Week in Review

~81 Miles
16 Mile Long Run
2 Doubles
3 Ab Sessions
1 Massage

In an effort to account for my crazy schedule that started on Wednesday, I kept things early in the week light and just focused on getting my runs in before my social life got the best of me.  The week started off with a solid 1000m workout and I had over 35 miles after 3 days of running.  On Wednesday, I traveled to Atlanta to visit my best friend Merry as she connected over night in Atlanta for her first trip back to the US in over a year after being in the Peace Corps.  We exchanged updates about our lives, reminisced about memories and people from Wake, and laughed about some of the oddities of Dominican Republic culture.  All of this took place into late hours in the night, and I had to wake up at 5:00AM to drive back to Charlotte in time for work.

Needless to say that the trip was well worth whatever lack of sleep I may have gotten, and I made it to work on time.  Combining the lack of sleep with the humidity made my body feel absolutely terrible, so I called off a tempo workout on Friday and decided to run hard for a 5k in my long run on Sunday.

On Friday night, my former massage therapist from Wake Forest, Joel Tull, was able to get us some free tickets to Cirque du Soleil since he is their massage therapist whenever they tour through the Carolinas.  The show was great!!  I still liked Totem better, but Cirque always will hold a special place in my heart because of the amazing feats of strength, agility and skill that are demonstrated by the athletes!

I topped out the week with a long run that was shared with about 20 other Charlotte runners on the Davidson campus and trails.  Afterwards, a group of 10 of us enjoyed the delicious food over at Toast before we made our way over to the Hepp-Hovis training facility for a quick dip in the pool.

I've got two more weekends of travel, and then I'll be staying put in Charlotte for a couple of weeks.  What's next?  Next weekend I'll be in Michigan for my cousin's wedding and the following week Meagan and I will be making an appearance at the 13.1 Minneapolis race.  Another wedding in Raleigh will keep me occupied in the final days of August.  Soon Jay and Lauren will be married too!  By the beginning of September, Garrett's baseball season will be wrapping up, but he won't be coming straight back to North Carolina.  Instead, he is opting to go straight to my parent's house to get to know them better and to also earn some money by working for their real estate business.  By that time, it will have been over 9 weeks since the last time I saw him.  I'm sure a trip home to Carbondale to visit Garrett while he's there will be something that comes to fruition.  After that, it's time to buckle down and focus on training, proper recovery, nutrition and all the other little things that build up to become really important!  (Not that I haven't been focusing on that, but travel does make it much harder to!)