I finally got the chance to go visit the K-Swiss Store in Santa Monica yesterday to get new shoes! (Check out the first time I was up at the store HERE) I’ve been wearing the Keahou since before the LA Marathon and they had a ton of miles on them. (Review HERE) Since I was up in LA, I invited my LA friend Billy to travel with me over there, and I wanted him to check out the awesomeness that is K-Swiss! I was actually really looking forward to trying out the Keahou II, an upgrade to the Keahou I was running it. Tomorrow they will be broken in on a 20 miler! I can’t wait to test them out and they just seemed to be even more comfortable than the Keahou. I also tried out and loved the K-ona! They are so soft and cushiony. I wore them on my morning walk with the dogs and they really are supportive and lightweight. That’s one thing that I love about K-Swiss, they are all SO lightweight.

The best part about the Keahou IIs? They come in pink! EEEE So excited. And they are the perfect amount of pink, not like someone threw up pink on my shoes, but nice accents.

All the pretty shoes! I’m wearing the new Keahou IIs in this picture too. I just think they look so nice. I seriously am in love with these shoes, and I don’t care what anyone says! Okay, that sounds weird but you get the picture.

So then after some awesome trying on shoes and talking running for a while. We snapped this last picture before we left.

Love both those guys! Can’t find better runners than either of them. :) Thank you again Bryan for having us at the store so we can see all the cool stuff, and I’m still jealous of your teal and orange shoes! :)

Then Billy, knowing that I’m a blossoming low-class foodie and my insane love for caprese, took me to a delicious Italian sandwich place, known as Bay Cities Deli! Instalove! I got the caprese sandwich and it was to die for!

The balsamic vinegar was amazing and it was the perfect amount of tomato, heaps of delicious mozzi and then just a little touch of basil that finished it off perfectly. I know, another food post right? Sheesh. I’m working on that FYI, so no more food posts from the Chic Runner!

Talk about a way to kick off the weekend. Well the day before the weekend. Awesome time up in LA And so glad I got to go up there and eat bomb food AND get new shoes to run off those calories in said bomb food.

This weekend we have an event on Sunday but I’ve got a 20 miler to kick off the weekend tomorrow morning. Luckily, it’s with my new la-la land lover, Maritza who is moving down here TODAY! I can’t wait to kick off her time down here with a long run together. Hooray for me having someone to run with!!!

xoxo

I’m such a freak about counting down. I have apps on my phone that countdown and I constantly am checking them. Here’s a little preview of things that I’m counting down till.

Big Bear Vacation -3 days

North Carolina Trip for Nina’s Wedding -14 days

Camarillo Marathon -45 days

My Birthday -48 days

Long Beach Marathon -59 days

New Mexico Trip for Kelly’s Wedding -65 days

Malibu Marathon -89 days

Dana Point Turkey Trot (Thanksgiving) -97 days

LA County Half Marathon – 114 days

Christmas -127 days

So basically until the end of the year, I’m busy ALL the time! I can’t believe it that it’s already the end of August basically! I remember when I started my new job that our ‘busy season’ being now until the end of the year, seemed SO far away! I didn’t realize how quickly it was going to creep up and be here. Everything in October is awesome. It’s by far my favorite month of the year!

Yesterday we went out to LA County to ride the course for our half. It was ridiculously hot and a few of us were getting nauseous. It was 101 degrees and I have even more terrible tan lines to prove it. It was a fun day though and we did get a bunch of neat pictures, which will make my job much easier.

This weekend we have one more event and a 20 miler that I have to work before vacation next week. I can’t wait to do some awesome running up in the mountains and just relax with friends. It will be a great week on the lake where I can get some good sun and maybe get rid of my flip-flop tan.

What are some things you look forward to? Do you do countdowns? I think it’s fun to countdown to things, especially races!

xoxo

So I’ve never considered myself a foodie. I don’t even think I fall into that category now, but I love yelping different places and trying new things lately. I guess I’m living in the moment and that moment isn’t my normal food that I eat at home and doing nothing. When we were down in San Diego for the expo for work I was yelping a place to eat dinner when I found R Gang Eatery. It had good reviews and after seeing the menu it looked like something that my co-worker and I would both like. We left the expo and were pleasantly surprised to find no wait and a genuinely fun place to eat and had AWESOME food. We started off with the House made Cheddar-Chive Tater Tots with Ketchup & Chipotle Ranch Dip. Looking at the menu now, we never got the ketchup, but man we didn’t even need it. They were AMAZING. The Chipotle was delicious and these were just fantastic.

Then we both got the Smoked Gouda Mac n Cheese with Toasted Butter Cracker Crumb Topping. I could not even speak while eating this. It was THAT good. I was totally in heaven and it was just delicious. There were so many great things on the menu but I knew if I didn’t get the Mac and Cheese I would regret it and boy am I glad I did. It was simply awesome.

There were so many great options and looked like there were also some awesome drinks that we didn’t partake in because we wanted to save the rest of our tummys for dessert, in which we traveled to Babycakes, a gay cupcake bar. Another epic cupcake win! We got two drinks, the grasshopper and a coffee and then three cupcakes. Yea, a little over the top. We got a red velvet with the rational of ‘well you have to try every cupcake shops red velvet.’ Then we got the peanut butter and jelly, because it sounded like the most amazing thing ever and then the Lemon one. Starting with the peanut butter and jelly, I was shocked how it tasted just like my favorite sandwich! It was awesome. Then the red velvet was a great one and we ended on the lemon one. It was like the pickle that ended our meal. Simply amazing!

Demmmmolished!

So that was a highlight of the expo for sure! If you are ever in San Diego, I totally LOVE R Gang Eatery and recommend you eat there! Babycakes is also a sweet treat! Alright, no more foodie posts from me for a while!

xoxo

So this weekend I was on the go-go-go the whole weekend. I started it off with a great Thursday evening run which got me out of my running rut. Friday morning I overslept :( and couldn’t do my long run that morning before leaving for San Diego for work for the AFC Expo on Friday and Saturday. We left at 9:30 am and got to San Diego right at 12 when the Expo started. Met some great people and finally left the expo at 7:15 pm. We ended up eating at one of the best places I’ve ever eaten at, more on that tomorrow, and hit the hay at 9:30. Had a horrible nights sleep since our hotel room was next to the elevator. All night long. Ding. Ding. Ding. We woke up at 8 am and headed over to the expo with a delicious trip to Starbucks and worked until 5:00 pm and then started the lovely 2 hour drive home. Got home at 7:15 pm, ate dinner, watched Jersey Shore and went to bed at 9 pm, to wake up at 4:00 am to head back to work the OC Fair 5k.

To say the least, my weekend was not really a weekend. Sometimes I look forward to working during the week and sitting at my desk all day one day so I can get caught up on all my emails and just sit for a while.

So after working 8 hours Sunday morning at the Fair 5k, I traveled home, sat for a while and ate lunch. It was actually very warm out so I waited for a while to start my long run. I started at 4:30 pm and made it 10 miles before I was just pouring in sweat and thirsty. I even wore my fuel belt and my water bottles were bone dry. I got picked up by a friend on the side of the road. It wasn’t discouraging, but I am just so busy that it’s hard to make training my priority right no, which is exactly what I said it needed to be on Thursday if you want to reach your goals.

From now until December, my life is going to be completely crazy. I have events basically every weekend. I love it but it does hinder my training a lot. This morning I walked the dogs for a mile and a half and really thought about my goals, my life and the upcoming races I hope to run in. I was hoping to possibly try to qualify for Boston in Camarillo in October. I realized that even thought I want to qualify, right now, I’m not going to have the time to make this a realistic goal. I thought about all the training runs I’ve had and how I feel great, but I’m not at the speed that I want to be or need to be. I also know that I run for me and that’s the bottom line.

It’s hard to realize that right now I don’t  WANT to qualify for Boston enough to put in the training that it will take to get me there, nor do I have the time to put in the training.

I have talked to many other runners about this but I have a theory that if you ran competitively previously in high school or college, it’s harder for you to train now to “compete” if you are running for pleasure. I feel a lot of the ‘training’ that I would be doing, would be exactly what I did in high school. It’s interesting to hear so many other people who have the same background as I do say many of the same things about how the feeling of “running for fun” is exactly that. Running for fun. If I start training like I used to, it would become work, like how it was then and I’ve already done that whole thing. It took me a long time to be okay with just ‘running’ for fun. I like racing, I like running but I’m not running like I used to in high school. Where I trained year round and ran competitively and constantly was criticizing myself and pushing myself to the limit. It’s an interesting thought that I consider that I’ve already ‘ran that hard’ and ‘raced’ in my life and now it’s just for fun for me.

Bottom line: Do I want to go to Boston? Yes. Do I want to go right now? Do I REALLY WANT IT? No. Which makes me believe it’s not my time to qualify. I’m just being honest with myself, it stings a little but it’s honest.

I want to have an awesome race in Camarillo. My goal is go to sub-4 again. I want to have fun and have an awesome race in Malibu again. I want to enjoy some half marathons and have fun running. I want to be able to go out and run and enjoy it. Which I’m doing  now.

I have a 20 miler this weekend and I know I’ll get it done since we don’t have an event on Saturday, but with vacation next week and North Carolina in two weeks, and then work getting more and more crazy as our ‘busy’ season is just starting, I know my rigid training would be the first thing to suffer. It’s like setting myself up for failure, but I want to enjoy running like I am now. So I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.

So that’s what I thought about on my walk with the dogs this morning at 6:30 am. Who knew?! :)

xoxo

After being a little lax in motivation for running lately, I finally found my groove again. I know that this usually happens when I start to train and I get tired and burned out. Sometimes it’s hard for me when I’m in training for a full because I know if you don’t make running your top priority and it’s basically your life, you can’t find time for it. It’s hard to say no to certain fun events because you have to run the next day. I was just getting caught in the running rut with my running when my friend Bill invited me to meet up with him and some friends down in Newport for a 6-8 miler last night. I used to bike the Back Bay (on a beach cruiser in college) often and I have never ran the path. I had to get some work done before I was able to meet up with them but got there in the nick of time.

It’s when you are accountable to people, you show up. You run. You have to. You said you’d be there. As soon as I started running I knew it was going to just rock. I was feeling great, I had some great jams on and though I’m not much of a ‘group runner’, since I do 99.9% of my running alone, it was a fun little group and everyone kind of did their own thing.

I fell right into stride and before I knew it we were at the turn around. The sights out there were just amazing and I easily fell right back into where I was in July, getting in great mileage and happy to be running. So my rut is gone and I’m ready to tackle the rest of training for Camarillo now. In July I had a record high of 106 miles. This month I’ve only logged about 45, which a few were run without a garmin, but that is a-ok and I’m glad I got my groove back. I have 15 this weekend where I’ll have to squeeze in somewhere, most likely Sunday evening, since I’m working all weekend.

If anyone is running the AFC half, I’ll be at the expo both days! :) Also the OC Fair 5k, perhaps I will be doing some of this again!

I’m just glad the rut is gone. I was pumped to be running. Like cross country racing pumped and it felt good. Thanks to Sydney and Bill and Dominic and Matty and Jessica. :) You guys kept me accountable and I am glad I met you all! Hope to see you all again soon

xoxo