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! :)

5 Miles is Now Difficult...

Man, running a marathon really messes with your brain in a lot of ways. Suddenly, two and a half weeks after I ran 26.2 miles, 5 miles seems like a chore. 5!! What is happening?!

Since Daylight Saving Time (which I always want to call Daylight Savings) the night is coming to Seattle around 4:30. 4:30!! Which means the window for running in the daylight hours is becoming smaller and smaller. Yoga has taken up most of my morning time, as well as, you know, my full-time job - and before I know it, it's dark outside. Well, shit.

This just means more treadmill miles. Womp-womp!

I kind of decided at the beginning of this run that it would be a "slow" one. What's slow on the treadmill is so much different than outside, though - I really hate it. But what am I doing right now? Sitting inside, typing up this blog post, while it's daylight outside and I could be running 4 miles. But.. you have so much TV to watch! Yes, self, I do. And watching it on the treadmill rather than sitting on my ass is definitely a positive. But still. What am I doing? 

My current goal, or what I'm "in training" for (hence this blog title), is to get a PR on my next half marathon in December. At this rate, skipping a 10 mile workout and running more than half of my runs on the treadmill, it's not going to go well. Regardless of how awesome and amazing my 7 mile Vegas run was... I just don't foresee a PR happening. Should I change my goals? Should I continue to strive and be disappointed? I'm not really sure.... I guess we'll just have to see how the rest of these runs go.

Next up: Vegas Recap!

You Can Run, Even in Vegas!

Hey y'all! I'm back from Vegas!

I didn't bring my computer while I was over there- otherwise I would have posted at least something this weekend. I realized in my last post that I didn't even mention anything about going to Vegas- I also didn't even tell my parents I was going. Whoops! :P

This'll be the running part of the trip, and I'll update y'all later with the trip itself. Because it was AWESOME.

Saturday was our last day staying in the Flamingo and our first day staying in our friend's house, about 10 miles away from the Strip. As soon as we got in, I felt the URGE to run in the fantastic Vegas weather, so that's exactly what I did.

IT WAS AWESOME. All while I was running, I kept thinking, "Look at these amazing views! The first thing I need to do after I stop running is take a picture!" And what did I not do? Take any pictures. FAIL.

The run felt SO GOOD. I hadn't run for three whole days (and even then it was only 3 miles!) so I felt really well rested, even with the amount of partying we did. I told my friends that I'd be gone for an hour, so I really wanted to see how many miles I could run in that hour. Well, my friends, looks like that number is 7! I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. PLUS look at those nice negative splits at the end!

Unfortunately, now my running schedule is completely off track. I should have run 6 miles last Wednesday night, and I didn't. Then I had to run 4 miles Thursday morning before we left - and I didn't. I was supposed to run only 5 on Saturday. Here's how I figure it... I just change the 6/4 to a 7/3 and then I'm only a few days behind!

Well friends, on Sunday, the day I wanted to run 3 miles, I got home from the airport with a fever. A fever! What! It really really sucked. No running that day. So 3 miles had to wait until Monday... night. Ugh! I keep putting these things off.

It was the most sluggish I've felt running 3 miles in a while. :/

Blehhh

I would assume that I'm finished with tapering from the marathon and I'm in full-on training mode for the half. But, I haven't done any long runs. Now I'm behind 19 miles. How do you catch up from that?! Today I'm planning on running 5... maybe I just skip the 10 mile run and go right on to the 12 mile run this Saturday and just run as much as I can in-between.

If I run 5 today and skip the 10 miler, then I'll have 19 miles spread over 4 days to catch up on. Meh- I'm not really sure what I can or should do! Usually I never get this behind on running schedules.

Any advice?

October Recap