An Excellent Eleven

11 miles…and done!

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Last night, I went to Taproom No. 307 for my friend Eileen’s birthday. We’ve known each other since freshman year honors Geometry in high school. Which is also about when I started hating math. I actually loved it and it came easily to me before then, but it was all downhill after Mrs. Solomon’s class. Also, how was that 15 years ago?!

(Also, despite usually screwing up Photoshop, I’m proud to report that the above is not an Instagrammed pic, just using Photoshop to do one of my favorite Instagram effects. Here’s the tilt shift tutorial I used.)

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After an intense Thursday night, I wasn’t so into drinking last night and took it easy with a cider and a margarita over the course of a few hours. I loved the mason jar water glass, though.

This morning, I had 11 miles on deck! The first month of marathon training never quite feels like I’m training for a marathon. It doesn’t feel real until I run longer than 13 miles. But 11 miles is still longer than I’ve run in a while, so I was excited.

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He wasn’t excited that he had to be woken up early for a walk. Sorry, bud.

I ran down Broadway to meet Rebecca at the Brooklyn Bridge. Our plan was for me to meet her on the Brooklyn side, but my Garmin couldn’t find satellites and then I wiped out colossally crossing Broadway, so I ran a little late. Which meant we met when I was about 3/4 of the way across, and didn’t have to run the hill twice. Win.

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(Photo via Rebecca)

I don’t miss too much about living downtown, but I do miss living close enough to run the Brooklyn Bridge often. We ran down to South Street Seaport and through Battery Park over to the West Side. I was trying not to obsess over the pace on my watch, but it definitely felt like we were running a fast pace, although comfortably fast. I was happy the few times I looked to see we were running between a 9-9:10 pace.

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The kind folks at Gatorade sent me this box of Gatorade Carb Energy Chews, which I tried out today around mile 6. They didn’t have much of a taste, but they did the job.

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I ended up keeping an average pace of 9:11, which I was very happy with. Also, I’m not sure the last mile is accurate–I ran under a little tunnel and lost satellite. Still, I’m happy I had such a great long run.

How’s your training going?

August is Going to Be Awesome

Hey, remember when I used to blog every day? Multiple times a day? How the hell did I find time to do that?

Last night I attended a very lovely party where I took zero pictures because there don’t need to be pictures on the Internets of me after an open bar.

You’re welcome.

As I mentioned last weekend, I didn’t make many plans for July because my next few months are booking up crazy quickly already.

But with all stuff I really want to do. As I’ve become more busy lately, I’m trying really hard to say no to things I’m not dying to do. You know, where I have an option. I’m not dying to do dishes, but I can’t really say no to that.

So here’s a look at some of the awesomeness coming up in August:

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BlogHer. To be honest, after going to three conferences last year (Fitbloggin‘, Healthy Living Summit and Fitness and Health Bloggers Conference), I was a little blog-conferenced out. But with BlogHer (probably the largest and oldest blog conference) in NYC this year, I couldn’t not go. Plus, I’ve always been curious about it and I’m really excited to meet other non-fitness/healthy living bloggers (no offense, guys) and learn more about social media to help both this little blog and help me at work.

It seems like just a behemoth of a conference. I’m pretty outgoing–I went to Healthy Living Summit a few years ago for the first time knowing only Ashley–but this conference definitely seems overwhelming. Any tips from any BlogHer veterans?

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Healthy Living Summit. I wasn’t originally planning on attending, but I was asked to speak on a panel and couldn’t say no. I know it will be a ton of fun, though.

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Color Run. It will be a ton of fun.

Other than those three big things, there will also be lots of running, lots of Junior League meetings preparing for the upcoming year and I hope another few beach days.

Like everyone else in the world, I’m also really excited for the Olympics, especially track, swimming and gymnastics. If you’re watching the Opening Ceremony tonight, here’s a funny drinking game I found.

Because I’ll never get sick of Call Me Maybe videos…

Are you going to either of these conferences? I’d love to meet you! What fun stuff are you doing in August? Which Olympic sport are you most excited for?