Great weekend - and we have pics to prove it!

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. We REALLY did!

Friday night we never could decide what we wanted for dinner and we ended up at Batter'd and Fried. I think our dinner would have been a lot better if we had ended up with our fave waiter. I didn't see him at first so we didn't ask for him, but it turns out he was there. The food was just OK, not great. We've been making such awesome dinners lately using our new Racheal Ray cookbooks that we knew we could've done something ourselves much better with the $40 we spent on the meal. We had the classic issue of the waiter disappearing when we were ready for our bill. Where was he? Constantly bringing food to the family of three overweight people at the table next to us. They each had TWO meals, literally! And the ten year old kid drank at least five sodas. It was insane the amount of food they consumed. Lately I've had so many people mention Pippin's weight to me that I really just WANT to tell overweight people that THEY need to lose weight. Pippin's weight is all our fault, and he really just has a couple more pounds to lose. He's down to somewhere around 24-25 pounds from his highest weight of 30 over a year ago. What are these people's excuses???

Anyway, Saturday morning we went out for our long run! The local running group was doing 14 miles Sunday morning in our neighborhood (running from Bongo Java East to Bongo Java Belmont and back). We decided to run the same course ourselves on Saturday instead. Their run started a half mile from our house, so we just started at our house and cut out part of a loop they did and have 11 miles instead. Our last long run was DECEMBER 9th so we wanted to start out easy. Brent has only run once since then, too....... It was nice and warm Saturday morning, perfect for running! It was a little windy and most of the way out on our run the wind was in our face. I could definitely tell it had been a WHILE since I'd done hills! Since our last long run I've put in around 70 miles on the treadmill (primarily because we've been taking care of Pippin) and working out 6 days a week - but hills are a different story!

We had a blast, stopping to take pics when we wanted and enjoy the atmosphere and the beautiful day. We ran from our house, past the stadium (1.5 miles) then into downtown (.5 miles) down 2nd and up Demonbreun to Music Row and to Athletes House running store. When we made it to AH's we'd run 5.5 miles. Perfect! We took pics outside Bongo Java Belmont and Athlete's House and enjoyed some of the water and Gatorade they leave out for runners. I had already drunk all my Gatorade so I was very thankful for that! We popped out our Clif Shot Bloks and tried the Pina Colada and Black Cherry flavors I picked up recently. PC was OK, but I don't think I'd like it during a marathon - it was a little too sweet. BC was pretty good, I think that one would work for me. The return trip was more downhill than uphill (yay!) so we made great time. Other than two brats downtown for the circus who literally almost knocked us down as they ran out from a side entrance of the GEC as their redneck dad smoked in the corner (their DNA is probably still under my fingernails from where I grabbed her arm to keep her from slamming into me) our return trip was pretty uneventful. (On a side note, why is there no parenthood test??? I don't get that. Anyone can reproduce. Those brats could have knocked down an elderly person, other small kids, or run into traffic! And I don't blame them, I blame their redneck parents.) I felt great and picked up the speed closer to home. It was nice to know that even though it's been about six weeks since I've run anything close to double digits I can still do it when motivated. We kept a pace of avg 10:30 which includes stopping for pics and traffic lights. (I've got to get my watch back on the auto-pause so I can get our true pace again). When we ran we kept up a 9-9:30 pace on the flats and flat 10 on the ups. Not bad! And Brent did quite well for NO running in about 6 weeks! He's sore today but nothing bad.




































The next highlight of the weekend??? Taking Pips for his walk!! When we got home I grabbed the Dazer and somehow he KNEW we were going for a walk!! We walked .3 mile, 10 mins. I know we were supposed to only walk 5 mins but he does stop and pee a lot, and we did stop for about 3-4 mins to talk to one of our neighbors (J) and his dog (Y). It seems like we haven't seen our neighbors in AGES since we haven't been outdoors running or walking Pippin. Our neighborhood is wonderful - people are always walking, running, and taking their dogs on leisurely strolls around the neighborhood. Most every car you see going by in East Nashville has a dog happily riding inside with its people. Perfect. Pippin LOVED it. When we got home he sat down on the mat and pretty much decided he wanted to go again. And we did take him again today, for a slightly longer walk. And he LOVED it all over again. Thanks to a wicked cold front that came through last night it was 30 and WINDY. Normally Pippin would've turned around as soon as we hit the sidewalk but today he didn't mind it at all. He's doing great with his leg post luxating patella surgery. About 90% of the time he's using the leg that was operated on, and he's playing all the time now. He's started doing a lot of little things he hasn't done since before his accident (like attacking my feet and doing these crazy little stretches) and it just cracks us up to see him doing all that again. We're 15 days out from his surgery now and he's exactly where the doc said he would be. YAY!

This post is way long enough to begin with so I'm logging off now. I hope you all had GREAT weekends, too!

Rachel

WIDTW:
Fri: Rest Day!!
Sat: 11.2 mile run; .3 mile walk with Pippin
Sun: 3.3 mile run; 35 mins toning abs; .6 mile walk with Pippin