Taking It Easy....Well Sort Of

Hi everyone! I am happy to report that I have been behaving myself and taking it easy.....well, taking it easy according to me. Earlier this week I was able to do a bloggie meet up with one of my blogger friends from New York! I met Suzy and her husband ADP for a nice dinner in Minneapolis. We met at a cute and charming bar & grill called Eli's. I would highly recommend it to everyone! It is known as the Loring Park area's best kept secret! I found it to be a diamond in the rough. The service was outstanding and the food absolutely delicious!

Suzy and me:)

Suzy and me again:)

This is ADP and Suzy. We met and enjoyed a drink together before sitting down to eat dinner. Suzy and her husband are both very charming, we enjoyed fantastic & stimulating conversation! They are both very outgoing and charismatic:) Suzy, if you ever come to my neck of the woods again, please let me know! I would love to do a meet-up again! ADP, you are invited too:)

I really wanted to tone down my workouts for the week and take it easy on myself. I think that I did a pretty good job. This week's training schedule looked like this.

Sunday....Red White and Boom Half Marathon 13.2 miles.

Monday, off.

Tuesday.....an easy 2.5 miler at a 9 minute pace.

Wednesday....an easy 4 miler at a 9 minute pace.

Thursday, I will call this cross training day. I cut my lawn and this task takes one hour:)

Friday, off.

Saturday, an 8 miler at a 9:10 minute pace.

This morning I headed up to St. Cloud to run with my running group. Today's breakfast run was hosted by Denny, (AKA my running dad) and his wife Carol. They have a lovely home on the river with breathtaking views:) I met Deb at the park and we ventured out on a four miler, running on the trails next to the river. We headed back to Denny and Carol's house for our group picture. After chatting a bit with the group we started out on our second run. Deb and I ran another four miler. This second run was a little more challenging than the first because it was getting so darn hot. We ran by Whitney Park and Deb spotted that the baseball field had sprinklers on! Oh happy day:) We stopped to run through the sprinklers and cooled down! I was loving it and felt refreshed enough to continue on! I told Deb that I was bummed that my camera's battery died...this was definitely a Kodak moment:) After our run, I quick got into my van. I drove down the street to the nearest gas station to purchase batteries for my camera. Julie and a camera that doesn't work is just wrong! You all know how much I love taking pictures:)

After we all got back from our runs we returned to Denny's house for our breakfast! Here are several pictures that I took this morning.

Nikki and Deb.

Deb and me.

Nikki and me.

I took a few pictures of this amazing view of the river! This was taken just off of Denny's deck.... Denny and Carol get to look at every single day:)

So beautiful and peaceful:)

My running folks....Denny and Carol:)

Denny, me and Carol.

Next weekend my hubby and I are heading out to California! I am running in the Napa to Sonoma Half Marathon and looking forward to it:) Hopefully if everything works out I will be running a few shorter races with my blogger pals Average A and Julie. The MDRA is hosting Wednesday evening races in the month of July! We get to run by Minnehaha Park....one of my favorite spots to run in Minnesota:) With in the next few days I will also be signing up for a few 5Ks to run for the months of July and August. I know of two races that I will be running in September. I did both of these runs last year and had a blast. The first is the Bolder Dash 10K and the other is Women Run the Cities 10 miler. Don't worry, I promise that I am not going to go all gang busters with these runs! I am going to listen to my body and use them as training runs. I still need to wait for clearance from my doctor to run full force. So far I have not had any other GI episodes but will continue to remain cautious when running.

Happy running, biking, swimming and lifting! Cheers to you all!

Rad Runner is hosting an ALO clothing giveaway!

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Anne is hosting a $60 CSN giftcard giveaway!