Monday Morning Meeting: POTUS Hugs and Wedding Bells

I have to admit, since marathon training ended, I’ve kind of missed our Monday morning meet-ups.  What can I say, I’m a creature of habit.  I organize my life around things that happen at a certain time, on a certain day.  And I like it that way.  Plus, it gives me an excuse to tell you about my weekend, my plans and training goals for the week ahead, and any other random thoughts on my mind.  Which clearly you need to know.  So let’s keep the Monday morning meeting as a tradition.

And let’s be honest.  I happen to have quite the weekend to tell you about.  Friday I hugged the President.  Twice.

As a part of Nate’s last day at the White House, he got to take the whole family to the Oval Office to meet Barack.  I’ve knocked thousands of door for the President, and believe deeply in the values he represents, but until this week I’d never had the chance to meet him.  He thanked us for the part we played in getting him elected, and Courtney almost got a White House beer.  It was totally surreal.  We had lunch in the West Wing Mess Hall and happy hour on Nate’s balcony overlooking the White House.  Talk about once in a lifetime.

Then we got up a the crack of dawn on Saturday and hopped on a bus to New York to see one of my earliest college friends walk down the aisle.  It was in a beautiful historic Roman Catholic church (where Aaliayah’s funeral was held, our cabbie informed us, as he made us fear for our own funeral.  “Thirty blocks and I didn’t hit a single light!”)

The reception was at the Lotos Club, one of the country’s oldest literary clubs.  It was a phenomenal venue.  We had dinner surrounded by thousands of books.  We ate and drank and ate and danced and ate and drank some more.  Did I mention how much we ate?  I could do an entire post solely on the food at the reception, which is only appropriate since the bride and groom are true foodies.  But mostly we were just excited to celebrate Alice and Tom’s marriage.

This week we’re going to take it pretty easy.  The goal is to not eat out at all and to cook all of our meals from ingredients we already have on hand.  This should be a challenge!

Workout Summary:
So I accomplished step one: making a goal.  And I came pretty close on step two: keeping it.  Having a goal, and having shared my goal with you, definitely helped me push myself on the running front.  I didn’t have the energy after work to get in the additional speed intervals, but I did turn my Friday morning 6 miles run into 7 miles of speed intervals.  And I was able to maintain a 7:30 pace for one solid mile.  

Monday: Chisel
Tuesday: Cycling
Wednesday: 6 mile run
Thursday: Cycling
Friday: 7 mile speed intervals:
1 mile warm up @ 9:00 pace, 800m @ 8:00 pace, 800m @ 9:00 pace, 800m @ 7:30 pace, 800m @ 9:00 pace, 800m @ 8:00 pace, 800m @ 9:00 pace, 1600m @ 7:30 pace, 800m @ 8:00 pace, 800m @ 9:00 pace, 800m @ 8:00 pace, 800m @ 9:00 pace

Saturday: Rest/Travel
Sunday: Rest/Travel

Goals for Next Week:
Going forward with speed intervals, I need to speed up my recovery periods to a 8:45 pace so that I come closer to my overall race goals.  9:00 minute recovery periods brings down my overall time too much.

Monday: Chisel
Tuesday: Cycling
Wednesday: 6 mile run
Thursday: Chisel
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 11 mile run
Sunday: Cross train
*Plus 1 additional 5 miles of speed intervals

Johanna