My 5th CDPHP Workforce Team Challenge

Hey guys, happy Friday, I hope you all had a good week!  I was pretty busy and had a hard time finding the energy and motivation to tell you about what's been going on in my week, but there has been some pretty fun stuff.

As I mentioned, I started my week on Cape Cod for work, where I was treated with some beautiful scenery with the beach out my window and some delicious eats as well.  I had the pleasure of being able to get coffee at Mary Lou's coffee shop, is a staple for many and has incredibly delicious flavors.  I was pumped when I realized that there was one right near where we were working for the two days.

Their girl scout cookie coffee was deeeelish!  I also found a little sandwich place nearby that I enjoyed while working one day.  Lately I've been on an avocado kick and realllly enjoying having a lot of it in my life.  In the form of guacamole, on sandwiches, in salads, or however it is dished up, it's been tasting quite good lately.

And like I said, the views aren't too bad at the Cape.  I was lucky enough that my job gave me this great opportunity to spend some time here and have some fun too.  

I mean, just wow, right?

The event that we were hosting involved a lot of Instagram photographers and it was a really fascinating couple of days for me that involved picking their brains quite a bit.  I learned a lot about Instagram and downloaded a few new apps to play with and ordered some little lenses that you can use with an iPhone to try out on an upcoming trip.

Fisheye lens here I come!

On Monday while on the Cape I was able to get in a 4 mile hilly run that was really nice and I did 2 miles on Sunday night as well because I was feeling guilty over the fact that I didn't get a long run in over the weekend and that I ate so much with my family on Mother's Day.  I've been having quite a bit of back and forth fighting with myself over my fitness and eating habits lately.  It's definitely been hard to be in a routine while on the road and even now that I am home, I know I have more trips coming up so it's easy to just "stay bad" until I can eat healthy for real.

I got back to Albany late on Tuesday night and woke up early on Wednesday to meet my friends for a run.  We did a 3 mile run with hills on Wednesday and by the end of the day I was so wiped from everything over the past week and a half.  I came home from work and was in bed at 7:15, fast asleep at 7:30 p.m.  I got ELEVEN hours of sleep on a week night, which is just insane but my body needed it.  I felt a bit better on Thursday and had a really nice day at work because it involved going out to a celebration lunch honoring one of my coworkers who was named one of the Capital Region's top "40 Under 40" leaders.  The lunch included a really delicious chicken dinner, which was impressive since there were 700 people attending and it's hard to cater a group that big!

I don't know if it is because I went to bed so early the night before without really having dinner, but I was STARVING all day on Thursday.  The salads were already set when we arrived at our table and I couldn't wait to eat it, so I ate both my salad and one of the extras next to me.  It cracked me up when the ceremony actually started and the first speaker told everyone that they could start eating their salads.  I was only through one at that point, but my table had totally jumped the gun and all eaten their salads way early.  When the speaker told us to start eating we all looked at each other like, "Uhhh... woops?" because our plates were cleared!

And Thursday evening was one of my favorite runs of the year, the CDPHP Workforce Team Challenge!  I have written about this race many times before as it is the race that I trained for back in 2010 with the Couch to 5K program I did.  I couldn't run the full race that first time, but 2 weeks later ran the Friehofer's Run and finished my first 5K ever.  I love that at the Workforce Challenge, all my coworkers come out and we run in my neighborhood.  It's a great tradition that I very much enjoy.

This year they even changed the course around to deal with some of the crowding problems that occur.  There were about 9,700 runners on a drizzly, muggy night last night, and it was awesome to see everyone out in full force!

I've developed quite the collection of shirts over the years because my company makes a shirt every year.  This year's shirt, I LOVED the color.  It was a bright pink-ish color that we were calling "hot coral" or "neon red" to avoid using the word "pink" which I don't think many of the guys appreciated.  However, I've gotten enough race shirts over the years in "guy" colors that it was great to have such a bright fun color to add to my collection!

The Corporate Challenge is a weird distance at 3.5 miles, and Jess and I actually added to the distance of the run by getting in 2 miles before it even started by running from my apartment down to the start.  Parking is always a big hassle by the race start so we figured we'd just get an extra couple of miles in and avoid the mess, which worked out well!  Since it was sort of drizzly, I think people probably assumed that my sweat was probably just rain, which is fine by me :)

I was really happy with my time at the end of the race.  Despite not "running" the race for a time, Jess and I tried to keep a steady pace and stuck together for the whole thing.  At the very end the race has a downhill finish, where I was feeling pretty good.  I kicked it into high gear for the end and felt satisfied crossing the finish line with a time of 31:59 for 3.5 miles.  I was even more impressed when I compared my time to that of last year, which was 36:09 (although granted, last year the course was different and I probably had a slower start, plus it was right after my first half marathon and I still wasn't feeling good on my legs yet.)

After the run, my coworkers all went to a local bar to partake in some celebratory drinking, which was really fun and led to a little bit of a later night that probably I should have had!  I had a ton of fun though, made some new friends, and kicked a little butt in a game of darts.  I haven't played in a while, so it was fun to get a game in.

Today started far too early considering the night I had, but Jess, MM (a new runner in our morning crews!) and I got up for what felt like a creaky 3 miles this morning.  But we pushed the run back from 5:40 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.  Indulgent, huh?

Anyways, on the way over to run this morning a problem with my car popped up again that I've been having.  And when I say "popped up" I literally mean "popped up."

Do you see that thing sticking off the side of my windshield?  For the past couple weeks the liner thing around the windshield keeps coming undone.  It is pretty annoying but kind of funny.  It happened the other day when I was getting off the highway and it was flapping around like crazy.  I actually put my window down and held it with my hand until I could pull over and push it back in.

Looks like I'll have to get that taken care of soon!

Anyways, I feel like I am rambling and should probably log off.  This week took a lot out of me and I actually have a ton to get done tomorrow given it is a Saturday!  However, I've got a fun adventure coming up so I am very much looking forward to getting the errands done tomorrow.

Hope you had an exciting Friday night, more exciting than mine on the couch!  [Although I did "virtually" watch a movie with my friend Ari in LA which was sort of nice... we hit "Play" for Safe Haven off of Netflix at the same time and chatted via G-Chat while we both watched from our couches on opposite sides of the country.  Technology for ya, huh? :)]