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

Spur of the moment racing

I did two new things on Sat:

1) Decide to run a race the morning of

2) show up to/run/finish the race all by myself

I decided running a race would be a much more fun way of getting a run in. I wanted James to run it with me too, but the waves were too good, apparently, so he went surfing instead. Since when are waves>running, anyways? ;)

The race was the UCSB Turkey Trot "10K". I honestly didn't even notice the fact that I was there all alone until after I registered, and had a bunch of time to kill by myself. In college or high school, I would have felt totally awkward and insecure showing up to something all by myself like that, but on Sat, I felt completely at ease just hanging out with me, myself, and I.

My, my. My little Julia's all grown up. Tear.

I ran 1.5 miles to warm up, and just kind of hung out near the starting area stretching and such. Right before the race, there was a group warm up exercise led by a local personal trainer. Unlike in Maui, this warm up was very well organized and executed. The instructor had us "jacking" and squatting and push-upping. "If you're tired already, you're in trouble!" she yelled at one point, and I had to gulp... but apparently others felt the squats too, as one girl yelled back "Oh no! I'm in trouble!" I love small races. Everyone feels more comfortable and just wants to have fun.

The course was actually very poorly thought out, in my opinion. First of all, the first 2 miles is very hilly. (Pansies like me don't like hills!) Second, they had us running on this trail which is hardly wide enough for one person. What made it worse is that they had us running back along the trail, which meant that the faster people had to cross the slower people on a trail that's not wide enough for even one person. Even worse was that some people were running with their dogs. Without leashes. Ugh. (BTW, it's cool that races allow people to run with dogs/strollers/etc. But leashes should be mandatory!) This made it difficult to pass anyone, or run fast. Good thing I wasn't racing, as this would surely have pissed me off.

The other bad thing about the race was that they didn't have an aid station until mile 5. The weather was in the upper 70's without the cloud in the sky. I was DYING of thirst by that point. Seriously DYING. Who puts the one and only aid station at mile 5?

The "10K" ended up being 6.75 miles. Again, good thing I wasn't going for time! In the last quarter mile or so, I made a new friend. I discovered he is also running the Santa Barbara marathon; he's running it as a relay, and he is running the last leg. In my opinion, the last leg is the best, because you're the one who gets to cross the finish line!) We ended up crossing the finish line together. Race friends make me happy :)

I left right after I finished to pick up James by the beach, so I have no idea what my time was. I don't even care. I had fun. I ran. That's all that matters :)

Here is the Race Shirt and freebies I scored: Jelly Bean Sport Beans. I'm excited to try them. I actually love the race shirt. I love the brown trim!

After the race, I absolutely refused to stay indoors. I mean, it was 70+ degrees out, without a cloud in the sky! The best thing to do? Go for a shoreline walk!

It doesn't look it, but this sammie was gigantor.

And then we met the most acrobatic puppy ever:

Incredible.

We ended up walking 4.5 miles, which brought my total mileage to close to 13 miles. Oops. So much for tapering! But it's ok, cause I am not gonna even have time to work out this week.

Bring on the turkey and gravy, baby :)