Weekend Recap: Resting Up for the Race

Yesterday, I ran the Louisville Half Marathon. I’ll do a full race report tomorrow, but it feels important to start my weekend recap with that, as resting up for it drove most of my weekend activities!

Friday I had a lot of volunteer work to do. Up at Boulder County Parks & Open Space, I led “school days” activities, where kids from area elementary schools came to Walker Ranch on a field trip to learn about 19th century ranch life. I had a lot of fun teaching them about some of the common chores that kids might be asked to help with: butter churning and laundry. I love highlighting how long everything took back then – laundry was an all-day process, and for anything with buttons, you had to take all the buttons off, then wash the garment, then stitch them all back on. It’s definitely quite a bit easier today, and a luxury for us to be able to wash our clothes after every wear!

After knocking out my work for the day, I headed downtown to meet my Champa House mentee for the first time. I’ll be meeting with her weekly for the next six months, and I’m looking forward to working with someone one-on-one and hopefully making a difference. I’m really thrilled that all the volunteer opportunities that I signed up for / trained for so long ago are finally coming to fruition!

As for Friday night, it was a quiet one – I had stayed out late checking out a new local hotspot, El Five, on Thursday, so I was pretty happy to get to bed early with a book. I woke up Saturday morning feeling really well rested – which was great. Unfortunately, my legs were still pretty sore, as I had done some solid deadlifting at Thursday’s Orangetheory. I thought that was far enough before the race to be okay, but I was definitely feeling it Saturday! So my morning started with foam rolling and some Boulder Boost tea to help my legs recover.

Even though I was trying to rest my legs, I had quite a lineup of activities for the rest of the weekend. First, I headed for a hour drive down to Castle Rock, where I was cheering my friend Sarah on in a 10K trail race. Originally, I was going to run this race too, but I had swapped it for the Louisville Trail Half Marathon on Sunday. It was great to see Sarah at the race, and she finished incredibly strong – taking first place in her age group. Woo hoo!

Also – Sarah had a really smart strategy to help her figure out when to walk the hills and when to run them on the challenging course. She drew out the highlights on her hand, so she’d know exactly how long each hill was when she got to it. I definitely want to copy that when I have similarly technical / challenging courses!

I have to say, I spent most of the day Saturday kind of regretting my decision not to run with Sarah. Saturday morning was a beautiful, perfect running day, and I hated that I had to rest up rather than going for any one of a hundred workouts I would have liked to do. After the race, Sarah was going to a pilates/barre/Orangetheory combo that I was dying to join… but I skipped it to give my legs some extra rest. From now on, Saturday races only, so I can then get back to going hard the rest of the weekend 😉

Sarah and I headed to brunch after at a little café we found on Yelp, and I had an incredible breakfast burrito that was served with green chili but without cheese. It tasted incredibly indulgent and was really filling, but the lack of cheese (and having only a small dollop of sour cream) actually made it pretty healthy – exactly what I wanted the day before my own race. We had a great time catching up on the patio at brunch, and Sarah convinced me to sign up for another trail half marathon in Florida in November – the Masters Of All Terrain (MOAT). Probably getting ahead of myself to sign up for a second trail half when I still hadn’t done the first, but it was comforting to know that even if I blew up at the Louisville half I’ve have another chance to do well.

Next up: stopping by my friend Amanda’s house for a walk and to catch up. I loved getting so much quality time with my girlfriends this weekend! We ended up chatting longer than I expected, which meant that I had to dash home fast for a quick shower before heading back down to Golden. My neighbors had invited me to the Colorado Mountain Club’s screening of Banff Mountain Film Festival Radical Reels – and it didn’t disappoint!

I’ve gone to the world tour of the Banff Mountain Film Festival before, and loved it – but I wasn’t entirely sure how this would be different. According to Banff, The Radical Reels Tour presentations include many of the same elements as the World Tour screenings, but the focus is on dynamic, high-adrenaline films featuring sports such as skiing, climbing, kayaking, BASE jumping, snowboarding and mountain biking, and new sports such as snow-kiting and speed-riding. Sounds good to me! In fact, this was the perfect way for me to kick my feet up and relax, while still getting pumped for my own athletic achievement the next day – my half marathon.

I’ll do a full race report on the half marathon, but it went really well (considering my near-total lack of training). After the race, I grabbed a quick shower and some Noosa yogurt, then headed down to Lakewood’s Cider Days festival to meet a few friends and indulge in a cider donut or apple fritter (hadn’t decided which).

Unfortunately, this festival turned out to be the one disappointment of my weekend: the Cider Days festival didn’t have either cider donuts or apple fritters. The volunteers we asked said they had apple fritters on Saturday, but not Sunday – and cider donuts neither day. And the volunteers seemed surprised that I was looking for cider donuts at a fall festival. Are cider donuts only a northeast thing? Anyone know where I can get one (preferably the cinnamon sugar coated kind) in Colorado?

Stay tuned for my race recap!