Of Schmoopiness & Long Runs

For those of you that follow me on Twitter or are a Facebook Fan you probably saw the "Flashback Friday" I posted that linked to the blog post I wrote last year where I revealed to all of the blogoshpere my love affair with Spike. Although we had been long distance dating for a few months by that time, that post was the first time I admitted it to the world that not only was I dating Spike but was pretty much head over heels for him. As you can imagine I was being uber girly as I re-read through that post and remembered how nervous I was that fateful day last year when Spike came to visit me for the first time in Orlando... little did we know of what the coming year would have in store for us!!! So as I wallowed around in schmoopiness, these beautiful flowers arrived which kicked off a perfect weekend of a romantic dinner Friday night and sleeping in late for the first time in I can't even remember when on Saturday. *le sigh*

After a gloriously lazy morning with my honey I decided to get a long run in before we went to dinner with family that night. I had a general idea of where to go and a guesstimate of how far it'd be and headed out to explore our new town. Between our trip, my mid-day runs with my coworker and Spike regularly working out of town, neither of us have had a chance to run our new 'hood yet!!! I hoped to get in 10 miles but hadn't run further than 8.8 M (my last leg of Ragnar) in two weeks so time would tell what my legs thought of that idea. As I set out my primary focus was on the terrain, with the snow comes ice and I'm a rookie when it comes to running on both. The first two miles is a nice wide trail with some wood bridges, where the snow and ice lurk, followed by one huge uphill for about a half mile and then it levels out and it's all shoulders and sidewalks til home with a few bunny hills sprinkled in along the way.

Looks like I've found where to run my hill repeats!!!

As I went along I mentally noted mileage versus location and places to stop to use the bathroom along the way; you know all the important details for future use. I managed to hit all the sights of the city before wrapping my way back home and wouldn't you know I felt like I could've ran another 5 miles when I arrived home having run 10 M. I hadn't looked at my pace once during the run so I was more than pleasantly surprised when I saw that I had managed just shy of an 8:30 avg for the run. It made me realize that if I could pull that off without trying than surely I could BQ Cleveland if I did! The best part was I'm totally getting down this dressing for the colder weather, I didn't feel the least bit sore yesterday and now I have a few different routes around the city. Weekend success!!!

I hope y'all had wonderful weekends too, I can't wait to make the rounds and read all the CIM & Vegas recaps!!!