Shopping, beer, and running!

NiCole here!  I thought I would get a start on the joint blog post.  It seems that whenever Nic is town we either go shopping for running things (as any good runner would do when their buddy is in town) or go to a few craft breweries.  We also are usually competing in some race that we have both signed up for so there is some running involved as well.  The last two races that we have done together have both been in Jax.  So I had a house guest for a few weekends!

The first run we did was the Tour de Pain.  This race required us to run three races in 24 hours.  The first was a 4 mile run on the beach.  Most people like running on the beach but I am not a big fan of it.  Some of the reasons for my dislike include sand getting in my shoes, dodging the little kids that are on the beach playing or the holes they have dug at some point during the day, and the fact that it seems to go on forever when you are doing an out and back course.  We did intervals for this race since that has been how we have been training for the marathon.  We didn't do too bad.  After that we went to see a preseason football game for the Jaguars which left a lot to be desired but that shall not be discussed in the blog since it makes me sad.  

 This is Nic! I don't like running on the beach either, so this was my least favorite of the 3 races. I'm not a fan when beach conditions are perfect, but the 4 miler was especially bad as the sand was all churned up in parts, families were still hanging out with the kids darting in between runners and we had to run at a slant for a while to let the faster runners through, who were making their way back. We were also in a rush, since I had just driven in from Gainesville and didn't quite make it before the gun went off. Things could have gone better but we got there, we completed the race and got some of my favorite race photos of us taken. Since we were already kind of tired, and the Jags weren't playing their best, we cut out early from the game and headed back to NiCole's for dinner and an early-ish night.

The next morning we had to get up and run a 5K.

The course for the 5K was pretty nice, most of it in a neighborhood, but it was really humid. We started out by running continuously and had a pretty good pace for the first mile but once we reached the first water station we realized that we needed to do intervals if we wanted to save some energy for the third race. So NiCole set her watch for 4:1s and we did okay. Certainly not our fastest, but our goal was to just finish all three races. No PRs necessary! 

 Afterwards we bought some stuff at one of the local running stores since the race started at the store.  We also went out to breakfast with my running buddies since they were running that morning while we did the race.  Breakfast was good as usual.  Afterwards, we went back to my house to rest up for our one mile sizzler.  For some reason this race seemed to be the scariest one of them all.  I have never timed myself while running a mile so I was scared I was going to be really slow.  Instead I surprised myself and ran it pretty fast.  I will say running 3 races in 24 hours wore me out and made my hips hurt on my next training run because I think I over did it when I ran those 3 races. 
 

This is us during the one mile sizzler run!

 Whilst we were downtown, we decided to go and visit our favorite craft brewery for a beer and to fill our growlers, since we don't get to go there very often.

Pretty cool medal and a well deserved beer!

After that we went to Brewer's Pizza for some tasty craft beers and food.  The beer as always was very tasty after all the hard work we did during the race series.  The food was amazing!

If you ever go there, try their calzones :)

The next race we ran was a 3.5 mile run on Labor Day to celebrate 1st places sports 35th anniversary here in Jacksonville.  This was a course we had already run since it is used for some of the local 5K races so we weren't surprised by the course and had a good run.  It was a little warm but it has been that way all summer so no big surprise there.  

The worst part was the first mile and a half running directly into the sun (and I had decided that I didn't need sunglasses/visor), but I made it without tripping over! This course was pretty much the same as the 5K from the Tour de Pain just extended a little to add the extra mileage. Since it was a special occasion, with the anniversary, we got medals! Yay!

We chose yellow as our color to wear!

We went shopping at 1st place sports since, by participating in the run, you were eligible for 35% discount on all merchandise except electronics.  So we both got some new running shoes since we have been doing a lot of running lately and it was a good deal.  Not to mention some visors and amazing running socks.  Plus we ended up buying visors for a bunch of our running buddies because we had the discount and they needed new visors to wear!

The running socks we got are called Feetures and I had been eyeing them up on Amazon for a while. The 35% discount sealed the deal, so we each bought a pair when we went to pickup our race packets. We wore them for the race and they were so good that we both bought another 2 pairs whilst we had the discount. They are super comfortable, come a little higher up than some of the other socks that I've tried and my feet didn't get really hot!

After the race, we went and grabbed breakfast then headed back to NiCole's to shower. Then I had to head home to Gainesville. On the way I stopped at Home Depot to get supplies as we had decided to make our own medal racks! I guess I'll save that story for my next post though.

Bye for now!