Back to Reality

Ugh, I hate Mondays.  If you didn't already know this about me, I dread Mondays.  They are the worst day of the week for me.  I get all depressed come Sunday afternoon and the blah's just don't go away until I wake up on Tuesday morning and celebrate that I made it through another Monday.  And coming back from a really awesome weekend, it makes it especially difficult to face Monday.  And to make matters worse, with the end of the Holidays, I have some new realities setting in.  In just a few short weeks I will be back in full swing tax season mode, and as much as I LOVE my job, I really hate the long hours that it demands.  Thankfully tax season is only a couple of months long and the rest of the year is pretty lax, but looking ahead and staring down the face of tax season is quite daunting for this chica.

Okay, enough with the doom and gloom.  I had an AWESOME weekend!  New Year's Eve was fantastic!  I had a blast with my Bro, SIL, hubbs and some really good friends.  We partied way tooooo much but it was sooo worth it!  Let's just say, if I never see another Markers Mark and diet coke for about six months that will be okay with me!  We had the limo takes us all over downtown Sacramento and we even watched the fireworks go off - a big highlight of the evening.  But it was just perfect to spend the evening ringing in the New Year with some of the best family and friends a girl could ask for :)

Ari and I - sorry it's a bit blurry!  I think the car was moving, there were drinks consumed and it was taken on my blackberry!

My good friend Sarah and I - we all had a pair of those light up glasses that said 2010 and blinked like crazy!  They were a constant source of laughter!

Friday, New Year's day, after sleeping in for about 5 hours (yes, five hours! we didn't get home until 3 am!!) my hubbs and I headed up to Tahoe for the weekend.  What a mistake that was.  The town was packed with people!  Traffic to get anywhere was terrible and you could tell the locals were just done (we had bad service everywhere we went).  We decided though, to enjoy ourselves.  By the time we got up there the weather was perfect for running, about 40 degrees.  I have always run on New Years Day and I wasn't going to let a hangover stop me.  I logged about four miles and felt great.  I didn't turn on my Garmin just went for a run and had a blast. 

Saturday we got up and headed over to Heavenly to snowboard.  I am not a big fan of this resort.  It is a huge tourist trap and you get a lot of beginners trying to tackle this big mountain.  On a non-holiday it is even busy but this day was even crazier.  We had tickets already for there so we decided to give it a shot.  We were the first ones on the Gondola and the first on a few of the lifts.  But by noon the place was out of control and I was tired of dodging people.  So I decided to head back down the mountain and go for a run while Ari finished up a few more runs.  I was soooo glad I did this.  The weather was awesome again and my legs felt surprisingly fresh even though I had just snowboarded for over three hours!  I wonder what kind-of a workout you would call that?  It was definitely a duo day!

I ran 6 miles up and down Lake Tahoe Blvd in 47:38  7:56/mi pace.  I didn't want to venture too far while I waited for Ari to come down the mountain, so I did 1.5 mile stretches back and forth.  All the while eating car and bus fumes.  But my legs felt great and the altitude wasn't too bad - I might actually be getting used to it!  If you look closely you can see the mountains in the background.  But you can also notice that there isn't much snow on the ground here - they have been getting warm temps in the afternoon - not good for snowboarding!

We headed home on Saturday afternoon and it took us FOREVER!  We thought we would be beating the traffic by leaving Saturday, but we were wrong!  It normally takes about 3:45-4:00 hours to get home, but it took us 5 1/2 hours!  Traffic was bad.  We made mental notes never to go to Tahoe on NY weekend again :(

I am sooo excited to start my training.  Only 15 weeks to Boston!  I am going to continue to do base work for a couple of weeks and then jump into the full training schedule around 12-13 weeks out.  16 weeks is just too long of a cycle for me.

I hope everyone had a fabulous NY Eve and day and I am excited to see what 2010 has in store for all of us.  Have a great Monday peeps (I'm gonna try)!
Happy Running!