Throwback (Run) Thursday

Hey guys! Check out my guest post on Mangoes and Miles! I wrote about a topic near and near to me-avocados.

Yesterday was my first day of summer, and I must say, it was a really awesome day! I slept in until…5:10…but hey-it was well worth it to attend my favorite spin class! Plus, my kitty came into my room about 10 minutes before my alarm demanding to be petted. And waking up to a purring cat is way better than waking up to an alarm!

After spin, I had a 4 mile run to do. I decided to do a throwback run-last summer I clearly remember one of my first training runs. I went to early spin and then drove to a neighborhood fairly close by, which is flatter and prettier than where I live. I completely forgot to bring my Garmin, so I decided to run for time instead. I planned on 40 minutes, but I lengthened it to 45 because I kept stopping for pictures, plus a had a minor goose incident. More on that in a minute. I made a playlist on my phone of all the songs I listened to last summer to really throw it back. Confession: for some reason whenever people do throwback Thursday on facebook with their pictures, it drives me crazy. I have no idea why…

I enjoyed the wildlife of suburbia- geese!

Ignore the slant-this was my first attempt at a picture while running (without stopping). What’s funny is this lagoon is actually where we rowed some of the time. It’s also a 2k racecourse, so I would have raced here quite a bit if I had continued with crew. That’s so weird to me because I never knew people rowed here. I mean, I basically grew up in this area; half of my friends live here, and I went to violin lessons right around here, and then, I later rowed here. 

There are geese everywhere around the lagoon. If you were to see the geese as they were in this photo, you wouldn’t think anything of it, right? You’d just run through and expect them to move. So I started to run towards them. But…they didn’t move! SO I decided to just run through them and run around them. As I got closer, they started hissing at me! They were hissing and screaming and running closer to me!

So naturally I stopped to take a picture. What you can’t see is that there was a goose right next to me on my left hissing. At that point, I was kind of stuck. I was in the middle of the pack, and I didn’t know which direction to go in!

Luckily, I did get out in one piece, unscathed. But it was terrifying. I guess the bird around this lagoon are kind of aggressive. One of my teammates had a scary experience with an aggressive swan chasing her!

Being done with spin and a run by 7:45 am is such an awesome feeling. Breakfast was cottage cheese mixed with chia seeds and thawed blueberries.

An even more awesome feeling than that? Taking a midmorning nap with your cat. He’s such a sweetie! Sadly, I have no pictures, as I was unconscious.

Lunch was a leftover turkey burger and freeze dried sesame edamame. 

I also had one of these guys-it was good, but similar to the coconut creations I’ve made in the microwave, so in the future I’d probably just do that.

A little later in the afternoon, I met up with Kaitlin for coffee. She’s about to graduate, so I was lucky to catch her before she leaves! We went to Philz Coffee, which was a cute little place where they hand make everything. 

We were both a little overwhelmed by all the different types of coffee! Since I know very little about coffee, and I didn’t want to have much caffeine that late in the day, I went with iced chai tea.

I got mine with milk and honey. They add mint leaves to it as well. I really, really enjoyed this. It was super refreshing on a hot day, and while the chai flavor was subtle, I really liked the flavor the mint added.

I also enjoyed an oat bar, which had various types of dried fruit. 

I had a really great time talking with Kaitlin– I’ve never met up with a blogger before! She’s totally awesome and you all should check her blog out.

Thanks Kaitlin!

We met up more near school than home for me, but that worked out really well because I kind of forgot to turn my room key in, and school was on the way back. I had to say goodbye to people again! I also had to help my sister move out which was…a process. For the record, I was out in an our (besides the packing). I was there for 3 hours, my parents were there for longer, and she’s not even completely moving out! She’s living there (kind of-it’s complicated) this summer! But I did score a homemade cupcake from her fancy cupcake holder which she made for a class project. 

In addition, she and her boyfriend made cinnamon rolls from scratch that were ready right before we were done!

They were sooo good, but I could only have a few bites before my heart started racing!

And FINALLY we were home for dinner. My family was having pesto pasta, but I felt like I could use protein more, so I microwaved egg whites and spinach and topped that with pesto instead.

And dessert:

I had been out of sunflower seed butter in my dorm for quite a while, so this was AMAZING.

Have a great day everyone! Kitten nursery post to come, as well as my recount of Crossfit (my first class is tonight!).

Where is your favorite place to run? Have you ever met up with a blogger?