From Colorado Back to NYC

I’m finally back from Boulder! I always love traveling, but I really love coming home and getting back to a routine and snuggling with Bailey.

Yesterday afternoon, Anne, Gretchen and I snuck out of the conference for a little while to explore a little downtown Boulder. I had planned on doing some exploring on Thursday before my travel problems on Frontier Airlines prevented me from doing so.

We walked down to Pearl Street for some lunch, sunshine and exploration.

I brought my macro lens with me, and some of my photos were sort of a fail, so go check out Gretchen’s blog from some more awesome photos from yesterday afternoon.

We went to a restaurant called the Kitchen Next Door, which Gretchen had heard of. It was another farm-to-table meal, so it was right up our little blogger alleys.

I mean…they had kale chips on the menu. Need I say more? Anne, Gretchen and I nearly clawed each other for these.

I went for the mushroom loaf sandwich with curried carrots. The carrots were really soft, so they almost tasted like sweet potato.

Afterwards, we did some frolicking in the flowers before heading back to the hotel.

Oh, and got some fro-yo. I try to stay away from as much dairy as possible to keep my sensitive tummy happy, but I couldn’t not get fro-yo. I got a kid-sized serving and ate probably a quarter of it because I was so nervous about it upsetting my stomach. I ate all of the chocolate chips though, because my stomach doesn’t mind chocolate.

These bikes were part of Boulder’s B-Cycle bike-sharing program. You can get a day, week or yearly membership and borrow a bike for an hour at a time. I wish NYC would just hurry up with its bike-share program.

We went back to the hotel for the keynote and the live-blogging before dinner, which was sponsored by Refuel With Chocolate Milk. I went with the chicken forestiere, a chicken with a mushroom sauce.

And wine, obviously.

I had a mountain for dessert.

This morning, I woke up early to get a run in before my flight with Sara, one of my new favorite people. We ran for 45 minutes, and the first half was incredibly hard–my heart was pumping way harder than usual and my lungs were struggling a bit to get more air (because of the elevation.) It was difficult to talk, but Sara and I had too much in common to not chat the entire way.

We stopped at one point to breathe a bit and I forgot to restart my Garmin for a bit after that, but I think we ran about 45 minutes and just under 5 miles. There was a running clinic at the conference I’d wanted to go to, but Super Shuttle was supposed to pick me up for my 10:45 flight at 8 (what!?), so I had to bail on the clinic–which is fine, because getting a nice 5-miler in with a new friend in a new place was worth it.

My flight left about 45 minutes late, but after Thursday’s ordeal, that barely fazed me. I was back in NYC by 5pm and Bailey was back a little while later. I had 7 miles on my marathon training schedule (I’m technically calling it “pre-training” until July 1), so I did two more miles once I got home, running to Bryant Park and back.

Yeah, I ran in two states today. I’m badass like that. And…yeah. I’m definitely not in Colorado any more. It was pea-soup muggy when I went for this run.

I had a great time this weekend–but it’s funny how all of these conferences are so different. So far, out of the three I’ve been to–Healthy Living Summit, Fitbloggin’ and now, the Fitness & Health Bloggers Conference–HLS seems to be the most social, Fitbloggin’ the most informative and FHBC the most focused on fitness.

But they all have one thing in common–they’re incredibly tiring! Time to curl up with Bailey.