Fun in the District

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I moved to Arlington for grad school six years ago now. It’s so hard to believe I’ve been down here that long – time has absolutely flown by. I instantly fell in love with this area and am still blown away by how many cool things there are to do in Arlington, D.C. and even occasionally (usually begrudgingly) Maryland.

I’ve gotten to a couple Nats games already this season. Nats Park is a great, new stadium with some awesome stadium food options too! I’m a fan of the Ben’s Chili Bowl spot, but might have to try out Shake Shack on my next trip there now that I’ve finally gone to their restaurant. I was lucky enough to go to opening day here during the Nats inaugural season and have attended several games a year since then, even getting to sit in the Diamond Club seats once.

This season I caught a Saturday afternoon game with friends in a packed stadium to watch the Nats beat the Phillies and got out of work for a weekday game as part of a department outing. We got to see Strasburg pitch, but unfortunately it wasn’t his day as the Nats lost to the Padres.

My parents made a trip down to D.C. to visit in late May, and having visitors is always a good excuse to get to play tourist in my own city. They’ve been coming down for years now, so we’ve already done most of the usual touristy things and joke that most of our visits are planned around food, but with all the great restaurants down here, you can’t go wrong doing that! We ate at some of our usual favorites, Rhodeside Grill, RiRa and Brooklyn Bagel Bakery (best bagel spot in the greater D.C. region!). We also got a deep dish and a thin crust at District of Pi Pizzeria, which my Dad had never been to and wanted to try after I’d been raving about it for some time. It didn’t disappoint. Their specialty seems to be the deep dish pizzas, but both of ours were delicious. The service left a bit to be desired, but fortunately the pizza was so good it made up for that.

On our past visits to the National Mall, we’ve never made it all the way down to the Capitol Building so I decided to start on that end this time. I get to run around this area a lot and it’s such a great site to take in, so I was excited for them to get to see it up close finally. I waited too long to try and get tickets for a tour unfortunately, but we walked all the way around the outside and passed by the Supreme Court and Library of Congress as well.

My favorite museum to visit in D.C. has always been the Newseum. Working so close to the National Mall now, I have no excuse not to visit some of the Smithsonian museums I still haven’t managed to get to in my six years here. I’ll share some future posts on my experiences at them and which ones I think are most worth visiting.

My Best Forest Gump Impression

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Last Saturday I started running, and kept on running for a lot of my day. It was my last big, long run before my upcoming marathon so I had a 20-miler on tap for the day. I was up bright and early so I could get 6 miles in before meeting up with the DC Road Runners for a 14 miler at 7.

I started out with a loop that took me over the Key Bridge, through Georgetown, down Rock Creek Parkway and back to the Iwo Jima Memorial via Memorial Bridge. The Road Runners route took me on a course I hadn’t run before, and if I’d know how hilly it was ahead of time, I might have just chosen to finish my 20 on my own! The first five miles felt like a seemingly endless uphill battle, but hills are always easier when you’ve got other runners to help push you up them. The run took me up the Custis Trail, through Zach Taylor Park and by Marymount College before a very steep downhill sent me over Chain Bridge onto the C&O path, by the Kennedy Center, back over the Memorial Bridge and up the Mount Vernon trail back through Rosslyn.

Getting ready for the Pacers Mini Relay with Blair and Lindsay

I’ve had some tough, bad-day runs over the last couple weeks, which can be pretty discouraging leading up  to a race, so I really wanted to do well on my last big test before my next marathon. My pace was a bit slower than I’ll need to qualify at 8:29 per mile, but I felt strong throughout and given the terrain we followed, I wasn’t disappointed with the time. I ran some pretty fast late miles too finishing miles 17 and 18 in close to 8 minutes each. I crashed a little at the end and slowed way down for miles 19 and 20, but instead of letting this freak me out, I’m going to hope it just had to do with the extreme ups and downs over the course and will look forward to the mostly flat marathon course I have coming up at the Niagara marathon.

One of my favorite Saturday post-long run treats is waffles, so I had my waffle iron, mixing bowl and ingredients out and ready to make things as easy as possible when I got home from the run. After a quick shower and some delicious waffles, I had a few hours to sit on the couch and ice my legs. I wasn’t done yet though.

I met up with my friend Lindsay and fellow Pacers Ambassador Blair for the Pacers Mini Relay. Pacers teamed up with Ragnar and Saucony to put this race on and it was a lot of fun. It was more of a fun run since it wasn’t a timed event and there were no winners or awards, but it was a blast and ended with a great party at the Clarendon store. The starting point was the Pacers location in Alexandria and the run went from store to store with the last leg ending at Clarendon. Blair started us off running the longest leg from the Old Town Alexandria store to the Pentagon Row location. I took off from there on a 5-mile route to their Logan Circle store, where Lindsay finished things off with the shortest, but by far the steepest leg of the race ending at the party in Clarendon.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to move very well, but was surprised how good I felt. After running my first mile in 7:25, I looked at the Garmin shocked and decided to slow it down a little, but still managed to average a 7:40 pace over the 5 miles, which left me feeling pretty good. My only issue was the lack of signage at a few spots along the course. There was no set route as you were allowed to get from point to point taking any route you wanted, but there were suggested routes and at least along my section a turn off of Rock Creek Parkway onto P street was completely unmarked. Not being familiar with that section of the trail, I would have had no idea it was where I was supposed to turn had I not seen another runner sporting an orange snap bracelet out of the corner of my eye. A small sign posted in the ground would have been really helpful, but I guess figuring out your way was also part of the fun of this event.

All participants got a commemorative pint glass at the finish filled with complimentary beer – more races should end this way! To make the day even better, a grilled cheese food truck pulled up outside of the party so Lindsay and I enjoyed delicious Vermont Cheddar Cheese sandwiches on sourdough. The event was a lot of fun and a great way to meet and mingle with other runners in the area. I can’t wait to do it again next year, but maybe next time I’ll plan better and won’t run 20 miles earlier in the day!

National Running Day!

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Today is National Running Day and here are three reasons why I love this sport:

This video has been making the rounds. I saw it on Runner’s World Daily last week. Be ready for some tears.

Great video from the ’92 Olympics in Barcelona.

Incredible show of sportsmanship.

Read more about this story of a high school runner helping a competitor to the finish.

Whirlwind Weekend: 24 Hours in Chicago

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A few weeks ago I flew off to Chicago for my friend Leah’s bachelorette party. I’ve gotten to go to Chicago a couple times in the past few years and think it’s a great city! Last year my boyfriend and I caught the highlights via a hop-on-hop-off bus tour our hotel concierge gave us free tickets for. Yes, I love doing dorky tourist things like that. I’ve even taken a segway tour in my own city. Nerd alert.

DC Girls Reunited

This trip would be a quick one. I had to miss out on the Friday evening festivities as I flew out Saturday morning and got in around 11. You know it’s a quick trip when you already have a reminder email to check-in for your return flight upon landing. Less than 24 hours later I was heading back to airport to fly back to DC, but managed to squeeze in a great time before heading back east.

Leah currently lives in London, but is a former DC-resident. Along with another friend from here, it was great to reunite with Leah and one other former-DC friend. One thing you have to get used to living in this area is a lot of people moving away, but the positive side of that is I now have friends I can visit all over the place! It was also great to meet Leah’s high school and college friends who were all a lot of fun.

We stayed at Hotel 71, an awesome hotel right downtown with a great view of the city. Dinner was at Rockit Bar and Grill’s River-North location, and I ordered some of the best mac ‘n cheese I’ve ever eaten. It was a buffalo chicken mac ‘n cheese – combining two of my favorite meals. After ordering, the waitress said I wouldn’t be disappointed and it was one of the best things on their menu – she was right. Creamy and delicious, it had just the right amount of buffalo flavor to it as well. I’m sure I never want to know the calorie count for this dish, but let’s just say it’s a good thing I’d run 19 miles the night before eating this! The fun continued as a party bus drove us all around Chicago with several stops including a bar in Wrigleyville and outside of the Chicago Science Museum to take some pictures with the water and skyline in the background.

Chicago – view from Hotel 71

It was a great trip and I hope to get back to Chicago again soon. A couple things I’d still like to do there are a Cubs game and one of the architectural boat tours. I also hear they have some big race every year that I might be interested in doing some day!

On The Move

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I’ve been neglecting my blog for far too long, which usually means I’ve been travelling a lot. And, that I have been. Since the beginning of May I’ve been in Orlando, Chicago and Minneapolis, and I also hosted my parents for one of the weekends I was staying in town. My whirlwind of travel looks like it will continue throughout the summer and into the fall with trips already planned to Hoboken/NYC, St. Louis, Boston, Canada, Syracuse, Annapolis, Providence, the Outer Banks, NYC (again), Connecticut and Lake Placid. It’s going to be a busy few months!

The Canada trip is a recent addition. I decided a few weeks ago to try and take advantage of the speed gains I’d seen throughout the April 5ks and take a shot at qualifying for the Boston Marathon. I still plan to go for this at the Marine Corps Marathon in October, but that race is too late to qualify for Boston in 2013. I signed up for a small race called the Niagara Marathon that starts in Niagara on the Lakes and runs along a path by the Niagara River towards the Falls on the Canadian side. It’s a bit quicker than I would have liked, but was the only one I could fit into my busy schedule. I ramped up my mileage pretty quickly and have seen this hurt my pace a little, but am hoping all the miles I put in will be enough to carry me to the finish line in under 3:35 at the end of June!

The Orlando trip that kicked things off was for a work conference. It was my first work trip with the new job and it went pretty well. It was a small conference, so it was good to get some experience at this before our big convention in Boston this June. I did things like work in the media room, attend sessions and write blog posts. If you have any interest in biotech, you can check them out on my company’s blog.

One of my favorite things about work trips is getting to stay in nice hotels. One of the coolest I’ve been to is the W in NYC. For the Orlando conference, I stayed in a Gaylord Resort. I’ve been to the restaurants and conference areas at Gaylord hotels in D.C. and Nashville, but this was my first time staying at one. Unfortunately all of our meals were already set for us so I didn’t get to try out any of the restaurants, but most of their catering was pretty good. Their cheesecake was particularly great, and I think I ate more desserts in a week than I usually do in a year! Good thing for me, their fitness center was also superb. It was by far one of the nicest hotel fitness centers I’ve seen.

They had a great pool area with a section for adults who wanted some peace and quiet with their sun and a more fun-filled area with water slides. I unfortunately didn’t fit in a visit to the pool, but it was nice to look at when I’d sneak outside to warm up during the day. The conference, also held in the convention center of the Gaylord, was absolutely freezing! The rooms on the hotel side, fortunately, were much more comfortable. I had a spacious room with comfy beds and a nice, clean and big bathroom. Check out some pics below!

Best For Last

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Last Friday was one of those days I just didn’t feel like running. It’d been a busy week, I hadn’t slept much Thursday night and I was leaving early Saturday morning for a work conference. It was the last week for the Pacers Crystal Run 5k Friday series though, plus I’d signed up to volunteer beforehand, so I really didn’t want to miss out.

20120501-105953.jpgIt had been such a fun series so far. I loved the new addition of the Shoe Lab they brought to this series so runners could test out shoes before buying them. The weather has been amazing especially compared to last year. This week was a little cooler than past weeks and a bit windy, but the sun was shining and at least it wasn’t freezing!

It turned out I saved my best performance for last setting a new 5K PR, so I’m definitely glad I didn’t bail. I finished in 21:25 coming in 125 out of 1,426 overall, 13 out of 724 women and 9 out of 354 in my age group – first time cracking the top 10! I ran into some of my former boot campers who were also running – always good to see them. We enjoyed some beer and wings at Buffalo Wild Wings after the race…perfect post-race food!

After seven straight weeks of racing, I’m going to take it easy for a few while I pick my next race. Right now it looks like it’ll be the Pacers Mini Relay in June, which looks like a blast and ends with a party outside of their Clarendon store. I’m still looking for a third teammate, so let me know if you’re interested in joining!

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Crystal Run 5K Friday Take 3

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This Friday marked my sixth weekend in a row of racing and my third Friday heading
over to Crystal City after work for the Pacers 5K Friday series. I got there early again to
help out with bib pick-up before the race and was happy for another night of my favorite
race weather. It was warm and sunny, but not too hot.

Sporting my new Newtons that I bought last week (after just a week of running in them,
I’m already in love!) I didn’t need a test pair from the Shoe Lab this week, but did get a
cool free tee when I stopped by to say hi after the race! Race shirts for series entrants
were also available this week. I’m a fan of this year’s design. Pics below.

It was my slowest race of the series, but still almost a full minute faster than I was
running 5Ks last year, so I was feeling pretty good after the race. My 21:51 finish was
good for 136th of 1,381 overall, 20th of 724 females and 14th out 336 in my age group.

Last week I did a good job of keeping a steady pace, but after getting caught weaving in
and out a little bit at the start, I started pushing the pace thinking I had to make up time
and ended up hitting the first mile mark in 6:40. I wasn’t able to maintain that however,
running my second mile in 7:03 and the third in 7-flat. With just one week left, I’m hoping
for another good outing next weekend.

I followed Friday’s race up with a long run Saturday morning with the DC Road Runners
who I ran with for the first time last week. Getting up by 7:30 on a Saturday might be
normal for a lot of people, but is no small task for me, so I was pumped I was able to get
myself up again and out the door in time to run with the group.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, running with a group really helps me pick up the
pace and push myself to run faster. One of the other cool things is learning new routes
I had never ventured on before. The downside I learned this week is that there are a
whole bunch of people around to see when you take a spill along a trail. Yea… that
happened. On the plus side, I wasn’t hurt at all – except for maybe a bruised ego!

Run-Centric Weekend

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For anyone who knows me, it comes as no surprise that I spend a lot of my time running, talking about running or doing other running-related activities, but this weekend was a particularly run-centric weekend.

Friday night I headed out of work for week 2 of Pacer’s Crystal City 5k Friday series. I got there early to help out with packet pick-up before the race. My first stop was the shoe lab, however. After having a lot of success last week with a pair of racing flats from Newton, I planned to try out their Gravity performance trainer this week. As soon as  I laced them up I could tell these shoes felt great. They were super light, gripped my foot, but roomy around my toes, and had some great bounce to them.

The race actually started a few minutes late to accommodate the huge turn out of runners on a really beautiful Friday night. My pace was all over the map last week so I wanted to really focus on running a consistent pace and did a great job of it. I hit mile 1 in 6:54, crossed mile 2 at 13:53 and mile 3 at 20:47. My finish time of 21:29 took another 11 seconds off my PR! I finished 133 out of 1,426 overall, 23 out of 773 females and 16 out of 344 in my age group. I also walked away with my own pair of Newton Gravity’s thanks to a 10 percent onsite discount! (It doesn’t take much to talk me into buying new running gear.) I’m really excited to start logging some more miles in them.

Saturday morning I linked up with the DC Road Runners club for their weekly Saturday long run. This group meets right across the street from my apartment and I’ve been saying I was going to get myself up and run with them for years. This was the first time I actually went! I’ve been trying to make much more of an effort to run with groups since it makes training a little more fun and helps me push myself to run faster.

We ran a route that took us over Memorial Bridge, down the Mall, by Union Station and back down the other side of the Mall before running along the river and returning via 14th Street Bridge and the Mount Vernon Trail. Runs like this remind me why I love this city so much. No where else can you go for an early morning run past so many cool monuments, memorials and historical sites. I was also entertained by the set up and prep for the Cherry Blossom parade going on later that morning.

Sunday I volunteered to help with the early packet pick-up for the GW Parkway Classic 10 Miler and 5K. I’ve heard great things about this race and definitely plan to do it sometime. I helped out at the Clarendon store, and let me tell you – it took no small amount of will power to spend 5 hours in a Pacers and not spend any money. I did leave with several things on my wish list for my next visit there though!

New Kicks and a New PR to Kick Off the Friday 5Ks

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I love the Crystal City 5k Fridays race series. It’s such a fun race; is a nice, relatively flat course; and Pacers does an awesome job with it. I was able to run 3 of the Friday 5ks last year, and set my PR for the distance with a 22:50 finish.

I know I’m a cold-weather wimp, but I don’t think I’d be the only one to say the weather for most of last year’s races was not too fun. Last Friday was perfect, however. Sunny and close to 60 – I was in my element. My boyfriend was in town for the weekend too, so I was very excited he was going to get to see my race, cheer me on and take some pictures!

Pacers is doing a cool thing at the series this year called Shoe Lab where Mizuno, Newton and Brooks have test shoes you can try out for the race. After turning over my Nike’s and my ID as collateral, I had a pair of Newton’s racing flats on my feet. I’ve never worn racing flats so I couldn’t believe how light they felt.

I’ve been running hard lately and running a lot, so I hoped to set a new PR at this race with a goal of breaking 22 minutes by the end of the series. Well, I was pleasantly surprised with my performance and now have to readjust my goals to make them a little tougher as I blew away my old PR by 1:10 finishing in 21:40! Maybe it was the shoes?!

For some reason the first mile of this course always seems to take forever in my mind so I thought I’d gone out slow, but saw my watch read 6:46 at the one-mile mark. I slowed down a bit for mile two passing the marker in 14 minutes even, and picked it back up to a 7 minute pace for the third mile. The 6:59 pace is my first-ever sub-7 minute race pace!

The 21:40 finish was good enough to put me in 137th overall out of 1,253 finishers, 19th out of 652 females, and 12th out of 268 in my age group!

I’ve wanted to try out some Newtons since I went to a seminar they put on at Pacers in Clarendon last October. While I loved the speedy Newton flats, I’m going to give their regular performance trainers a test run this week since those would probably be a more practical purchase for the distances I’ll be running in training for the 2012 Marine Corps Marathon.

I’m already looking forward to this Friday’s race – such an awesome way to kick off the weekend. I’ll be volunteering at packet pick-up before the race so stop by and say hi if you’re there!

(Lots of pictures: courtesy of Ian Gallagher – check out his food blog for an entry on our post-race dinner date!)

3 Weekends – 3 Races: Cherry Blossom 10 Miler Race Recap

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For the third straight weekend I found myself lacing up my shoes for a race. This past weekend was the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, which I was particularly excited for since I’ve been denied entry through the lottery system into this one for the last few years. I love any race course that lets you take in the monuments of D.C. I’ve been running a lot recently, and I run most of the route for this course a lot, so I went in feeling pretty confident.

Race Shirt and Bib

The expo was crowded even at noon on Friday and it took a little time to get through the packet pick up and t-shirt lines, but it was well organized. Unfortunately since I’d already burned through most of my lunch break time walking to the National Building Museum and waiting in line, I didn’t get to peruse the expo booths as I normally love to do and instead had to hustle back to work.

It was also one of the most crowded start lines I’ve been in, which isn’t surprising given more than 15,000 runners came out for the race and the narrow starting roads. I also might have contributed to the over-crowding by lining up in the wrong corral. I wanted to start near the 7:30 pacer and realized after a few minutes that everyone around me had gold bibs that did not match my red one. Sorry about that!

I do wish they’d let you sign up for your corral based on an expected finish time rather than your previous best 10 miler though. While I understand this keeps people from putting a much better time than they could ever run, I’ve only run one other 10 miler – this one in fact – that I hadn’t trained for, so the time didn’t really reflect my training for this race. Regardless, the start went off without a hitch for me, and all the people squished in there helped keep me warm while waiting for the start.

It was a little chilly at the start and a bit overcast, but overall, it was pretty perfect weather for racing. I headed out with the 7:30 pacer as the course started near the National Monument and headed down the Mall past the Lincoln Memorial and over the Memorial Bridge. We hit the 1-mile mark in about 7:20 so I’m not sure why, but our pacer either decided hey, maybe he could win this race, or that we were just much too slow for him to pace and took off. I kept him in my sight for a little bit, but as we came back over the bridge and into the out and back on Rock Creek Parkway I lost him for good.

Cherry Blossom Race

I felt great as the race continued and hit the 5 mile mark in 37:15. Hains Point got the best of me though and slowed me down a little. I struggled during the Hains Point stretch at last year’s Marine Corps Marathon too, so clearly I need to get out and practice on it some more before this year’s MCM.  It’s a tough stretch, usually pretty windy as it’s a wide open space along the water. There is very little crowd support here too, although I did appreciate the guy who set up the free beer and oreos table – it gave me a good, much-needed laugh. I was a little disappointed in the crowd support (other than the volunteers who were stationed at certain points to cheer on runners) throughout the race as well. There was one stretch I think around mile 6 that had a ton of people, but they were dead silent. Runners were actually yelling things trying to get the crowd excited.

I didn’t grab water at the last two water stops thinking it was a short enough race that I didn’t need anymore. This might have been a mistake as I got an awful side-stitch cramp just after mile 8. I was able to fight through it slowing down a tad, but was thankful this wasn’t a longer race or it could have really hurt my chances.

The finish line crowd was much more energetic and the slight downhill at the end made for a good final kick into the finish line. I crossed the line at 1:16:41 – obviously a PR for this distance since I’d only run it once before. The 7:40 pace was by far the best pace I’ve kept up for any longer-distance before too, so I felt great about it. All of my races and training this year are geared around improving my time at the Marine Corps Marathon this October. I can feel that my fitness level keeps getting better and seeing this kind of progress gives me a great confidence boost.

Next up is the Pacers Crystal City 5k Friday series so I can work on my speed (and have some fun too since I love these races)!