Epic Weekend

Epic seems to be the theme of this weekend!

We went to Epic last night, had an epic night, and woke up this morning for an epic run which turned into another epic morning 🙂

 

Even though we had our fair share of fun last night. . . I woke up feeling good and ready to get a weekend sweat on.  I may not have my long runs anymore, but I still like a good sweat.

I woke up slowly with coffee and half a Chocolate Crunch Power Bar (new to me, I liked it), then headed down to the gym for a quick run while Zach finished up work.  Our plan was to head up to my favorite park and run a few miles together as well.

 

So I jumped on the treadmill and took a VERY easy first mile, followed by 400 repeats of 7.1-7.3 (400 on, 400 off) until I hit the 5k mark.  I finished in about 28:35.

I then did 50 sit ups and headed out with Zach to continue to the work out!

old pictures

It was SO nice to have Zach with me for the afternoon run.  Not only was it PERFECT running weather (high 50’s, low wind), we stayed at a pace that was very manageable (about 937), kept switching up trails, and before we knew it 3.5 miles were done.  WOOT!

Pretty impressive considering Zach rode 30 miles yesterday and I had already ran on the treadmill, THEN given my legs a break, which normally equals lead legs.

Seriously, what a perfect morning! 🙂

We went grocery shopping right after (smelly and all)  and picked up some necessities.  We’ve been bare bones here in the apartment with Zach gone for four weeks, so this was a big grocery week.

But more importantly, we picked up goodies for me to bake Zach his birthday cake

 

More pictures and recipe to come soon, but this one looks CARAMEL good!

Question fo the Afternoon:  What birthday cake would you have baked for you if you had your choice of ANY?

 

I’ve Missed Flexible Friday Nights

For the past 7 months or so I’ve been training for different halves.   The Steamboat and The Saint Louis.

For each weekend of those 7 months, I had a long run planned for Saturday morning.  That means Friday nights have needed to be relatively low key, especially as the miles started getting higher.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t go out or never drank the night before a long run, but I absolutely WOULD take it easy, and be cautious/picky about what I was eating. Luckily I have a husband who totally understands, and never really complained, and understood how important training was/is to me, and rolled with the punches.

Now that I am on a break from training, one of the things I was most excited about was flexibility  being allowed back into my Fridays and weekends.   During the Winter months, many of our Friday evenings will be spent driving to the mountains, and many Saturdays spent skiing, but I have flexibility to do whatever I want with my entire weekend schedule.  And that is a good feeling.  At least for a little while 😉

A Fun Friday Evening

Zach had the idea of going on a mini brew tour of Denver, so we decided to try a new-to-us brewery, Epic Brewery.

We new we were going to like it when we walked it.

The place was PACKED and it wasn’t even 6 PM yet.  Not to mention, this brewery is kind of in the middle on nowheresville, AKA where you may  not  want to be alone.  But it was HOPPIN.  The sign of a good business.

Being the sneaky lady I am, I found us a seat while Zach picked us up some beers to start the night.

 

I started with a Cheery Belgian that was not overly sweet but had a TON of flavor, and Zach had an IPA (go figure).

We relaxed and chatted with our first beers, then decided to get a bit of grub to go along with our second.

 

Epic had a foot truck stationed outside and let me tell you, these little sliders were TO DIE FOR.  Holy Cow.  Denver folks, if you see this truck, grab a bite.  YUM.  The one on the left was a dim chi slider, with a piece of bacon under there that was totally hiding, and the one on the right was a more standard pulled pork, but PERFECTLY done.

This was a great way to settle our stomachs while we hung out over a second beer.  Yum.  I went with a nitro porter, and Zach went with a nitro IPA (again, go figure).

Unfortunately, by this point in the evening, my camera hibernated…but we ventured on to one of our downtown go to’s, Wazee Supper Club for dinner.  I had a tuna salad and Zach got the fish and chips.   I would say the coleslaw that came with his food was my highlight…maybe that was the beer and wine talking?

After dinner we made it home and enjoyed an episode of Boardwalk Empire while we ate Halloween candy and for me, another pumpkin cookie.  YUM.

Really, such a great evening and a reminder of why I do love not training all the time 😉

And now, it’s time to finish up my morning Power bar, and get moving.  Zach and I are headed out for a run in a bit 🙂