Pacing a friend

I know that I am posting this race report about 6 months late. It’s been a busy 6 months, but now that I have some free time from work over the holidays I figured I would catch up with some much-needed race reports and other blog related things.

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This summer I had the neat opportunity to pace my friend to a new 5k PR.

In July I signed up for a 5k race and it just so happened a friend of mine who now lives in North Carolina was up visiting, and planning to run the race as well. After I did my warm up I could tell my legs weren’t feeling super fresh. It was the morning after my high school reunion which could have had something to do with it. 😉

When the gun went off I just stayed with my friend to take it easy. She started talking about how last time she ran the race and came in at 45:00 and how she would love to beat it. Challenge accepted.

It was a neat experience to help her push her pace – as a back-of-the-pack runner it’s not something I get to experience very often.

We finished in 43:17 – well under her 45 minute 5k PR.

Wedding time

Happy Monday.

I’m actually off of work today – the hubby and I took a 3 day weekend – because one of my good friends got married in North New Jersey yesterday. It was my first time being a bridesmaid and it was a fun but long day. Lets go back to Friday though.

We left right after work on Friday night, and made the four hour drive to the hotel. The hotel was a gorgeous Mariott with super comfy beds. We fell asleep ASAP.

Saturday morning I headed to the country club where the ceremony and reception were held to do a quick rehearsal of the ceremony. The hubby stayed at the hotel and went to their gym and pool while I was gone. As soon as I got back to the hotel I went down to the gym and did a 30 minute incline & interval workout and then did 15 minutes on the bike. It felt great to get in a good sweat in the middle of a crazy busy weekend away. Lunch was an amazing avacado, lettuce and provalone sandwich from Atlanta Bread Company. It was awesome. Dinner that night was the rehearsal dinner. I ate lots of the amazingly spiced potatoes and steamed veggies. They also had some pasta with vodka sauce and wine.

Sunday was the big day! I went to my friends hotel suite at 8:30am to start getting ready with her and her sister. The hubby brought me an egg and cheese bagel sandwich and an iced coffee for breakfast. I’m not a huge coffee drinker, but I definitly needed it Sunday morning.  When I do drink coffee, I always get it iced, with skim milk and sugar. We spent about four hours getting hair and makeup done and got to the country club to take a few hours of photos. At 4:30pm the ceremony started, and it went super smoothly. The cocktail hour had a TON of food. It was the largest buffet I’ve ever seen. And since we got photos before the ceremony, the bride, groom and the bridal party got to enjoy it. It was so good! After cocktail hour, we were introduced and dinner was served. The hubby and I ordered baked eggplant parm. It was good – it tasted like baked lasagne. After the main course came the real show. Belly Dancers!

It was super entertaining. I loved when they balanced the candles on their head!

Then came the crazy desserts… starting with baked alaska!I’d never had baked alaska before but it was pretty good! I loved the “blackened” flavor. It was like a toasted marshmellow. 🙂

They had tables of cookies, gelato, wedding cake, chocolate fondue and dippers, etc. It was insane. Luckily I managed to save room for some sweets! haha.

After dessert, the waiters started bringing around comfort food – oven baked pizza and fried mac and cheese. It. was. nuts. The food was never ending!

This morning the hubby and I woke up at 6am to get in the road. We got home around 10. So we’ve been hanging out most of the day, I’m taking care of laundry and ran to the grocery store to stock up for the week. I’m hoping to get a run in here soon. It’s been a good way to spend our monday. 🙂