Road trip

This weekend, most of the northeast got hit with crazy snow. Baltimore wasn't expected to really be affected by Nemo, but just in case, we got the hell out of dodge. 

We were way overdue to visit our North Carolina BFFs, Nicole and Mike. We've visited them a lot and totally infiltrated their group of friends, so much so that we even got invited on their beach trip last year.  Yet even though we saw all sorts of cool people we never get to see, somehow all I ended up with was this blurry picture of me cuddling with people I spend my entire life with.

Blogging fail.

Friday after work Eric and I picked up our local road trip buddies, Carolyn and Casi, and headed south. I don't know about them, but after a tough week, nothing sounded better than relaxing in the car for a good 7.5 hours.

Yeah, so not exactly an ideal Friday night activity. But the benefit to road trips (other than the adventures you may have stopping at random gas stations in rural Virginia) is that we get so loopy that basically anything becomes hilarious, so what you lack in ability to move or pee at will, you gain in entertainment. 

I've probably complained more than enough about my tired legs this week (although I only posted twice so maybe some of it was just in my head), but I'm not done yet. Friday morning, I did an easy, rainy 5 miles, and my legs just felt like lead. I had a sneaking suspicion that sitting in a car all night wasn't going to help matters and Saturday's 20 miler would be a challenge. I remember that back in the day I could easily hop in the car for a road trip to another state and not feel a thing, but that's no longer the case.

The other fun thing about road trips and running is that you kind of have to purposely dehydrate yourself on road trips, especially since we were driving through creepy dark mountain roads in West Virginia and were 95% sure most of the 7 houses we saw in the state were haunted. 

I wanted to get an early start Saturday so that I could actually see the people I came to see and not be like "thanks for the bed now I'll be running through your town till 1pm", but that's pretty much what happened. But I had what I think was a new experience, and had a great run mentally, even though I felt sub-par physically. Even though my legs hurt from the start and the run was filled with those sneaky, long, subtle hills, it was pretty awesome to be running on a beautiful, sunshiny day instead of under 3 feet of snow. Carolyn joined me for 6.5 miles at the end, just to make it even better.

After the run, the girls spent the day in our traditional fashion, shopping, then met up with the boys to stuff my face at the best Mexican restaurant ever. I bet you wouldn't have guessed it would be located in rural NC. 

Our friend Kim had her adorable baby boy, Asher, in October and I have been DYING to finally meet him. She was a better blogger than me and took a picture.

Look at those cheeks!

We did need to use the baby as a frame of reference to show how big the beer tower was.

Looks like the baby is taller, but not by much.

 Sunday was finally a much needed rest day and I slept like the dead for over 9 hours. Amazing. Since I forgot to take a picture of our foursome when we all looked cute, I demanded we take one in our sweats before going on a 2 mile walk with Nicole's dog.

Another fun weekend idea is to spend all day Sunday in the car, unwinding before the upcoming week. Luckily for me Eric loves to drive so I didn't have to do any of that, at least. Also, you should be impressed with how awesome our friends are, because all that driving was totally worth it.

What was your last road trip?