Hello and happy Monday! Can you guys believe Christmas is less than 10 days away?! I don’t know about you guys, but I need to get moving on some serious Christmas shopping this week. Yikes! By the way – if you’re looking for some holiday gift/stocking stuffer ideas for your favorite runner or foodie, check out my favorite products page for some inspiration! It includes all my absolute favorite running related gear, kitchen appliances and gadgets, and cookbooks.
Anyway – I hope you all had a great weekend! On Saturday, I got in my longest run since the Richmond Marathon last month – an 8 miler with my buddy Heather.
I’m so lucky that I have friends that are willing to run with me early on a Saturday morning! I needed to get going and be back home by 9 a.m., so we met up at 7:45 on the Virginia side of Key Bridge, right at the entrance to the Mt. Vernon Trail, and then forged on together from there.
Blurry snowy trail action shot:
It was pretty cold and cloudy out but as always we enjoyed the views of the monuments across the water.
We decided to do a loop instead of an out and back, so we headed over one of the bridges towards the National Mall area.
We did a short jaunt around the tidal basin…
Said a blurry hello to Mr. Lincoln…
Ran over Memorial Bridge towards Arlington National Cemetery (the Wreaths Across America event was going on – TONS of people were around!)…
Then ran through Iwo Jima and up through very steep Rosslyn until we hit 8 miles. Whew! So rough ending on a massive hill.
Splits:
- Mile 1: 8:38
- Mile 2: 8:39
- Mile 3: 8:21
- Mile 4: 8:29
- Mile 5: 8:32
- Mile 6: 8:34
- Mile 7: 8:52
- Mile 8: 8:57 (great pace for the uphill!)
Awesome run! Running with Heather is always good motivation to go a little faster than I normally would. 
Hooray for running buddies.
After the run, I quickly showered, had some food, and then headed out: I had a bachelorette party to attend!
My college friend Kathleen (who you’ll remember as one of my Richmond Marathon training buddies) is getting married in February, so a group of us spent the day on Saturday hitting up some local wineries, followed by dinner and drinks back in DC. Our favorite of the day was Aspen Dale Winery at the Barn. So cute and cozy, and we loved that they have live music every weekend!
Even cozier: the snow that had started outside. I’d never been wine tasting in winter before – it gave a totally different feel to the outing!
Such a fun day.
Other excitement this weekend included trying a new to me yoga studio: Flow Yoga Center on P Street in DC.
My friend Lauren and I hit up the Sunday morning 10:30 a.m. class led by Sam, and it was awesome. Two big thumbs up! I’ll be back for sure. I also did a headstand for the first time with the assistance of the instructor! Exciting. I’ve got my forearm balance handstand down now thanks to practice at my favorite yoga studio (Edge Yoga in Arlington – Mark’s classes are the best!), so it was fun to try something new.
It was actually a pretty nice day in DC yesterday – good to see the sun after a pretty gloomy couple weeks! Matt and I decided to enjoy it with a little afternoon hike.
We were originally headed to the VA side of Great Falls Park, but stumbled upon this on the way and decided to mix it up.
We hiked around for about an hour and a half, enjoying the fresh air. It was a little soggy out here from the snow recently but beautiful!
And now, time to get caught up on work! Have a great day, everyone!
What did you get into this weekend? Any fun adventures?
p.s. Thank you so much to everyone who entered my Brooks running shoe & winter accessories giveaway! I just used my giveaway plugin to randomly select the two winners. If you are one of them you’ll hear from me today!
Weekend Adventures originally appeared on fANNEtastic food on December 16, 2013.
The post Weekend Adventures appeared first on fANNEtastic food.