Morning! Did everyone have a nice weekend? Mine was filled with good eats, good exercise, and good friends. My favorite!
Check out these epic burgers Matt made us on Friday:
He gets an A+ for presentation alone! The burgers were piled high with sautéed mushrooms and onions, tomato, pickles, and fresh spinach, sandwiched together with whole wheat buns. To get it all to stay together, he speared them with chopsticks! Genius. And of course baked sweet potato fries are always a win. He cut them nice and thin so they were crispy!
After the burger feast, Matt and I went to see Silver Linings Playbook, which was awesome. Highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet! I have a total girl crush on Jennifer Lawrence. Saturday was filled with fun friend dates: a yoga + brunch date with my college friend Kathleen, a coffee date with my friend and previous coworker Maranda, and dinner out with Matt and a bunch of our mutual friends.
On Sunday morning, it was time for another long run! The plan: 12 miles with my friend Karen.
As you know, I have quite a few half marathons on the docket this spring (for a full list of races I’m doing, check out the “upcoming races” section of my blog’s right sidebar). I wrote recently about my Spring Half Marathon Schedule & Training Plans, and the first of which is the DC Rock n Roll half marathon in 2 weeks! This was my longest training run – next weekend I’ll be tapering and I have a fun 5 mile trail race on the agenda.
A 12 mile run called for my old friend Mr. Camelbak to come back out to play! It’d been way too long. I also brought an unpictured Clif shot gel – double espresso flavor.
It was cold out there, so gloves and ear warmers were also necessary! Zensah sent me these cool smart touch running gloves awhile ago and I’ve been rocking them on a lot of runs lately. Big fan! Lightweight and breathable but they keep my hands warm. I like the touch screen ability in the fingers and there’s also suede on the outer thumb so you can wipe your nose. Gross but necessary for cold runs. 🙂
Karen and I decided to do a fun varied course all through DC so we would have lots of nice scenery and sights to keep us distracted on our adventure. We started by running by Iwo Jima:
And headed down over Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial.
From there, we ran down the reflecting pool (hooray for winter meaning there aren’t 1290203948293048 tourists around – not good for running!):
Past the Washington Monument (boo to the construction fence in front of it right now!):
And all the way down the National Mall to the Capitol.
And then we came back! We ran back over Memorial Bridge and down onto my favorite trail, the Mt. Vernon Trail along the water.
It was WINDY out yesterday! We felt like we were running against a wall at times, but at least the scenery was nice. 🙂
(I got the pictures when we stopped to stretch!)
From there, we headed up a massive hill and then rounded out the 12 with a nice and flat 2 mile loop at the top of the hill. Whew! Done and done. I’m so glad I had a buddy with me – long runs are always way more enjoyable with a friend to talk to! We chatted pretty much nonstop the whole time, as usual. 🙂
Splits:
- Mile 1: 8:29
- Mile 2: 8:32
- Mile 3: 8:38
- Mile 4: 8:50
- Mile 5: 8:47
- Mile 6: 8:48
- Mile 7: 8:55
- Mile 8: 9:01
- Mile 9: 8:47
- Mile 10: 9:10
- Mile 11: 9:31
- Mile 12: 9:02
Total distance: 12 miles. Total time: 1:46:31. Average pace: 8:52 minute/miles. I was excited when I saw our average pace – neither of us felt like we were pushing it on pace at all, and that’s faster than I thought we were going! Maybe I should try to PR at this race in 2 weeks after all… 🙂
The rest of yesterday was spent relaxing, hanging out with Matt (we’ve been watching out way through the old TV show 24 on Netflix – so addictive! We’re in season 3 now), and doing some meal prep for this week, inspired by Lindsay’s Sunday Food Prep post!
I made a big batch of a variation of my Simple Mediterranean Pasta Salad.
And also threw together a variation of my Quinoa Taco Salad, with pinto beans and a little chicken!
Yum. Now we have food to eat this week. 🙂 I had some leftover plain pasta and quinoa since I made too much, so those are in the fridge to throw into quick meals as well. I also chopped some veggies and got all the meat off of a rotisserie chicken I bought at Whole Foods last week – some of it went into the Quinoa Taco Salad and the rest is now ready to be thrown into quick meals as needed!
What did you guys get into this weekend? Anyone else do any good meal prep or long runs?
