Long Run Sundays: Bad Runs = Good Luck?

Where has this weekend gone? I’m not going to lie, I probably slept a good portion of it away. It started with the sugar coma I got from eating cupcakes at work.

Being that it was National Chocolate Cake Day (or so I was told) and my work friends and I were dying to get out of the office, we found it fitting to stuff ourselves with cake. Mermaids Bakery is located downtown and is known for their fancy fondant work on cakes as well as being gluten-friendly. Since I don’t have gluten allergies or care about gluten-free products, I opted for their Cookies n Creme cake made with dark chocolate cake batter and topped with crushed cookie bits.

 

We picked some up for a few of the others as well. Overall, the cupcakes were good, but not great. My favorite place is still Happy Cakes (how can you not love a place with that name?), hands down. Also, if any of you Denverites plan on stopping by Mermaids, please take note that their large cupcakes are the size of normal ones even though they say they’re 3x bigger. They’re not. Yes, I wanted a ginormous ass cupcake and was highly disappointed.

Anywho, moving on. As mentioned, I was going to be heading to Thao’s birthday bowling party on Friday night. If you read my last post, I bet you’ll never guess what I did when I got home. I took a 3 hour nap. Three whole hours of afternoon bliss. Then I woke up starving because it was 8pm by then and I hadn’t eaten since I downed my not-so-giant cupcake from earlier in the afternoon. I honestly don’t know what I ate because I was still sleepy and trying to force myself awake.

Once I made it over to the bowling alley with Maly and Nate, we promptly greeted Thao and proceeded to buy her drinks and make her sip off of ours. It’s a good thing we got a picture with her before we made her hate her life.

BTW, I really suck at bowling. Therefore, I’m convinced that the balls must have been rigged because I won the first game on my lane with a score of 118! It was fun to bowl because I felt like I was in high school all over again. I used to go to these lock-ins with my best friend where you got to play unlimited games until your parents picked you up at 6am. Those were the days.

It’s a good thing I took a nap because I didn’t get home until almost 2:30am. Then I promptly passed out…again. I got in a painful 4 mile run the next morning afternoon before heading to Planet Laboratories in Cherry Creek for a haircut. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I let my fantastic stylist, Heather, do whatever she thought would look best. She ended up chopping off about 4 inches of narsty dead ends, re-cutting my bangs pseudo-Kim K style, and texturizing my hair to give it more oomph. She also had an opening after my appointment, so she decided to curl my hair for me after the blow-out. What do you think?

It feels so much lighter and healthier! If you live in the Denver area and need a great stylist, go to Planet Laboratories. You get to feel fancy for being in Cherry Creek, and their lower-level stylists are very affordable (I think they start around $30…if only mine were that much…).

Since I got my hair all did and purty, I ended up joining some friends out downtown for a couple of drinks before calling it a night. I took a nap before I went out, of course.

Do Bad Runs Make for Good Luck?

Hooray! Today was my last long run before my half marathon next week! I wasn’t really planning on tapering down my long run, so instead of running 12 miles full-on, I ran about 9 miles of it much slower than I normally do and did a combo of running and walking for the last 3. Sounds all fine and dandy, but it just sucked today.

My legs felt fine, my feet were a little sore but okay, my breathing was coming easy, but I was just plain exhausted and not mentally in the game. Boo. I was dragging along hoping I would see someone I know so that I could find a way to convince them to give me a ride home haha.

I’m hoping that this is good luck for me. How? Well, every time I have a super craptastic run one week, the next week seems to be one of my more amazing runs that makes me feel like a million bucks. I’m hoping that this is true because that would mean my half marathon is going to be even more awesome than I’m already envisioning. Guess I won’t know until then.

In the meantime, my primary goals for this week are to get a lot of sleep, drink enough water to become a fish, and focus on a few, short  speed runs. Ahhhh I can’t believe it’s exactly a week from today! I’ll probably be posting random running crap throughout the week and asking for advice, so be prepared. I’ll also share some tips for first time racers that I got from the Skinny Runner. I emailed her asking for tips for first-time racers wanting to not piss off more experienced racers and for having a good time, and she was awesome enough to reply back. Aww hell, I think she’s pretty awesome even without the email, but I’m starting to sound like a stalker, so I’m out for today!

Question of the Day: Are your bad runs or workouts usually followed by spectacular ones? How was your weekend?