great weekend events.

Saturday I ran my longest distance ever! 16 whole miles! I was on top of the world the rest of the day. They say that exercise releases endorphins and now I really believe it. I don't think I have been in that good of a mood in quite some time. Nothing was going to stop me. It made me really fall in love with running even more and makes me want to take on more adventure sports. I have really been considering looking into cycling and mountain biking, but want to get through this marathon first. Which I am also already trying to find my next marathon, but think I am going to just do a half marathon next go around so I can get more into other sports.

After my wonderful 16 mile run, I had to stop by the grocery store to get some ice for my ice bath that I take after every long run. It helps with recovery and is just delightful after a long run! I had the intention of only picking up a few things for dinner this week and grabbed a cart (not a good move) and got going. I went over to get some strawberries and saw the wonderful shortcakes sitting right next to them. Mmmm strawberry shortcake. It sounded so wonderful and said, hey it can't hurt and plus I've heard it's a fairly decent snack (fairly decent are the key words here). So I head over to get some soy milk and see the chocolate milk is calling my name. I want so badly to grab a gallon, but opted for just the small single serving container. In my defense, chocolate milk is actually a really good recovery drink for endurance athletes. My mouth was watering at this point. I somehow (yeah somehow *cough*) end up in the frozen foods section... mmmm pizza... mmm ICE CREAM! I end up walking out of the grocery store with a cart full and lots of fruit (good for me), chocolate milk (good for recovery), strawberry shortcake (could be worse, right?), pizza (not the best choice), and ice cream (it's Edy's slow churned with half the fat, that makes it good right?). I just burned over 1700 calories, I can pretty much eat all this right? Well I am certainly trying. My lesson this week is don't stop at the grocery store after a long run!

On Sunday I walked downtown to watch the Cycling Pro Championships. It was one of the most exciting things I have watched. The end came down to a two man sprint to the finish and Hamilton won by two thousandths of a second. They go so fast that you can barely even concentrate on the riders. George Hincapie, a native of Greenville and Beijing Olympian was racing, so it was quite exciting to be able to say I watched him race, even though I don't know if I actually saw him or not! Part of the excitement for me was watching the lead cars and support cars fly by... oh how I wished I was driving one of them. Here are a couple of photos and as you can tell they were going so fast my little ol' camera couldn't even catch them!