Catching Up

Hello everyone! Hope you all have been doing great:)

It's been a little crazy around my way this past week, so I haven't been able to update lately. I was too busy with Charlie's surgery and all! He did really well for the procedure. Recovery has been pretty tough for him. Having to go home with a catheter is no fun:( But he's handling it really well and I'm very proud of him. I can't wait for him to be back to his normal self though!:)

In other news, this past Sunday was the Veteran's Day 10k! It was a really great race! Definitely one of the bigger ones I've attended. The weather was great! Nice and cool, with the sun shining down on us. The place we ran at was great; West Potomac Park in Washington DC. It was beautiful. Most of the run was along the Potomac River.

This was my first 10k race, and despite being hungover, I actually did pretty well! Yes, you heard me right... hungover! I did not intend to drink the night before, but things happen! I had went to my parents house for my Dad's birthday, and my sister in-law and I ended up finishing a big bottle of Moscato between the two of us! It sure was yummy.

I was planning to go home after that, but some last minute plans with Alicia popped up and I ended up swinging by her place to pick her up! We went out to Adam's Morgan, which I had never been before! It was a blast! First we went to Madam's Organ which was a really cool, old, creepy building. It was 3 floors I think, with like 5 bars. We went all the way to the top and had a few drinks:)

After that, we went to Sutra which was also pretty cool. It was like a lounge/club type place. It was kind of empty though, so we left and attempted to go to another place, Bravo! Bravo! But, that plan failed because we couldn't find ANY parking! Ugh... lame. Anyways, I didn't end up getting home till 3am! I had to be up for the race at 6am....! Yikes! Bad me... lol

I felt crappy when I woke up, but I took two ibuprofen and chewed a couple of tums and I was good to go! Once I got to the race, I felt pretty decent. I was running a little late, so I even ended up running from where I parked, to the race, which was about 1 mile! lol:)

I started off running with Amy and Jenn, two co-workers from my job, and we were going at a pretty comfortable pace. I really wanted to run a little faster, so I ended up going off on my own:)

I felt really good the whole time! Never got too out of breath and kept a decent pace the whole time. It's nice running a race on a path that you don't know. It keeps you surprised as to how long you've been running! Although they did have a few mile markers!

Towards the end of the race, I noticed that I was at a pretty good time. I decided to kick my pace up a notch! Once I could actually see the clock at the finish time, and noticed that I was still under an hour, I really floored it! I was so excited to be able to finish a 10k in under 1 hour!!!

Gun Time - 59:12
Net Time - 58:17
Pace - 9:23
Place - 474 out of 1139 (Women's Division)
Age Group 20-24 - 95 out of 157

I'm pretty proud of that!:) Running with all those amazing runners really inspires me and motivates me to run more. It really makes me want to run faster too. When I first started running, it was purely for fitness and losing weight. Now... running has become a passion and a hobby of mine. I truly enjoy it. Especially when you add competition to the equation... that really gets me going! Although I doubt I will ever come in top 3 or anything like that, my goal is to at least come in a top 10 of a SMALL 5k lol:)

I was VERY proud of myself the other day. The day before Charlie's surgery, he wanted to go to Outback Steakhouse. Kind of as his "last meal" before surgery lol. I told myself "Screw it... just eat whatever you want and who cares about logging it!"

Well, even when I tell myself that, I still usually end up logging it anyways, just to see how much I went over my limit. Once I did that, I was overcome with guilt! I just couldn't believe I had eaten so many calories during one meal! I promised myself that I WOULD burn all of those calories off that night!

I got on the treadmill with the intent of running until I burned off the amount of calories from that meal. Which was about 1,300... which is A LOT of running! Once I got to around 8 miles and saw that I STILL needed to burn more calories, I decided to just go for 10 miles straight!

I couldn't believe that I ran TEN MILES!! OMG! And on a treadmill?? Wow! It was during that moment that I realized something. I can definitely do a half marathon and I WILL sign up for one! Right now I'm undecided. There's the Ocean City Half Marathon on April 28th and then there's the Iron Girl Columbia Half Marathon on April 29th. I definitely can't do both, but I wish I could! The OC one is $55 and the Columbia one is $85. But I think it'd be easier to do a half around here, rather than driving to Ocean City. I dunno! I'll wait a little bit longer to decide.

I decided I'm going to weigh in every other week now, closer to the end of the week. It all depends on when I work. I don't like to weigh in after a night of working. Especially because I eat at 4:00am, so I feel like I would have extra food in my stomach! lol. I'm going to try and weigh on days that I don't work the night before, and hopefully I'll see something good!

I got my boots!! The ones I showed a picture of in my previous blog. I love them so much!! They are great and go with lots of outfits! So happy I got them:)

Well, I don't have much else to say. Writing this is making me really sleepy, so I'll write again after the next time I weigh in!!

Thanks for reading!!

Anna