17 miles baby!

I apologize for the lack of posts, but my candidacy is approaching (I defend December 3rd) and I have been focusing all of my attention on that.  Although, my free time has been spent running 3 days a week and hanging out with friends and family.  I have continued my three runs a week streak, which I am very proud to say.  Rather than write about each run (I did log them in Daily Mile though), I will tell you about the three most significant runs.  The first was the fastest 3 miles I have ever run which was an average of an 8:30 pace.  That is better than my 5K PR pace!  The next is our second 15 mile run which took 3 hours (average of 12:02 pace), 7 minutes faster than our last 15 mile run.  Finally, today I ran my farthest distance yet, 17 miles.  Unfortunately, Caitlin was not feeling well and had to stop at 9 miles, but we all have bad running days.  She was really awesome though and told me and Ryan we could continue running.  We ran back to the car (mile 14), then Ryan went to pick up Caitlin while I pushed through another 3 miles.  Unfortunately, the last 3 miles had two large hills.  My overall time, including walk breaks, was 3 hours and 21 minutes (average 11:49 pace).  I am happy to say that my knees and hips did not hurt during the run, but they are pretty sore right now.  I am icing them as I type this.

In other running news, I am signed up for a half marathon on Dec. 4th with Caitlin.  I also just found out that my old roommate/original running partner is going to run the half-marathon when we run our marathon.  I am so excited!  I actually get to see her tomorrow while she is in town for Thanksgiving.

In cooking news, I made my first veggie and meat lasagna.  It was okay.  I think it could have been much better if I cut the zucchini thinner and if I used real noodles instead of those nasty no-boil noodles.  I will never buy those noodles again.  I also made butternut squash, which was very delicious.  I am making a pecan pie for Thanksgiving, which I will share with you later.

Other than the studying, running, and brief amounts of cooking, Chris and I have had our date nights and hung out with friends.  We also went to Disney for the weekend with his family.  Every year we stay at a Disney resort, and this year we stayed at Bay Lake Tower next to the Contemporary.  We all went to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which was very busy but so much fun!  Then we went to Downtown Disney the next day during a huge art festival.  His sister, Amy, and her boyfriend also announced their engagement, which was exciting.  We had a wonderful weekend with his family!  Oh and on our way home, we saw a plane writing "Love You Jesus" in the sky.  I took a picture of that as well as earlier when it said, "Love You Jes". LOL  Oh, and I supposedly saw a True Blood actor leaving our hotel.  I don't watch the show though.  After our great weekend, my little Kirby got sick and had to go to the vet, but he is feeling much better now.

Chris, Jess, (My Chris and Jess's dad in the background), Jes, and Chris.  The matching was not on purpose.

I had fun with the "fireworks" setting on my camera.

Our view from our room

I told Chris he should have driven away faster and said he did it. LOL

The wind and trees made it hard to capture the entire image

Samples of sidewalk chalk art.  AMAZING!

Finally, I am waaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy behind on reading your blogs, and I do apologize!  I promise that as soon as December 3rd passes, I will catch up!  I hope you all are doing wonderful!  And I hope that everyone celebrating Thanksgiving has a wonderful and delicious holiday!  I leave you with a couple pics of my babies.

Ashe and Zack

Kirby