This weekend was half great

Hello & welcome to new readers and followers!  And of course hello again to those of you who keep coming back to read my blog!

The great part of the weekend started for me on Friday afternoon when I got an email confirming my volunteer duties for this year’s Boston Marathon.  I will be directing runners and loading buses on Marathon Monday on Boston Common from 5:30 to 8:30 in the morning.  The runners get bussed out to Hopkinton for the start of the race and the Common is where the buses leave from.  I know the shift starts sooo early, but I wanted to be done with volunteer duties before the race started so I could meet up with my family along the course and cheer on my cousin, Amanda, who is running the marathon.  She is running as part of the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge team.  You can read about her marathon training on her blog, Rise to Run and you can read about her fundraising (and donate if you wish!) on her Dana Farber team page. She is doing awesome and is almost at her goal!

Even though I am not running the marathon, I still felt really cool to get an email from the Boston Athletic Association that started out “Dear Heather, Welcome to the 115^th B.A.A. Boston Marathon…”  Only a month away, it will be a fun weekend in Boston with my family!

Saturday was another great day.  I ran the Ocean Drive 5k and got a new PR!  So excited to shave 29 seconds off my time from the ESPN 5k two weeks ago!

The course was beautiful along scenic Ocean Drive and Washington Ave in South Beach.  The art deco buildings are so beautiful; they were even on our race bibs.

Super cute race bib

The post race awards ceremony took place at Nikki Beach and it was nice to relax on the lounge chairs there.  I was so relaxed I may or may not have fallen asleep for about 20 minutes :)

Between the 3.1 miles I ran for the 5k, I also ran an additional mile before the race, to bring my total for the Cupcake Marathon up to 9.1 miles.  Still need 17.1 miles, but I have a 10 miler planned for Thursday morning, plus a couple other short runs this week, so I won't have a problem reaching my goal of 26.2 miles.

The weather was so nice on Saturday; I decided to stay at the beach afterwards to get a little sun.  Before leaving SoBe, I stopped at Joe’s Stone Crabs to pick up some lunch.  Delicious!

Yummy stone crabs!

The half of the weekend that was not so great was Sunday when I woke up feeling like crap!  I was so disappointed because I was supposed to go to my first Red Sox Spring Training game in Ft. Myers.  The thought of driving over there, sitting in the sun all day and driving home was not appealing, so I bailed.  However, like any die-hard Sox fan, I got online and bought a ticket for a game next week.  I can not let another March go by with out going to a Spring Training game.  Besides, I had bought a new baseball and two new Sharpies so I could try and get some autographs before the game.  For now, my ball will sit blank on my counter for the next week, so sad.  Oh well, something to look forward to!

My sad little baseball with no autographs

I am not really sure what was wrong with me yesterday, but I do feel better today and I plan on sweating the rest of it out of my system at tonight’s spin class.  The teacher on Monday is amazing!  Can’t wait for class!

Make it a great week everyone!