Weekend Things: Nike Women's Half, Flip Cup, and Fiesta

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Today's Workout: Rest

Monthly Health Goal - No Eating After 8:00pm:

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I almost called in sick like 10 times this morning. Not that I'm particularly sick, just tired, and my boyfriend was still here and it seemed like a much better idea to just stay at home this raining morning. Alas, I brought myself to the office and here we are.

This weekend was fun but exhausting. I will give a full recap of the Nike Women's DC Half Marathon tomorrow. On Friday, some of the girls and I went to the EXPO, and then walked around the corner to Paper Moon for some yummy Italian food. You can never start carbo-loading too early, right?? The food was great, as was the service. The price point was also very reasonable for the portions - and considering it was Georgetown.

On Saturday I attended a charity flip cup fundraiser at the Exchange for some of my friends who are doing the Tour de Cure this summer. I flipped cups of water... so I wasn't a complete buzz kill. The weather was perfect, and if I didn't have big dinner plans with the boy I would have been ordering some food off the menu. Looking at all the other tables on the patio was making me  drool.

Later that evening Kyle and I kept the carbo-loading going with a chicken pesto pizza at Paulo's complete with cherry tomatoes, spinach, and goat cheese.

We went without a reservation which was dumb, because I know this place is always packed. Luckily, there was a high top table for two open in the bar the suited us just fine.

After dinner I laid out my things for race morning and called it an early night. I had one of the worst pre-race nights of sleep I've ever had. My allergies were in full swing and my throat would not stop itching, my nose would not stop running, I could not stop sneezing, and I felt all-over miserable. When I woke up on race morning, I was still dealing with a lot of drainage and felt very very nauseous. I ate half a zone bar and drank water on the way to the course, where I met up with some other fearless females who were going to be making the 13.1 mile trek.

We weren't the only ones showing Boston love - all stars Joan Benoit and Shalane Flanagan were representing Boston too.

I was able to hold 7:30-7:40 pace until about mile 9.6 when my drainage became too much and, to avoid TMI, I got  a little sick on the side of the road. I think mile 10 was around 8:05, 11 was 8:15, 12 was 8:20, and 13 was 8:50. As you can tell, after I got sick I hit a serious wall. Everything tightened up. I felt terrible and started thinking the finish would never come. It did, and I was pretty close to my goal. I wanted to break 1:45 and and I ran 1:45 and some change.

I tend to spend a lot of time during races weaving around people, which I know is part of it, so I obviously take into account my chip time, but for personal goals I set up my map my run to tell me when I reached 13.1. I believe my chip time was closer to 1:48.

After I finished we rushed home so I could shower and make it over to a surprise birthday brunch at El Centro for this pretty girl. This is one of our favorite brunch spots in D.C. for many reasons. One, they have amazing food (of the Mexican variety) and a large selection on the menu. Everything is bottomless - bottomless mimosas, bottomless bloodies, bottomless quac, bottomless tacos, bottomless EVERYTHING. You will definitely want reservations here, I think I heard the hostess say without reservations the wait was around 2 hours.

She had no idea that we were planning a brunch for her so by Saturday night she figured we had all forgot it was her birthday and had arranged a little gathering at our place Sunday evening. We obviously weren't going to cancel once she found out about the brunch, so we continued the festivities late into Sunday evening. I was a zombie around 8:00 and was pretty much in a daze as people came and went.

I slept like a baby last night, and was not ready to be greeted by my alarm this morning. Check back tomorrow for a full race recap!