Weekend Wrap Up: 11.2 PW Edition

Friday was not my best day.  To make me feel better, John took me to dinner & then to Parnassus & bought me a book.  Having recently finished The Casual Vacancy, I wanted something short & light, so I got Swamplandia!.  I've heard great things about it.   We'll see...

I got up early on Saturday & went to the flea market with my parents.  I found this ottoman in the first 5 seconds of being there & bought it.  It was just $15!  This is it's true color, no Instagram filter.  It's an orange-red.  I'm not sure if it's leather or vinyl.  Probably vinyl.  Oh, & the lid comes off & you can store things in it.  It smells like basement & Linda won't leave it alone, but I love it!

I found a stack of these huge "@" & almost bought one.  They weren't priced, but letters of similar size were around $60.  They had a smaller size for $35, but I think I like the bigger one.  In my mind, I would paint it black & hang it somewhere in our house.  But I couldn't decide, so I didn't buy it.

After the flea market, I ate lunch with my parents, then went to Green Hills to pick up my new Equipment top!!!  I'm going to love that shirt so hard.

On Saturday night, John & I went to the Belcourt to see the new Peter Jackson documentary, West Of Memphis.  Since I read Life After Death, I've been a little obsessed with the West Memphis 3.  I watched the 3-part HBO documentary, Paradise Lost.  West Of Memphis is a nice, kind of, final installment.  It shows a lot of new info not included in Paradise Lost, particularly about the stepfather that a lot of people suspect actually committed the murders.  The movie is at the Belcourt through Thursday.  I highly recommend it.

In preparation for the Oak Barrel Half in 2 weeks, we ran the 11.2 in Percy Warner yesterday.  I've run the 5.8 many times, but never the 11.2.  I was more nervous about this training run, than I've ever been about a race.  Everyone said if I could run the 5.8, I could run the 11.2, but I had my doubts.  Plus, as you can see in this pic, it wasn't exactly ideal weather.

Well, I did it.  I ran the 11.2.  I didn't start my Garmin in time, so it's off by a half mile or so, but I assure you, I ran it.  Thank you to everyone who lied to me about how many hills are in this route.  I was already freaked out & had I known that I would basically be running uphill (in the rain) for oh, NINE MILES, I totally wouldn't have done it.

This is the hardest route I've ever run & I'm super proud of myself.  And I ran the whole thing!  I would stop & walk for the few steps it took me to shove some energy chews into my mouth, but I ran up every single one of those insane hills.

I listened to music yesterday, which I never do, & that helped.  I ran with water & my Stinger energy chews, but it wasn't enough.  It kept me alive, but I didn't have as much energy as I usually do.  For the last 2 miles, I couldn't even talk, which, for those of you who have ever run with me, you know how rare that is.  But I did it!  Afterwards, we (me, Lana, Heidi, Jaime & Melanie) treated ourselves to brunch at Le Peep.

I burned about 1,700 calories (seriously) running yesterday, so I told John we could have hot chicken for dinner.  We've been wanting to make it again now that we have the secret ingredient, Slap Ya Mama.

We were calling it Hot Chicken 2.0:  Fry Harder.  It was definitely hotter.  It was on the cusp of being too hot for me to eat.  I always get the mild at Prince's & John gets the hot.  He said what we made last night was probably the medium.  Lawd.  It didn't feel medium.  But it was delicious!