I DID IT!

I didn't hit my sort-of-secret time goal of 2:15, but I did just fine. With plenty of help and encouragement from running buddy Stephanie.

Recap tomorrow. For now I'm hanging on my couch drinking Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride tea out of my 13.1 "been there, run that" mug that I picked up at the expo :)

GAH!

Too long since I've posted!

Let's start with the bad news. That I've already gone sort-of-public with, on Twitter, and I've known in my heart for a while.

I'm not running the Distance Run this weekend.

I'm very unhappy about it, but the fact is, I let my emotions get the better of me and neglected my training far too much over the month of August. Could I fake it? Probably. But I might actually hurt myself, and I know I'd be disappointed with my performance. I know myself, and the last thing I need is to spend 13 miles ragging on myself for failing to train.

The good news? I still get to hang out with a bunch of blogheads coming into town this weekend for the race!

The BETTER news? The (inadequate) amount of training that I DID do leaves me in a good place. My knee is OK, my endurance is OK, and I'm ready to start training for the Philly Half in November, which I just registered for!

On to the fun stuff. It's been a while since I've posted. Part of it is that this has been an insane week at work, and I just haven't had time. Part of it (the BETTER part) is that it was an equally insane weekend - but I was too busy HAVING FUN. Saturday we made an impromptu decision to have some of my siblings over to watch the Penn State game and make dinner. Sunday we hung out with some friends from law school who I haven't seen in forever. Add to that the cleaning and house-prepping, and the gym-ing and grocery shopping, and BAM! that's a full and fun weekend.

Last Friday (god, has it seriously been that long?) PhillyGuy and I went out to celebrate our anniversary. Yup - Monday marked two.freakin'.years since we got all dolled up and said "yup, you're the one" in front of our friends and family.



To celebrate, PhillyGuy made us reservations at R2L, a restaurant at the top of Two Liberty. We started with a drink at the bar while they got our table ready -- and he managed to snag us a very private, corner table that looked out over the Western part of the city.





Frankly, I expected this place to be decent food and all ambiance. I was blown AWAY - it far exceeded my expectations. We started with a braided loaf of pretzel bread while we perused our menus.



Appetizers were bacon-wrapped scallop potstickers and crisp cheese risotto.



Risotto balls might be up there with the greatest decadent treat inventions.





We split a bottle of wine with dinner. After seeing Murphy-Goode Liar's Dice zinfandel on Jenna's blog so many times, I was very excited to see it on the wine list. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world's worst picture of a delicious bottle of wine:



PhillyGuy also had french onion soup. The presentation was fun, but the soup itself was pretty "meh."



We also split two entrees. The veal, served five ways - including a meatloaf, a brisket, tenderloin, sweetbread and a gravy - tossed with potatoes:



and the halibut, seared and served over a smoky corn salad:



Un.Be.Lieve.Able. I can't pick a favorite, but I guess I'm leaning towards the halibut? Or maybe the veal? Or the risotto...GAH I DON'T KNOW.

I ended with a cappuccino, and we shared two dessert plates.



I love artistic foam! Beignets (which were actually a variety of fried pastries, including donuts, beignets, and an apple fritter) and a trio of dipping sauces:



and the "Cinnamon Toast Crunch." you had me at "donut ice cream."



I would HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend this place for a swanky night out. The view was amazing, the ambiance was fun (if a little slick), but the food far surpassed my expectations.



Oh, and just in case you were wondering what we did on our ACTUAL anniversary?

Sweet Lucy's BBQ in the northeast.





I may love me some sweetbreads and cappuccino, but ribs and messy, vinegary Carolina BBQ sauce is where it's REALLY at for me.

Yoga Pants at Work

Yup. I'm doing it.

What a beautiful freakin' morning it is. Sunny, low 70s, (relatively) low humidity.

What a perfect day to rock some lululemon to work.



Pretty sure this isn't in our "business casual" dress code, strictly speaking.

But I'm also pretty sure I can go the whole day without interacting with anyone in the office. Bosslady's out. My secretary is out. I haven't been working for anyone else lately. And I am flanked by empty offices.

And besides - other than the pants, I'm dressed "professionally." Cardigan, shell, pearls, watch. Hurrrrr's did. Makeup's did.



I'll be comfy all day, and no one will be the wiser.

On a more serious note...I am considering selling my bib for the Rock'n Roll Half.

I have just NOT been training properly. I do my long run on the weekends, and that's it. And it's showing.

Sure, I've been getting in my lifting and some other types of cardio (mainly the bike)...at least up until the past couple of weeks, when I hit a bit of a bump and let it get the best of me. Part of it is that it's been stinkin' hot and humid, and I've noticed that while my knee rarely bothers me during or after an outdoor run, it almost ALWAYS acts up on the treadmill. So, on hot and humid days -- which has been, um, all of them, lately -- I don't run.

And then I get out to do my long run and it's a big struggle. I always, ALWAYS feel amazing when it's done, but it's tough when your first six miles are kind of lame and you don't start to get into a groove until the last two. I go back and forth, though - I will (probably) feel better about myself if I just suck it up and race. But I might not. I might either (1) struggle for 12 of the 13 miles, only to finish with a time so slow I don't feel accomplished at all, and/or (2) actually hurt myself since I'm not in "half marathon" condition, physically.

I guess my bottom line is -- I could fake ten miles for Broad Street. I'm not so sure I can fake 13.1. And I'm not so sure I want to try.

Thoughts?

No Supervision

You know...I love my job and I really love my boss. I lucked out, for sure. But I can't lie...I still love those days when I know she's not coming in.

It's not like I do anything differently, really. I guess I could. It'd be tempting to come to work in yoga pants, for example. I truly don't think anyone would notice, because when she's not here, I may not need to interact with anyone else at all, except my secretary. Who isn't going to judge me. (At least, I don't think she'd judge. And if she did, she'd still be nice to me, so whatever.)

But there is just something freeing about knowing that I don't need to get X done by Y time. Which means I can blog at 9am and not feel guilty about it.

Distance Run/Rock & Roll Half training is going...OK. I had a 7-miler this weekend, which was also my first ever run with my brand-new Camelbak. PhillyGuy was away, so I couldn't take pictures for you, but I dig it. I bought the Annadel:



Not too big, not too tiny. I filled it about 1/3 of the way the night before and laid the bladder flat in the freezer overnight. In the morning, I filled it the rest of the way with lemon-lime Gatorade. Since the ice was in a big sheet, it took longer to melt and kept my Gatorade nice and cold.

I got a later start than I wanted, and didn't hit the road until just after 9am. I ran a nice out-and-back on Kelly Drive and the Schuylhill River trail. As I was running out, I started thinking about how I should build in a cooldown period. Oh! Wouldn't it be great to make it so that I wrapped up my seven miles just as I was exiting the trail back onto Locust Street? Then I'd have a nice half-mile walk home to cool down, instead of running straight back to my house and having little to no walking time. Great! I'll just run an extra half mile out before I turn around.

Are you better at math than I am? Because I was AWFULLY surprised when I hit my 7 mile point when I was still on the trail. Not just still on the trail - I hadn't even made it to the steps at JFK/Market Streets. Oh...DUH. An extra half mile out before you turn around is NOT an extra half mile. It's an extra mile. And I am a total moron.

Oh well. I had a nice mile long walk home with the Garmin turned off. Splits:



Eh. Those splits are a little deceptive, to be completely honest with you, blogworld. I took a couple of "stretching breaks" between a few of the miles. Like between miles 2 and 3...and again at mile 3.5. And again at mile 4.5. And again at mile 5. And then I just straight up walked a bit during mile 7 - but, of course, that's actually reflected in my time. So even though my Garmin tells me I covered 7 miles in 1:08.52, it actually took me more like an hour and twenty minutes, because I paused the garmin during my stretching breaks.

I need to stop doing that. Breaks are OK, don't get me wrong -- but it's not helpful to me to look at my time and say "oooh, I did 7 miles and averaged a better-than-10-minute pace!" when, well, I didn't.

Ok. Moving on. Another side effect of my training? My poor toenail, which bruised and eventually fell off after Broad Street, has not been able to grow back properly. Brace yourselves for gross feet pics:



Oh, you poor thing. It doesn't hurt or anything, it just looks...well...busted.



I've been telling my pedicure ladies to just leave it alone. They don't seem to mind. I'm afraid to paint it, like somehow the nail polish might inhibit the regrowth process and I'll be doomed to have a busted toenail for the rest of my life.

Meh. Now, who's ready for food pictures??????

Monday dinner:



Mexican crockpot chicken. I throw mushrooms, onions and peppers (usually -- I didn't have any on hand this week) in the crockpot with a bunch of chicken breasts (frozen works too if you forget to thaw them), black and pinto beans, cumin, paprika, chili powder, salt and pepper (or a packet of taco seasoning for the really lazy), and dump a jar of salsa over the entire thing. Cook on low for 8 hours. Come home to delicious chicken that falls apart when you stir it.



I like to serve it with hot sauce, black olives, green chiles and plain Greek yogurt.

Breakfast today:



I treated myself to a delicious DiBruno's whole wheat bagel with their lox spread.



SO GOOD, even if I did have to scrape 2/3 of it off. And it took about four hundred times longer than usual, because I scraped it off and then performed surgery to dig out the lox pieces and put them back on the bagel.

I suppose I should get to work now.

Anyone want to join me for an 8-miler this weekend? Assume a 10:00 pace. And assume that I will actually run the entire time, which I generally do when I have someone with me.

Round 2!

I'd been musing a couple of weeks ago on what I wanted to do after Round 1 of P90X wrapped up.

Here's the final decision:

PhillyGuy and I officially started Round 2 yesterday, kicking it off with a nice, tough Chest & Back workout in our "home gym," followed by the still-douchey, but incredibly challenging, Ab Ripper X.

I'll be doing a modified version of it this time around (unlike last time, where I just straight up deviated from the program with no real rhyme or reason), so my weeks will look like this:

Monday: P90X (generally chest/back or chest/shoulders/triceps, depending on the phase; Abs)
Tuesday: run workout (speedwork or tempo run)
Wednesday: P90X (shoulders/triceps/biceps or biceps/back, abs)
Thursday: Yoga X
Friday: P90X Legs & Back
Saturday: Long run
Sunday: rest

That might need some tweaking -- doing a long run the day after a quad-killing sequence of Yoga X followed by legs & back is probably not going to be much fun. But, I really want to run the Distance Run/Rock & Roll half in September...so training for that needs to be my priority.

I still haven't gotten a chance to buy a new camera cord, so I have no fun pictures to share with you all from my relaxing Fourth of July weekend, my shiny new MacBookPro, or any of that good stuff. Instead, I'll just share pictures of where I really, REALLY wish I was on this 101-degree day in Philly:







Yeah, I'd go back to Hawaii. Like now. I really can't complain about the heat, though -- if I start to sweat, all I have to do is think back a few months, when the streets looked like this:

First Half!

So, I did it.

I just registered for the Philadelphia Distance Run...which is apparently now known as the "ING Rock n' Roll Half Marathon - Philadelphia."

This is my first half. Or, well, it will be. Years ago, my friend's mother gave me her bib for the Disney half, but I (wait for it) injured myself during training and did not run it. (Please try to hold back your astonishment.)

I have plenty of time to train and for once in my life, have finally figured out that I don't need to go insane on every single run. And I strongly suspect that if I DON'T go insane on every single run, I might juuuuuust manage not to hurt myself five weeks into training.

If my training looks like it's going well, I think I'm going to go really nuts and register for the November half also.

Not going to lie, I'm a little excited to train. Like, I kind of want to dance around my office. (I probably won't do that. Might somehow affect my chances of making partner.)

So, who is going to run it with me???