Tag Archives: running

A Crappy Run and Some Awesome Mexican Food

Sometimes I write about how my runs were awesome and how I ticked off those 16 miles on my training plan like they were no big deal.

And then sometimes I have terrible, hard, humbling workouts that I can’t bring myself to get through.

Like tonight. I had this little gem on my training plan for today:

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(That means 2 miles warm-up, 2 miles cool-down, and 5 repeats of 1200m [.75 miles] at an 8:00 pace with a 1:30 jog in between.)

Grrrrrrrrrreat, I thought as I read that last night. I woke up and decided to get some work out of the way before attempting my workout.

I ended up leaving it till about 4:30. Why do I do this to myself? Any time I run in the afternoon lately, it sucks. Anyway, I ran the 1.25 miles to the gym and warmed up for about another minute on the treadmill before jumping into the workout. After the first repeat, I was nauseous and sore. After the second repeat…I just couldn’t. I can usually push myself to get through a workout, but I just couldn’t today. I really need to just [wo]man up and get speedwork done. I left the gym and ended up running the 1.25 miles back home. It’s crazy that any other time, it would be awesome to just have gotten 4.5 miles done, but during marathon training when I should be doing speedwork and I don’t finish, it’s disappointing.

Something to work on, right?

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At least I had good plans to catch up with a friend tonight.

My college roommate Jen is one of my favorite people, but we are really bad at making time to see each other. We always cancel on each other for some reason, but today she texted and asked if I had plans for tonight. Luckily, spontaneity worked in our favor and she came over and we hung out until we got hungry and took a walk to find a decent not-too-expensive-but-not-gross either meal. There is a serious hole-in-the-wall Mexican place in my ‘hood I want to try, but I just fear my stomach will hate it. And when Mexican is bad? Mexican is really bad…Yeah…anyway.

We ended up finding Patron Mexican Grill. It looked chill and not terribly expensive.

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It’s Wednesday, but our waiter honored the all-day happy hour. Clearly we liked him for this.

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Uh, he showed us with the tiniest margarita ever. I know you have no scale to this, and I have no idea why it’s all red, but this glass is approximately shot-glass sized.

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Per usual, I got chicken tacos. Chicken tacos or fajitas are usually my Mexican go-to because they’re not terrible for you, and there’s usually a lot less cheese, which bothers my stomach. (Please keep in mind here: I LOVE CHEESE. My stomach does not. This dichotomy is incredibly unfortunate.)

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Lately, my stomach can handle a little cheese. I thank it accordingly.

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We sat at a long table, which would have been a lot more fun had two cute guys sat down next to us, but was still pretty fun.

Verdict? I’d definitely come back here. I’m happy to have a good, chill Mexican place in the ‘hood that I like. Welcome, Patron Mexican Grill. Just work on giving me a shot of Patron when I walk in the door and we’ll be all good.

Apparently I’m a Morning Runner Now

I used to always run at night. I am not a morning person by any means.

Running at night meant that I could sleep in. When I didn’t have anything planned after work, this was sort of amazing. I could get the sleep I wanted AND get my workout in.

But when I have plans after work, as I often do, is when I ran into trouble. I’d either sneak in lunchtime workouts, show up late (and stinky) places or just scrap my workout altogether.

Running at night also meant having to worry all day if what I was eating was going to sit like a rock in my stomach.

In April, when I went to Vegas with Ashley, I realized that she got to work way earlier than me and still managed to get workouts in before work. No longer did I have an excuse. I had a good run of a few weeks of morning workouts before getting laid off.

Since working at this freelance gig the past few weeks, I’ve revived my morning runs. (With walking Bailey, classes get a little more tricky.)

I get to see awesome things like this view:

And less awesome things, like weird swarms of birds:

But I get to have my run behind me and an open night ahead of me.

Tonight, that means going to an ACC football party.

Since my alma mater is lame and does not have a football team, I may need to adopt an ACC team for this party. Any suggestions? (I may also be attending some SEC football parties; feel free to vote for your favorite SEC team, too.)