marathon training anyway, so she ran it too. Perfect! It was about 1.5 miles for us to run there from Iwo Jima. It was a gray morning so sadly no pretty sunrise shots – very mysterious looking out!
From there, the four of us jogged over to the tidal basin where all the cherry blossoms are! It was probably another 3/4 mile or so. Hello, blossoms!
There were some people around (lots of photographers and people doing fancy engagement/fashion shoots), but it wasn’t crowded at all like it would be later in the day. Early morning is definitely the way to go!
When we arrived at the tidal basin, we started walking and took our time strolling all the way around the tidal basin taking photos. There were so many pretty views! We missed the sunshine from previous years, and the blossoms aren’t QUITE in 100% full bloom yet, but it was still gorgeous.
When we made it to the other side where the Jefferson Memorial is we started jogging a little bit again, but stopped for a couple more pictures in this cool area just off the tidal basin with lots of pretty trees.
We jogged over to the Washington monument where Kathleen and Sarah ran on solo to head to their respective homes, and Chelsea and I hopped in a cab to get back to my car at Iwo Jima. We ended up covering 4.5 miles total – probably about 3 miles of that was jogging, and the rest walking. My C section scar felt a bit sore during the run, but it felt better than it has previously, and it was SO fun to be out there having a run date with friends.
We have done at least one cherry blossom run every year since 2012 or 2013… I think the best year photography-wise was our 2016 cherry blossom early morning run date… we had THE most epic sunrise backdrop for our photos. I had fun looking at that post again just now – stunning views!
Anyway! Speaking of the cherry blossoms and running, good luck to everyone running the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler (<- my recap from last year when I was secretly pregnant!) on Sunday! I’m bummed I won’t be out there this year but 10 miles is definitely not in the cards for me right now, and that’s just fine. 🙂
I’ll leave you with a few links of interest from around the web, as per usual. Have a great weekend!
- If you’re looking for new store bought snack bars to try but get overwhelmed at the grocery store, check out The Energy Bar Crawl – it’s a really cool website that you can use to quickly search for snack bars that meet your specific interests/parameters (for example high protein, dairy free, low sugar, gluten free, etc.). My friend and fellow dietitian Sarah Waybright launched the site with a friend – they have a database of over 1,000 commonly found snack bars in the system right now and are adding more every day! Such a useful tool! They also have “bar crawls”, which are round up posts that feature certain kinds of bars, like this fun one called Peanut Butter City. Yum!
- Healthy Blender Breakfast Bars – speaking of bars, but of the homemade variety… these sound so simple and delicious!
- Quick & Easy Lunch and Dinner Bowls – TONS of great ideas in this post! You guys know how much I love my throw together bowl meals – see also: Mix & Match Grain Salad Bowl Recipes.
