3 Day Weekend!

Wwwweeeeeeee!!!  I love me a good 3-day weekend!  Makes me feel so free!

I am heading up to Maine tonight to enjoy a weekend of sun, sand, lobstahs and family, can’t wait.

I am slightly annoyed/irritated/pissed off though because the airport's website is saying my flight will be leaving at 11:27 instead of 9:57...I am desperately pressing refresh hoping this will change.  We'll see.
I usually have very good luck when flying so I am just trying to take this in stride and not overreact like a crazy person.  We'll see about this too.
What are you up to this weekend?

****Blogger Love****

If you find yourself relaxing and lounging around this weekend, take a look at some of the other blogs I like to read, they’re great!

Blogs by people I know:

Amanda writes Rise to Run.  She is a runner also and will be moving from Boston to San Francisco in August.  You know she will have a lot of stories to share!

Martha writes Martha's So-Called Life, where she has recipes, reviews books, points out awesome handmade items on Etsy and talks about her life.

Wade writes The Crazy Thing About It All and takes amazing wildlife and landscape photographs.

Trish writes Living La Vida Lum and talks about the adventures of her two-year-old daughter.

Lorraine writes Run Wifey Run and she manages her family and her marriage all while training for a marathon!

Blogs by people I have never met (just in the bloggie world), but think are great!

365 days of awesome

(Just) Trying is for Little Girls

Anywhere There’s An Airport

Blonde Ponytail

Finding Happiness in Health

Little Fruit Fly in Rainbow Colored Socks

Running Peanut

Happy 4^th of July weekend!!!

Water Water Everywhere

I spent most of last weekend either outside or in the water.  It was a fun (and exhausting) weekend.

On Saturday morning I woke up and went for a run.  For the first time I used my new Nathan QuickDraw Plus handheld water bottle.  I loved it.  With the strap around your hand you do not have to grip the bottle at all and it does not feel like you are holding anything.

Something so simple like a hand strap completely amazes me :)

I was very excited after my run!

After going for a run, I went to try out the AquaFit class at the LA Fitness Gym by my place.  I love this class!  I knew it would feel amazing after running outside in the heat and humidity.  When I first saw ‘AquaFit’ on the list of classes at the gym I figured it was mostly for the super old and obese (so judgmental!), though I still wanted to try it.  There were people of all ages, sizes and abilities.  I am joining that gym and am super excited to be able to attend this class on Saturday mornings. 

During class we are in the pool (obviously) and we have these plastic dumbbells that create extra drag and resistance in the water.  The workout feels pretty great.  Plus the water feels so good on my arms and legs, it is like a little massage.

Keifer aquatic dumbells are great!

Later that day I drove up to Daytona Beach to see one of my best friends, Leah, and her boyfriend, Andrew, who were there for vacation.  That night we headed into Orlando to meet up with our other BFF, Annette.  It was great to catch up and have some laughs during our 3 hour dinner!  We missed our other BFF, Jamie, but know we will see her in September.

Andrew & Leah, the "Babas"

Love these girls!

I spent the night in Daytona and Leah, Andrew and I stayed up chatting until 4am, whoa!  We were up by 10am on Sunday morning though so we could head right to the beach.

After the required stops at Starbucks for coffee and Publix for sandwiches (BEST deli sandwiches ever!)  we headed to the beach.   Daytona Beach has amazing waves and I am pretty sure Leah and I were in the water for at least two hours straight. 

Best waves ever!

Andrew was in and out of the water as he does not really care for the “sea” too much.  Andrew is from England, so he uses fancier words and has a much better accent than we Americans. 

After becoming completely covered in salt and totally pruney (is this a word?) from the water, we decided to head for land and lay out for awhile.  The girl from Florida (me) and her sun-worshipping friend (Leah) both got pretty red that day (I use SPF 30!), but the fair skinned Englishman barely had any color.  I thought for sure he would burn.  Way to go Andrew.

After “showering” in the pool we headed out for dinner before I drove home that night. 

A fun and exhausting (but in a good way) weekend!

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!

Carnaval 8K, Sam Adams & the beach

Sunday mornings are my favorite time of the whole week.  The laziness, coffee, laundry and the home repair shows on TLC always makes me happy that it is Sunday.  Yesterday was even better because when I woke up I knew I still had one more day off from work to be lazy, drink coffee and do laundry, love long weekends!

I saved all my laziness for today as I participated in the Carnaval 8k & 5k run out on Virginia Key yesterday.  I ran the 8K, which is a totally random distance, but I think it is because this race use to take place on a Friday night on Calle Ocho in Little Havana.  Now they have changed it to Sunday morning on Virginia Key… weird, but I’ll go with it since the race started and ended at the beach!

My plan for this race was to run as hard as I could for as long as I could.  I am usually the “take it easy” girl when it comes to race strategy, but lately I have been amazed at the progress my running has made, so I am loving being able to push myself.  Half-way through the race I was two and a half minutes ahead of my usual pace… “whoa!”… yea I know, I thought the same thing too.  I was really happy with this and ended up finishing the race 39 seconds ahead of my goal time.  A good day on the road for sure!

The last mile was tough, but overall I had minimal soreness in my legs and I felt really strong.  This race has put me in a great frame of mind for THIS Sunday’s Princess half marathon – so excited!  I need to make sure these little details are in my blog, so next week after the Princess half when my running motivation totally plummets I can re-read this, and hopefully it will keep me going and build on what I have already accomplished :)

During the run there was a moment that made me think “running is awesome”.  It was when I was heading over a bridge running hard, pumping the arms, but then there is that moment when you reach the top of the bridge, the road evens out, your arms relax and fall to your side and then you cruise down the other side – awesome!

There was no finisher’s medal for this race but they did have free beer and arroz con pollo… Bienvenido a Miami folks.  Who cares if it was only 9am and I was enjoying a Sam Adams!  I was at the beach after a great run, my toes in the sand, enjoying the beautiful day.  Sunday mornings are the best…