When I ran this race 2 years ago (Nike Women’s Half), the course was different. The course this year is sort of like a backwards version of how it used to be.

If I had to guess why they changed it, it would be to not have to close the Great Highway and to make the hills a little better. Do you see that big downhill around mile 12? That 300 feet of fast elevation gain used to be a pretty brutal hill in the past. Just based on the course map, my experience today, and my experience in previous races, the hills should be not nearly as bad as in the past! I wanted to get at least one hill in from the race in my run today, so I started in Golden Gate Park and worked my way over to the Golden Gate bridge, taking the following route (about miles 5-10 of the race).

Granted I’ve been training on worse hills this summer, but the hills during this portion were not bad-I think running the reverse of this portion actually was worse.

I haven’t spent much time in Golden Gate Park besides during races, so I took lots of pictures. I was able to park on a side street right at the Western edge of the park, by the windmill.

It was an absolutely beautiful day in the city-75 and sunny! What?? I actually got to see the amazing views that I missed running this race the previous time because it was super foggy and you couldn’t even see the beach/ocean!

Golden Gate Park is nice. I should spend more time there.

First view of the bridge!

I ended up stoping regularly to make sure I was staying on track. I didn’t think I was, but I think I actually stuck to it pretty well until I reached Lincoln Highway, which I was supposed to run up, but there was no sidewalk. Instead, I cut down into a parking lot and got some good views of the bridge!

The return trip was actually better than expected, and I was surprised by how strong my legs felt with the increasing distance. I’ll take it!

Also-compression socks are magic. I put them on immediately and my legs felt great the next day. I mistakenly thought I was near Dynamo Donuts, and was thinking about them the entire second half of the run, so I decided to make the 20 minute drive there, especially since it was right by the freeway!

This time, I got a gluten free lemon buttermilk donut and a decaf iced latte.

Since my entire post-run lunch was sugar, I decided to stop for a hummus and avocado sandwich at the place across the street.

After leaving the city, I went to pick my puppy up from her play group and she was tired!

After a relaxing afternoon, my evening ended on a delicious note when we went to the Greek Festival down the street (it happens every year during Labor Day weekend) and picked up some Greek food for dinner. Spanikopita, or pastry with spinach and feta, is my favorite, but we also had Greek salad (traditional Greek salad doesn’t have lettuce) and chicken kebabs.

For dessert, I had my favorite-Galaktoboureko-which is phyllo dough filled with custard and soaked in honey. Plus, this is one of the only non-nut desserts!

Have you ever run a Nike Women’s Race?

I’ve had no energy or desire to pop open my computer these past few days. The first couple of days were totally exhausting, and my brain shut down before 10pm. Yesterday I started work at 7. I’m there for 9 hours a day, including lunch, and I’m on my feet the entire time. Needless to say, my feet haven’t been too happy about this! I love working at the vet though-I’m getting the hang of things much faster when I’m there 40 hours a week rather than the 4 hours a week I had been doing during school.

What else have I done this week? I went to the Farmer’s Market on Thursday-there’s one in the evenings right next to work on Thursdays. I’ve done some workouts, including teaching my spin class. One workout in particular I’d like to mention is the reason my legs are currently sore, and will only get more sore.

I mentioned it before, but I’m working with a trainer this summer. I trained with him all throughout high school, and in just the 2 weeks I’ve been with him this summer, everything is improving. My Olympic lifting technique is improving rapidly. In Crossfit, I feel like the strength/Oly portion gets glossed over on the way to the WOD, so this is really good. I still need to get a little more confident in my lifts, and my max weights should go up even more. Yesterday we did both snatches and cleans. I PRed my snatch again this week-from the power position. How crazy is that?? Then we did squats. I’m on a lifting program, and this week was sets of 10, 10, and 8. Yuck. High rep squats are the worst. My first set of 10 was 145#, my second was 155#, and my set of 8 was 165#. I can confidently say I’ve never done a set of 10 at 155# before. The thing though is, I never doubted that I wasn’t going to make these lifts. I think the mental aspect of weightlifting is incredibly important, and in high school, this is something that really shaped me in other areas of my life, which is one reason I fell in love with weight lifting. I actually wrote part of my college admissions essay about this. I can’t believe I’m actually sharing this, but I think it is really important so here’s a little excerpt:

“In weightlifting, I learned to push through mental roadblocks, launching myself into uncharted territory. With my mind, I could push my body further than with sheer strength. With difficult lifts, I found that if the thought of failure crept into my mind, I would instantly fail.”

Also note that I was a much better writer 3 years ago-being a science major does not foster the same types of skills…

I think that weightlifting has been a huge influence in shaping who I am.

Anyways, back to the workout. After squats was push presses and bent over rows. Then conditioning. My trainer asked me how my legs were. I said they were okay, to which he replied, “Oh, I thought they’d be shot.”

The answer should be yes, they were shot, because then I proceeded to do conditioning full of burpees.

6 minutes, on the minute:

1. 1 power clean (85#), 10 burpees

2.  2 power cleans, 8 burpees

3. 3 power cleans, 6 burpees

4. 4 power cleans, 4 burpees

5. 5 power cleans, 2 burpees

6. 6 power cleans, 1 burpee

I honestly surprised myself that I even finished 10 burpees in a minute!

But yes, now I’m feeling those squats. I started to get sore 2 hours later. So this should be interesting.

Foodwise?

Breakfasts

I mashed up a ripe banana with cocoa powder and then stirred in oats. I topped all that with plain Greek yogurt and sunflower seed butter.

Eggs+oatmeal. My berries to oatmeal ratio was 2:1 which was just about right. Oatmeal isn’t exactly my thing.

Lunch

For the first half of this week, I packed really unphotogenic sweet potatoes stuffed with black bean soup, chicken, and avocado. Plus a veggie. I’ll spare you the pictures. I finally settled on a favorite work lunch of a salad with dates, feta, chicken, nectarines, and champagne vinaigrette.

Dinner

Black bean soup with cheese and avocado.

Salad with corn and avocado, topped with Trader Joe’s BBQ chicken.

Parmesan encrusted chicken over garlic spinach, with a sweet potato on the side.

Take out-a chicken burger with dijon and avocado on a gluten free bun.

And of course-this is necessary:

How was your week?

This morning, I went to another OutRun!

I fueled up beforehand with some banana-oatmeal balls and blueberries.

The workout was fun-it was in a different place this time, and included plenty of hills, including trail running. I generally hate trail running-although to be fair I now have a good excuse for hating it. I have foot issues that are worse on trails-and the foot doctor even confirmed it. Not sure if I ever talked about this specifically but all the pain and numbness I talk about in my feet on long runs is apparently something called a neuroma, which is scar tissue build up on/around the nerve. This is probably from years of bruised feet when I played softball and had the cleats stick up through the shoe into my foot. Anyways-the foot thing isn’t an issue on shorter runs anyways!

I only wiped out on the trail once! By some miracle I landed perfectly, without a scratch. This OutRun was-I guess I would say-an easier workout than the last one. It was a larger group, so there was more pace differential so I didn’t feel like I was pushing the pace much. However, I’ve logged a lot of miles this week-kind of out of nowhere-so my legs were dragging a bit. I was especially worried about my calves. They were super tight, and my left one wasn’t feeling that great, so I kept a close eye on it. Not sure if my “long run” (5 miles) is going to happen tomorrow though, just as a precaution. I’ll play it by ear, but it is definitely not worth it to push myself and get hurt 2 weeks into training. I’m currently wearing compression socks, hoping they work their magic!

My running for the week was as follows:

Mon-off

Tues-3 mile training run

Weds-November Project+running there and back, so ~3 miles?

Thurs-Run Club. Between 3-4?

Friday-4 mile training run+maybe a mile or so at Crossfit?

Saturday-OutRun, about 4 miles

Sunday- (5 miles)

While the mileage isn’t that high, it’s much more than I’ve been running lately. The thing is, I don’t know what to cut out! It’s definitely something to figure out, especially as the long runs get longer.

After the workout, I decided to try my luck at Georgetown Cupcake. The line is always INSANE there, so I was hoping that before 11am, it would be reasonable! It was better, but it was still a wait, and I ran out of water so I was SO thirsty! I bought 2 bottles of water there. Worth every penny.

I had a lava fudge cupcake.

It was a chocolate base with cream cheese frosting and fudge sauce on top.

It was good, and the fudge on top was definitely a nice touch. I don’t get the gourmet cupcake trend though, now that I’ve had a few of the “best” places. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but I could make the same thing, or better, myself at home! Sure, it wouldn’t look as nice, but that’s really not the important part! I’m much more on-board the gourmet ice cream trend that seems to be sweeping the San Francisco Bay Area. How am I going to make liquid nitrogen ice cream at home?? (Wait-new life goal!)

So while this famous cupcake was good, I won’t wait in line for another!

Since I ate a pre-lunch cupcake, I decided I should get some veggies in my system. I happened to pass a SweetGreens-they’re seriously everywhere! I got the seasonal salad, which has peaches, goat cheese, basil, and balsamic. I added chicken.

I really liked the basil in this. It was such a nice touch that gave the salad a whole summer-y feel.

After lunch, I walked around Georgetown a bit, and then walked home.

My afternoon has been really low key. I decided to save the exciting things for tomorrow. I’m meeting up with some people to watch the game, and depending on if I’m running or not, I might hit up a Smithsonian.

For snack, I had some leftover brussels sprouts. They were a little firmer than I would have liked, so I heated them up in the microwave liberally to cook them a bit more. I then topped them with smoked gouda. Delicious.

Since I ate plenty of veggies in my snack (that bowl x2 or 3), I opted for a simple dinner of an egg and some very egg heavy chocolate chip pancakes.

They came out super dense, and not the most amazing things ever, but it got the job done!

Have a fantastic rest of your weekend!