Good morning, and thank you for the congratulations regarding my new opportunity working as the part time sports dietitian over at the Endurance Athlete Center (EAC)! I’m excited to get started and to embark on a new adventure. Speaking of, the EAC is looking to hire a new full time physical therapist – if you or anyone you know is interested, please email Kerri at Fast Track Physical Therapy ([email protected]) for more information. She’s looking for someone that has at least 3 years experience and is a fellow endurance athletics lover!
In other news, I spent an unnecessary amount of money yesterday purchasing the digital rights to this fun official race photo from the Richmond Marathon!
Totally worth it, I think. :) Oh and don’t worry – all my race photos were not this good, trust me. There were a couple cool ones of me finishing, but for the most part, in addition to the typical awkward half landing/legs look weird race photos, there was also a whole series of photos of me in the process of eating a granola bar, which were really quite fetching, as you can imagine. Lol. Feel free to check them out, if you want a laugh today. ;)
Anyway – I hope you all had great weekends! On Friday night, we went out for dinner and drinks with friends, and on Saturday morning, I had a fabulous 6 mile run around DC with my friend Karen. This was my first real/longer run since the marathon last weekend. (I can’t believe it was only a week ago?!)
I know Karen has her eyes closed in the photo above but I loved it because we’re both cracking up! The random person taking our photo said “Say cheeeeese!! Or whatever it is people say now…” and we both started laughing just as he took the picture. :)
Karen and I met up around Metro Center and set out for what was originally planned to be a 4 or 5 miler, depending how I felt. Well, I ended up feeling good! We kept it really casual on pace and chatted away the whole time, and I was so happy to be out and running again. It was a nice day on Saturday and it was great to catch up with Karen and enjoy our beautiful city!
We ran down to the National Mall and then around the Tidal Basin and back. I always love running around this – so pretty. Look – the Washington Monument scaffolding is starting to come down!
As we ran back towards the mall, we saw that the White House Christmas tree is now up and starting to be decorated – how fun! We decided to run over to check it out. I love this time of year. :)
Since we were both feeling great, we ended up making it 6 miles. Awesome run!
You know what was also awesome? Doing a run that didn’t take hours and hours and leave me exhausted for the rest of the day! What a novel idea. ;) I was definitely having some post-marathon blues last week, but Saturday reminded me how nice it is to be more flexible with runs and to not have them take up your whole weekend!
After the run, I headed straight to meet Matt, who was out running errands, and we grabbed brunch at Le Pain Quotidien. I love their omelettes – I had the wild mushroom and goat cheese omelette and also added avocado and tomato. Delicious! Love that they give you salad on the side, too.
As for the rest of the weekend, on Saturday night Matt and I started the evening with a Friendsgiving party at Mary and Anthony’s!
Our contribution was the awesome Quinoa Salad with Pecans and Cranberries (click for recipe) that was served at our wedding last year!
I hadn’t made that recipe in too long. So tasty and easy.
We had a blast at the Friendsgiving – great group and it was fun to meet some new people! Mary and Anthony had everyone go around and say something that they were thankful for in the past year, too, which we loved. Such a nice reminder to focus on the many good things we all have in our lives. Something about saying it out loud makes you appreciate it even more, I think.
After enjoying some pumpkin pie (couldn’t leave before dessert!), Matt and I said our thank yous and headed over to my college friend Sarah’s place – she was hosting a little birthday get together. Also a blast!
As for yesterday, we enjoyed a really low key day getting some work done and tidying up, and last night, our friends Steve and Lauren had us over for dinner & Homeland watching.
Lauren made a delish turkey soup, and we brought over some more of our quinoa salad (I made double the recipe since I knew we’d want to bring something with us Sunday, too). We also brought some beer and crackers and cheese to all enjoy before dinner.
To go with the soup, Lauren made some roasted veggies – my favorite. Tastiest way to eat veggies, in my opinion. :)
Thanks again for having us over, guys!
And now – time to get back to work! Matt and I are heading up to Pittsburgh this year to spend Thanksgiving with his family, and are planning to leave on Tuesday night, so I need to try to pack a lot of work into the next couple days. I got a good head start yesterday but there’s always more on the to-do list!
Have a great day, everyone!
What are you thankful for?
It’s going to be a busy week but a fun one for sure!
I am thankful for my health, happiness, and family!
Your brunch looks awesome! I’m visiting my best friend in D.C. in a couple weeks and we always do a big brunch, because there are so many good places to go! I also can’t wait to see the Christmas tree. I’m thankful for a 2-day work week right about now!
I LOVE the quinoa salad with cranberries recipe. Looking forward to the week ahead so yesterday I made some up for my workday lunches. No pecans in pantry…..boo…. But substituted walnuts. Also made 5 minute no bake peanut butter granola bars for my midday snack since I’m working late nights this week. Thanks for sharing!
Yay – so glad you’re enjoying my recipes!
Looks like a great weekend! I’m so excited Christmas trees are going up!!! I put my little one up this weekend. I love Christmas time!!!
yum that food looks amazing! so I totally checked out your race photos and the poor girl in some of your photos… I mean photo #144992421 is a classic. Bib 5087 really felt that marathon! Love your granola eating series lol
Lol! I know!
That marathon pic was totally worth the purchase. it’s awesome! I’m noticing lots of people having “friendsgiving” get togethers. I think I’m going to do that next year. I just had a big 40th birthday party last month so I guess that was my own personal friendsgiving party. I’m so thankful for my running friends. I had one amazing year this year. 11 half marathons, 2 full marathons, 3 10ks and one 5k and I think I just got talked into a 15K in December =)
But like you right now i’m thankful that my weekends don’t include long runs of 3 hours or more =)
Wow – that is a LOT of races! You’re an animal!
Glad to see that you’re back at it! Well done on the run — and on the fun! And congrats again on the position with Endurance Athlete!
I think that picture was definitely worth buying! It’s great!
That food looks so great! Post-marathon “short” runs aka anything under a half marathon are so shockingly short and sweet. haha
Hey Anne
I’m a brazilian fan of your blog! I thought it would be nice to let you know that I’m not american, so you get the feeling you have readers around the globe :)
I love running and eating healthy, so I found lots of interisting stuff around here
Yesterday i made your soda bread, there was no left overs lol
I made some changes since we do not find easily almond milk around here, so I used soy milk instead.
It is a great recipe!
I just want to congratulate you on your awesome blog and be sure i will keep reading and trying to make all the yummy recipes you post
Maybe someday i can even give you some brazilian ideas ;)
How fun to hear from an international reader – thank you for saying hi! I’m so glad you liked the soda bread. I hope you continue to read and enjoy my recipes! :)
I really need to make that quinoa salad! It sounds amazingggggggggg! :)
I am grateful for happiness!! I started working out and eating healthy in February and I really think it has allowed me to become a more confident person which yields to happiness! I am glad I made that decision in February! :)
I’m glad you did, too! Good for you! :)
Quite the weekend!!! Well done on getting in the run! That was a long week alright…these dark days take they’re toll :) Happy Thanksgiving in advance of Thursday!
What a great marathon picture! You probably are already aware but we (Pittsburgh) are supposed to get 3-6 inches of snow Tuesday night. I am grateful we are staying in Pittsburgh this year so we don’t have to travel in the snow. Travel Safe!
Yikes… Thanks for the heads up! Maybe we won’t be leaving tomorrow night after all!
Sounds like it was such a nice run! And I can relate to the feeling of it being nice to just be able to do a flexible run based on what you feel like not a set training distance.
Drooling over the brunch you had! Brunch is my favourite meal to go out for by far.
We don’t celebrate thanksgiving here in Australia but I still love the idea of being thankful for things. I am thankful for Nick my boyfriend, my family and friends and that I found such a great new hobby in blogging earlier this year.
Your picture is so cute – totally worth the cost! And, ALL of your pictures are actually way cuter than the line-up I usually get after races! Glad you had such a nice weekend full of friends and yummy food!
I can’t get over how pretty your run views are! So perfect. I also love this time of year, everything looks better covered in twinkling lights :)
Beautiful views! I am grateful for the support of my family most of all this year.
So glad the scaffolding on the Washington monument is coming down!