A week up north!

Hey guys!  It's been a super busy week since last Tuesday and I feel like I've done 100 different things since then so I wanted to try and just get caught up.  I sometimes hate the whole "this is what I did this week" posts but I always appreciate them for myself later in life when I look back and read what I was doing a year or two or three years ago (I've had this blog for a long time at this point!)

I wrote on Monday, the night of my 20-miler, which I told you I did from my old stomping grounds of the Hudson Mohawk Trail!  Well, I was in the Capital Region last week for work from Sunday-Wednesday following the wedding I had in Boston.  I stayed the first two nights with my good friends who I stayed with while I moved and the other times that I have visited.  It was great to catch up with them on Sunday, and then on Monday night, the three of us, as well as their little baby, and some of our friends in the area all got together for food and drinks.  I knew I was going to want a celebratory beer the evening of my 20-miler so it worked out well to schedule that!  And it was sooo good to see friends, laugh, and be in my old comfort zone. Until I crashed and needed to go to bed.  But until then it was great!

Tuesday night I don't have any pictures of, but rest assured, it was just as wonderful a night but a bit more low key.  I spent it with my friend Jenna, as we drank water, ate Whole Foods, and had a foam rolling party at her house.  Jenna just completed her second Half Ironman distance race in an amazing time, and you may remember that I went and cheered her on in her first race this time last year.  She is a constant inspiration to me and I laughed, joking with her, could she believe that this is where our friendship evolved too and we were now sitting around talking about races?!  That I was participating too!

I was up early on Wednesday morning, and met up with Jess for a run that ended up being 3 miles instead of the 5 miles that I had planned, but I was okay with that and valued the extra time with Jess to be able to catch up over coffee!  The Starbucks we go to has since changed, but our routines are still the same (note to Jess: buy solar panels.)

My Atlanta morning running crew got together for a run that Wednesday morning and it was funny because I noticed the messages on my phone that we were all finishing up at the same time.  We sent hello selfies and it made me feel good to have my running crews all over the country semi merged together!

I took a screen shot because it definitely made me happy!  And holy heck - look at the differences in light between Atlanta and Albany!  Anyways, it was a fun morning getting miles and I felt pretty decent considering I'd done 20 on Monday. That Wednesday evening after three lovely days in my old home, I drove back to Boston yet again for another day of work meetings there. I worked Thursday and before heading to my next destination, did a Thursday evening run in Boston along the Charles of 8 miles with a finish on Boylston right by an iconic finish line I hope to cross some day in the future!

And then from there, on Thursday night, I drove up to New Hampshire to spend the weekend at my sister's babysitting my little niece and nephew with my mom!  If you are exhausted just reading this, imagine how it was living it!  I was tired and my body has been tired too.  I have been feeling a lot of pain in my right hip area when I run and it has been freaking me out a bit.  I started to feel the pain at mile 7 of my 8 mile run on Thursday evening, which is the earliest in a run I have felt it before. 

I felt the pain throughout the day on Friday too, which was odd for me on a day that I hadn't even run.  So I ended up taking Friday as a rest day too and running my 4 miles on Saturday and then 12 miles on Sunday.  It was my last double digit run before the marathon and just TWO weeks to go until race day at that point!  My sister's neighborhood was super hilly so it was a bit of a challenge, but I finished it with minimal pain and feeling exhausted but good. 

As I mentioned, I was babysitting that weekend with my mom.  So she had taken over baby duty while I escaped for two hours for the run and when I walked in the door I was greeted by the little munchkins scooting over to me and pulling themselves up on my leg reaching out to be picked up.  It was SO cute, but I was also SO sweaty so I had to just give them kisses from afar before running off to shower and clean up.

I seriously cannot even handle the cuteness of my niece and nephew.  They are the sweetest, funniest little babies and I had so much fun with them. It was a totally exhausting weekend but well worth it to be able to spend time with them, as I mentioned in my post yesterday.  Both babies came down with a cold, which I have now been fighting off myself, so it was a lot of up-in-the-night-nights as well as babies that just wanted to be held.  It is hard to foam roll when you have little nuggets crawling around your or to stretch when you are holding an 11-month old child on your hip. I loved it though. And was definitely sad to leave on Sunday night when I head back to Boston to hop on a plane back to Atlanta.

But seriously, they're the best.  I am going to sign off for the night but just wanted to leave you with a hundred million pics of the cutest kids in the world before doing so.

Excuse me being creepy in that last pic.  Goodnight everyone!