Good morning, friends! First things first — if you have a blog, small business, or Etsy shop you’d like to promote, please consider checking out my brand new “Sponsor” page — I launched it yesterday and on the page you can find my blog stats and advertising rates. I’ll start displaying ads on October 1st on a monthly basis so if you’re interested in being included, please let me know ASAP! All sponsors will also be featured in a monthly sponsor shout out round up post. 🙂
Anyway — I hope you had all wonderful weekends! Mine was great — Matt and I were actually in town for once! We spent a good amount of the weekend doing wedding planning related stuff (a couple meetings, etc.), but it was nice to see friends and enjoy the beautiful weather here in DC, too. On Saturday morning, I made a new friend! Meet Grace:
Grace is a DC area blog reader who sent me the sweetest email a couple months ago about meeting up and we’ve been trying to make it work for awhile now — Saturday was finally the day! She’s training for a half marathon next month and had 9 miles on the docket; I’m running the Army Ten Miler in late October so I figured it would be good for me to do 9 miles, too. And so a running date was planned!
We had GORGEOUS weather on Saturday morning for the run — crisp and cool but gloriously sunny. The type of day you dream about in August when you’re dripping sweat after spending 2 seconds outdoors.
We met up at one of the access points to the Mt. Vernon Trail, which is one of my DC favorites — it goes for miles and miles along the Potomac River on the Virginia side and has stunning views of the monuments, DC, and the water.
Grace and I had a great run — not only was the company awesome (we had a ton in common and spent the whole time chattering away), but it would be hard to have a bad run with this scenery and this weather. 🙂
The miles flew by and before I knew it, we were looping back and finishing out the 9 miles!
We ran the 9 miles in 1:20:52, for an average pace of 8:59.
Splits:
- Mile 1: 9:16
- Mile 2: 9:09
- Mile 3: 9:06
- Mile 4: 9:06
- Mile 5: 9:12
- Mile 6: 8:47
- Mile 7: 8:39
- Mile 8: 8:56
- Mile 9: 8:40
I was pleased to see that we sped up near the end of the run! My legs were starting to get a little tired by the last mile, but overall, I felt great the whole time and the run flew by. Grace and I have very similar half marathon personal records (PRs – mine is 1:49:37 and hers is 1:49:59) so we have already made all sorts of big plans to train for a spring half together and beat our mutual PRs. 🙂 Grace, thanks for the great run — can’t wait to do it again soon!
After saying goodbye to Grace, I headed home while enjoying a chocolate milk I had stored in the car while we were running — I packed it in a lunch box with an ice pack and it was still nice and cold when I drank it. Best idea EVER — I love chocolate milk right after a long run. Protein and carbs, check!
The rest of Saturday morning was spent perusing the farmer’s market with Matt:
(Hi to blog reader Caitlin who we ran into at the market!)
After the market, Matt and I had lunch with my grandmother, met with our wedding officiant to hammer out some ceremony details, and then headed over to Yards Park in Eastern Market/Capitol Hill area to hang out with our friends Tom and Janice! Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures because I was busy socializing, but we packed some picnic snacks, threw the frisbee around, enjoyed the weather, and later ended up grabbing dinner and drinks in the area before heading home. Fun way to spend a Saturday!
I can’t believe today is Monday already — the weekends lately have really been flying by. I’m off to my first day at my new (second to last) dietetic internship with a corporate wellness place. I’m with them for 3 weeks before taking a short break from internships for the wedding!
Have a great day, everyone! What did you do this weekend? Any great workouts or meals?
