Anniversaries

Rainy Monday?!!
Good thing it's my rest day or otherwise we would have had a very sad panda situation going on here.
What better than to spend a rainy Monday Rest Day than cooking and baking? Those are my plans for after work. Banana bread, anyone? :)

This weekend was a special weekend; James and I celebrated our third anniversary! The day was hardly about gushy gushy mushy stuff though; I started the day off with my longest swim to date: 2600 meters!!!!, while James went with his friends to a Kiteboarding tournament, which got postponed because... there was no wind, lol.

Anyways, let's focus on my bad-ass-ness for a while here, and let me bask in my swimming glory for a moment. 2600 meters, that's more than 1.5 miles! Holy smokes! Though my shoulders felt they were going to EXPLODE at the end, I generally felt amazing the entire time in the water. And can I just brag that I took no breaks?!!!! There was once or twice I came up for 5 deep breaths, but other than that, I was just a swimming machine!

I broke down my swim into 500meter segments. The first 500 was just a slow-ish pace warm up. (it takes me a while to "get in the groove") The second 500 I threw in a couple 90% effort laps. The third 500 I threw in 250meters worth of 85-95% effort laps, the fourth 500 I did "ladder sprints" (each leg of the 100 meters faster than the other), and used the last 500 to breast stroke, back stroke, swim slowly, and warm down. An excellent workout all around! And of course, nothing better than a quick sauna trip with the latest issue of Competitor Magazine to round it all off :) OK I am a bad ass. Done bragging now, haha :)

Ok now back to the mushy mushy stuff. After going for a semi-lovely 45min afternoon walk with James (sooooo windy!) we got ready for the main event; Dinner!

We went to one of my favorite Italian restaurants called Via Maestra 42.
And we ordered what is potentially the best thing we ever ate. Like ever.

Behold!
Pumpkin Ricotta Cheese Ravioli with Brown Butter Sage Sauce

Ummmmm. Foodgasms.
So freaking unbelievably good. So so good.
The sauce. Oh, the sauce!
I want to take a shower in this amazing heavenly butter sauce and then soak in a tub full of this sauce. I just want to drink it by the spoonful.
I would probably go to battle for this sauce too. I would be willing to don an armor and fight someone to the death to protect this amazing recipe. And then celebrate by taking a soak in the tub in this sauce.
Yeah. It's that good.

Don't let any of that good sauce go to waste!

And the tiramisu!!!! Please excuse the ridonculously ugly expression on my face, but that is my "Holy sh!t this tiramisu is out of the world! I am beyond excited to eat this thing!" face. I literally wanted to order the entire pan of tiramisu and shove it into my mouth with a shovel. Yumo. nom nom nom nom nom.

And it's ok. I swam over 1.5 miles and went for a walk. No guilt whatsoever!

And speaking of anniversaries, my one year romantic escapade with racing is coming up in two weekends. April 24, 2010 is the 365 days mark of racing for me. Before then, I had never run a race before! Can you believe it? I can't! I can't imagine WTF I was doing before I started racing! Good god, I must have had so much free time on the weekends.... (haha not really, I've always been busy)

I feel like I've accomplished a lot in one year. The full list of races I've completed is on my sidebar on the right. In 365 days, I've fit in 3 HM, two full Marathons, a couple 10Ks, and a couple other distances. And I might be able to add two more to the roster before the year is up!
Though racing has sucked a whole lot of these guys from my wallet,

I believe it was all worth it. And I've got no plans to stop anytime soon either. Year #2 will include triathlons. I'll make sure of it. :)

So that's all for now, folks. I have a bicycle adventure to catch you up on, and some valuable bike lessons I've learned :)

Have a happy one, and if you see any leftover Cadburry Creme Eggs, you can send them my way! heehee