Chocolate Covered Almonds and PR's in March

Yep, March is the month of chocolate covered almonds...it's official. Official in my book is good enough for me! It so happened this past weekend while visiting Tammy, we had a girls night: this in our terms means chocolate and a movie.

We watched Chicago, my first time, and ate salted dark chocolate and dark chocolate covered almonds. I think I ate almost the entire bag of Dove almonds, but Tammy didn't know that until later. After the movie, we put our indulgences away in the cupboard, and just when Tammy was saying "We didn't do that much damage-----" she picked up the almost empty bag of chocolate almonds. HA! I couldn't help it, they were just too good.

Anyways, this chocolate craving is only temporary...so I say. But really, I started this post a few weeks ago and I am not craving chocolate covered almonds anymore. I am not sure if it was because I lost my appetite while I got a weekend cold, or if I simply ate too many.

Aside from curbing my addiction, I'd like to say that it may have helped me race faster!? Probably not, for my harder workouts and smarter racing probably did the trick. Today was the second outdoor track meet of the 2011 season at Pacific Lutheran University.

It was POURING rain, but as I write this post tonight it is a clear night. The rain helped fill the water pit for the steeple, (okay I'm being exaggerating). There were twelve women in the race, which is a great number for we usually have 4-6 racers each meet. I previewed the heat sheet a few days before the race, getting to scope out the competition. I was seeded second, and the first seed wasn't too far away; I knew this would be a great race.

The race started and I was on her heels, I could tell she had faults in her jumps (especially the water jump) so I wanted to take advantage of this. She ended up falling a few laps in, which I definitely took advantage of! There was no way in hell that she was going to catch up to me. I felt that I should have gone faster with a few laps left, but I ended up finishing the race with a new personal record, and winning my first college race. :) My previous pr was set last year in May, and today I broke it by almost ten seconds. I know there is so much more opportunity in my race, to work on and to propel forward. I am excited for the coming months, and next weekend we are at U of O!

Diggin' it,
Kayla

32 degrees and Sunny: Time to Run

I woke up just before seven and checked the weather to find out that it was 32 degrees out. I didn't believe it, so I looked outside. Yet that didn't do me any good because it was sunny...looks can be deceiving. Anyways, I threw on my warm running clothes to meet up with my teammates for our recovery run at Green Lake. Natty and I ran the zoo loop and Green Lake together, which was a great time of companionship. Stories flow when you're doing a recovery run, especially if it's a beautiful sunny morning in Seattle, I love it.

What a great start of my day. Who knew that college running would open so many doors of gratitude? I was talking with Natty about how I "fell in love with running" once I joined cross country two Falls ago. It wasn't that I hated running beforehand, but I was more in love with competing (hurdles specifically). I didn't actually like the running aspect. It was the open, muddy, rugged, intense trails that I fell in love with, it was the teammates and consistent hard work, it was the new found wonders of this world, and it was the re-learning of my body and life as a runner. Natty, brilliant as she is, went on to say that running truly is like a relationship. Some days you are fighting against it, and other days you are celebrating with it. You work hard, while worrying about it and how it affects you. Some days you dread it, but you always, always love it.

Practicing gratitude,
~K