Good morning and happy Sunday!
I hope you’re all enjoying your weekends. Mine started off yesterday morning with my first real training run of the year — 8 miles! I’m starting to amp up in preparation for the Tobacco Road Half Marathon in March.
Speaking of training — have you seen my new blog feature? I added a list of upcoming races (I currently have 4 on the docket!) to my right blog sidebar — if you’re reading this through email or a reader, click through to check it out. 🙂 I’ll keep it updated so you know what I’m up to!
Anyway! I ran the 8 miles my grad school buddy Elle, who is also training for the Tobacco Road half. We did a massive loop, starting in Carrboro. First we ran through Chapel Hill to UNC’s campus, where we stumbled upon a random sorority 5k! We ended up on part of the course and it was fun to have people cheering for us. 😉 We also may or may not have hit one of their water stops. From campus, we headed back towards Carrboro via some trails.
And then continued on to this cool wooded trail near the end of our run! It’s in a park that Elle had run in before and the soft earth was a nice change from pavement and cars. It was super rocky/hilly/small though so we had to watch our feet!
Isn’t it pretty? It was very peaceful.
And finally — done. 8 miles, check!
This was actually a bit of a rough run — one of those runs where running really felt hard. My legs were tired basically the whole way, and the weather was dreary and gray, which didn’t help. You can really tell the tiredness in our pace, which was slower than usual. But we did it. 🙂 8 miles in 1 hour 15 minutes!
Splits:
- Mile 1: 8:59
- Mile 2: 8:48
- Mile 3: 9:01
- Mile 4: 9:25
- Mile 5: 9:11
- Mile 6: 9:09
- Mile 7: 10:58 (on the rocky/hilly trail where we had to go slow or break our ankles, ha)
- Mile 8: 9:28
Good times! I was super happy when we finished. 🙂 Elle headed home and I walked over to meet my friend Libby for brunch at a local favorite — Jessee’s in Carrboro!
Isn’t she the cutest? I <3 Libby. We had a great time catching up — even though we see each other almost every day in class, I felt like we hadn’t had much time to talk lately!
As soon as we arrived, I ordered a latte the size of my head:
It was amazing.
Plus my most favorite thing ever at Jessee’s — their open faced biscuit sandwich.
Yes, it was as amazing as it looks. Biscuit + scrambled eggs + bacon + tomato + melted cheddar + pepper = happiness. I demolished it all.
Matt and I spent the rest of the day yesterday relaxing before driving over to Winston-Salem to have dinner with his brother Chris and wife Jess. It was great to see them! They recently bought a house and did all sorts of renovations so we were excited to see it — they did an amazing job.
I’m off to get some things done on this dreary Sunday. What is the deal with it being amazing all week when I have to work/study and then being dreary on the weekends? Not cool, NC. Not cool at all.
Ta-ta for now, friends!
