What I've Been Up To Lately

Man, I've really fallen off the wagon with this blog. I mean, considering this is a running blog and not much running has been going on..

So, what have I been up to? Well, I'm still trying to keep up my mileage by increasing it by percentage.

October 20:

October 23:

October 25 (in Austin, in 80 degree weather! Woof!):

We were there for the weekend to witness one of my best friends from high school get married!

Back in Bellevue, I used Mapmyrun because Nike+ kept crashing (and I kind of love how it shows splits!):

On Halloween, I ran my last run of October:

I went to a Halloween party, as Wednesday Addams (JW was Ace Ventura!):

I even made little witches' brooms (pretzels with string cheese) and "pumpkins" (oranges with celery sticks)!

Basically I've been cruising along and have really been surprised by how quickly time is passing. I mean, November? Hi. Long time no see. But still, wow. Can't believe you're here now. It's definitely fall now.

November also brings NaNoWriMo, the 50,000 word novel-in-a-month challenge of which I've made multiple attempts and always failed. It started yesterday and I realized within the first hour of working on my novel idea that it just wasn't going to work. Haha! I'll spend the next few days thinking of something else, but if nothing sticks, then I'll just try again next year. I'll crank out a novel one of these days. :)

Back From Vacation

I'm back from vacation! Before I left, I ran some.

Cloudy September day :(

Not the best runs, not the worst. Just kind of meh overall. I was ready for a chill, no-running vacation!

My mom and I flew to Durango, CO and went to Four Corners, Mesa Verde, Silverton, Ouray, and even drove all the way to Moab, UT to the Arches National Park. We had a great time!

Ouray, CO behind us

I didn't run at all, and it was kind of awesome. I'm kind of realizing that running isn't my favorite, at least right now, and that I probably need to dial back my goal for Bellingham to be "just finish" rather than beat my last half marathon time. I might feel the racing bug bite me again, but right now it's just becoming a burden to get outside and run.

A pattern has been developing - what were supposed to be interval and speed runs have turned into slow runs, and I've deliberately not listened to upbeat music because I don't really want to run fast. I recognize that that's probably not supposed to happen. I'm just slogging through the run, not trying for speed, just waiting for it to be over with.

Sure, at least I'm burning a ton of calories, but my nutrition also suffers because of it. I end up eating much more unhealthily than I would normally if I knew I didn't need the carbs to run. So running is making me more unhealthy, I guess? I know I could easily change that but I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to do so.

I think after this half marathon, I'm going to focus on dancing, yoga, and singing. I finally found a tap studio that really challenges me and I'm really excited about it, so I'll be going weekly, if not twice a week!

Here are the runs I've done so far since I've gotten back:

53 degrees on today's run! It felt so nice, and it was sunny (hooray!), but I'm just waiting for the day when Seattle turns into dark and cold 24/7. Gotta enjoy this weather while it lasts!

Almost a Treadmill Marathon in Jamaica

Hellooooo, blogging world! I'm now a married woman!!

I feel like I've fallen off the face of the earth in wedding bliss! :) A full recap with pictures is forthcoming, as soon as I get some quality time to sit down and blog... but as for now, I just wanted to pop in while I have some downtime in Dallas and post about how running went while on our honeymoon in Jamaica!

A small recap: the day of the rehearsal dinner, I ran a tiny mile.

I will post more about the rehearsal dinner, wedding, and wedding weekend later :)

Once we got to Jamaica, it only took me a day to realize that I needed to exercise every day so I wouldn't gain 50 lbs while we were there. Fortunately, there was a fitness center.. so I ran on the treadmill every day.

The first day - 3 miles was so hard!!

JW (my husband!!) being silly behind me, just 2 tiny miles. Happy about negative splits!

SUPER happy about 4 miles. This run felt GREAT.

Pumped about 5 miles! Don't mind my husband. :D :D :D

5 miles again! This was difficult, but faster than the 5 miles the day before.

4 miles - almost done!

I finished it off with 2.25 miles - sad to leave Jamaica!

Apparently I can't count in Jamaica, because I thought I ran 26.2 miles total, but according to my recaps I only ran 25.25 miles. Fail!! I guess if you count my 1 mile the day of the rehearsal dinner, then it totaled 26.25 for the month of May... oh well! I still think 25.25 miles while on a honeymoon is really impressive.

After I got back, I jogged with my dog in Dallas:

Short but fun! 68 degrees and not too bad!

And then forgot my hair ties when I went to Austin to see my sister in law graduate:

I was SUPER annoyed.

And then I didn't get a chance to run until today, back in Dallas, outside again with my dog!

Slow, but I figured it's okay since I haven't run outside in 80 degrees much.

Phew! Lots and lots of running- treadmill running yes, but something is better than nothing, right?

Tomorrow the Peters family and I leave for Hawaii and I won't be back until Memorial Day! I'm not sure if I'll be able to post until then, but at least I got to update this little bit! :)

Vegas!

On Halloween, JW and I picked up our friend Sam and drove to the airport. Of course Sam wore one of her Halloween costumes on the plane, but neither JW or I were that courageous :)

Sam as a Bavarian Barmaid :)

We arrived in Vegas without a hitch (along with free drinks because it was Halloween on Southwest - score!), met up with our friend Aaron who was on a different flight, and our generous host Micah picked us up from the airport. We had arrived!!

Aaron

We found our way to the Flamingo, Micah dropped us off, and waited in the hour line to check-in (ridiculous) and managed to get two rooms adjacent to each other so we could spread out :)

Excited for the night!!

Micah, his wife Leiszle, and their friend Stephanie arrived and we got ready to go out. Our plan was to catch a cab to Fremont, watch the parade, eat there, and then get back by 10:30ish to go to a party at Hyde, a club in Bellagio.

JW and I did literally last minute costumes, so I'm pretty happy with how we turned out -

His mustache is upside-down and mine is in necklace form, but Mario & Luigi!!

Micah and Leiszle found their inspiration on Buzzfeed, but tweaked it, and were a pair of boobs with nipple tassles:

Bahahha! Aaron is Scotty from Star Trek.

And last but not least, Sam was Jessica Rabbit.

She's in the middle :)

Our cab driver was awesome because she started to hit on JW immediately - she was like 65, haha! She kept saying, "You don't make fun of my boy!" (she had a Russian accent), "He is a good one!" hahhaha they were great one-liners.

We made it to Fremont, where Micah and Leiszle were an instant hit. Seriously, everybody wanted to take a picture with them and everybody smiled when they approached. Boobs just make people happy :)

We walked around for a bit but pretty much missed the parade that was supposed to go on. We decided to go get something to eat - and let me tell you, sitting in a fancy restaurant dressed as Mario and Luigi with a big pair of boobs is really funny and awesome.

I didn't take a lot of pictures at the restaurant - we were the middle of attention anyways :)

We left the restaurant and were ready to go back to Flamingo to then walk over to the Bellagio. We were ready to have some fun!!

We took the above pictures in front of Hyde while we waited in line. Waiting in line was pretty frustrating - at first they didn't have our reservation, and then we had no service to bring up the e-mail, and then we had to fill in our e-mail addresses on this random form to get free drinks but we didn't end up getting any free drink tickets...

The solution to everything in Vegas, in case you were wondering, is to be a female in a dress. Once we got in and asked the bartender about free drinks, which he knew nothing about, we were then shepherded over to the bouncer, who knew nothing about it either, and we ended up right back where we started with the people who we gave our e-mails to. I was a little frustrated and went into a speech about how we've been going back and forth between people and nobody's been able to tell us anything... and the guy gave us about 10 free drink tickets. Welp, that did the trick!

Pretty pink drink tickets

We went back inside and started partying!

We met another Mario & Luigi!

The girls

It was a great night! We got back in around 3am and went straight to sleep.

The next morning, we went to brunch at this nice place called Mon Ami Gabi, near Paris. It was delicious!

After that, we wandered around the strip for a little bit and walked back to the Flamingo to find a happy hour.

We were basically biding time before we had reservations to go to a speakeasy back in Fremont. We took the bus and arrived around 10:15pm.

The drinks were delicious and the ceiling was made of doors.

We left around 12:30, and were hankering for some pizza.

"Good pizza made with love warms the heart" <3

The next day, we checked out of the hotel and put all of our stuff in Micah and Leiszle's car to drive back to their house to stay that night.

We were a little squished.

We parked in the Planet Hollywood parking lot and walked over to Burgr to have lunch.

YUM.

After we ate, we walked around to find another happy hour before we got back on the road. We were wanting those tall slushies that we kept seeing everyone holding.

After some more walking around and gambling, we drove back to Micah and Leiszle's house, where I finished my fantastic 7 mile run.

That night, we ate a delicious homemade gnocchi, corn, and grape tomato dish with an apple feta cheese salad that Leiszle made. It was SO GOOD. We finished off the night watching Hocus Pocus, complete with some more drinks at midnight on account of the official start of Sam's birthday!

The next morning was the beginning of our last day in Vegas. We started the morning with (unpictured) mimosas, chocolate chip banana pancakes, sausage, and blackberries. Such a good start to the day!

Before we knew it, it was time to pack, go to the airport, and get on our flight back. We had such a great time - I can't wait to go back!

Plus, we got free drinks on the plane on account of this birthday girl!

Until next time, Vegas! :)