Cowboys and Hills

Wednesday was a wonderful day. I spent an hour driving three miles round trip to the post office to mail Kari her reward for completing the No-Dessert Challenge. It took me an hour because Baltimore is such a super fun place to drive around.

But when I got home, my reward from her was waiting for me!

Cowboy cookies and banana bread muffins. Kari's banana bread is amazing, but it doesn't stand a chance when competing with her cowboy cookies. Added bonus: most of the cookies broke into pieces during shipping, so you can eat a ton of little pieces that may have originally been 3 cookies, but consider it one cookie, or even less. Totally worth 24 dessert-less days (but who was counting?).

I was about to head out for a run, and somehow managed to avoid devouring half the cookies directly before. I ran five miles in the rain at a surprisingly quick 8:50 average pace - those afternoon runs are just always faster than the morning ones.

Mike wanted to get some hill training in, so we met for a 5am run at Loch Raven Reservoir. Here's some pictures I took on my last run there.

Beautiful, right? Doesn't running there watching the sunrise sound like an incredible way to start the day?

I wouldn't know, because I was already in the shower when the sun was rising. At 5am, it is 100% completely pitch black. Needless to say, I was wearing my knuckle lights, which did an impressive job of lighting my way, but I was still terrified. I thought I wasn't scared of the dark because I run in the dark all the time. Turns out there's a big difference between running in the suburbs dark (streetlights, car, and tons of fluorescent lights on fast food places) and in the woods alone hopefully with no killers dark. When a deer slowly ambled right by my car while I waited for Mike, I nearly went home. A orb of light directly in front of my feet is not enough for me.

Despite all that, we managed to get a pretty good run in. In seven miles, we climbed over 1,300 feet, and in my opinion, that's a lot of hill climbing. My average pace was about 9:33, and I was pretty pleased with that. I thought I'd be running much slower after the marathon, but so far, other than the first two runs, I'm more or less back to normal.

My week just kept getting better and better. After some yoga Thursday night to loosen up, my mother and stepfather arrived for the weekend! They are visiting until Monday. So far, the activities have been drinking wine and watching Modern Family, and drinking coffee and watching the news. Essentially laziness amplified by wonderful company. Life is good.