Picture Perfect Weekend

What a weekend! I had so much fun and got in 2 amazing runs. And after my last no-photo post, I’m making up for it here. Pictures galore!

Saturday

We drove down to Eugene to spend the day with my brother and sister in law. But my first stop was a run with a new friend! I met up with blogger buddy Lauren, at Sassy Mollassy http://justcallmesassy.blogspot.com/, and as expected we hit it off and chatted nonstop the whole time.

My talking was in between huffing-and-puffing breaths, because although it was an easy jog for speedy Lauren, we were flying by my standards!! I was feeling great though and definitely felt comfortable. But it did feel good to push a bit. I like to have one “fast” run a month or so and this definitely qualified- 5.0 miles at 10:09 pace. Weeee!

Photo proof:

Eugene run with Lauren! We covered Pre’s trail and a bit of the riverfront path:

After the great run, we spent the day with my brother and sister in law. They were in town from California for a big roller derby invitational tournament. My brother Jon is a ref, and Bri skates for the Silicon Valley Roller Girls in the Bay Area. I love derby and especially love watching these guys in action. I absolutely insist you all go out and watch a local derby bout- it’s a growing sport that needs your support! It’s way more exciting than you might expect, and is far more skilled, professional, and legit than you might imagine.

Bionic Babydoll (Bri) in action: (center)

Johnny Demonic- ref with arm up on left:

Family!

 

More picture-perfectness- Gorgeous sunset on the drive home:

The only bad part of the day was hearing on the way home that Whitney Houston had passed away. I loved Whitney when I was a little girl- my mom had the record and I listened to it all the time. I learned “Greatest Love of All” by heart when I was in grade school and still sing it all the time! She was absolutely one of the greatest of all time. Rest in Peace, Whitney.

 

Sunday

Today was quite an adventure. I drove out to the gorge with Zach, Alisa, and Alisa’s husband. We dropped Zach off at a trailhead along the way and he began his 25 mile trail run. Go Zach! He had his own adventure, of course. In the meantime, Alisa and I drove on to the Historic Columbia River Highway trail and covered all 9 miles of it (including an extra bit to hit up a restroom). Justin ran this trail too, on his own.

This trail is one of my favorites and one of the things is how different it is at all different times of year. I’ve been there lots of times, but this time was kind of crazy. The paved path was in rough shape. It was covered in fallen tree branches, rock slides, and even ice and snow. We made our way around the obstacles and carefully past the icy spots and enjoyed the journey. We walked several of the hills but cruised on the few flats and the downhills. We ended up with 9.15 miles at about a 12:30 pace! Nearly 2 hour long run, not bad for this 4 months pregnant chick.

Lots of great photos of this run:

   

Long run done! Momma and baby both had fun:

Delicious coffee and breakfast after:

We headed back and picked up Zach about 5 hours after he started. He encountered some extremely challenging, basically impassable terrain in the last few miles and ended up taking nearly an hour longer than he planned. This is the course he’ll be running in a few weeks, so the race directors need to figure out an alternate route or something! We’ll see what happens.

Gorge waterfall on Zach’s run:

  Having fun after 20 miles:

The last couple of miles… do you see the trail? There is none. Zach said “it’s not even just like the trees had fallen, it was like a bomb went off in the forest.” This is all damage from a big snow, ice, and wind event a few weeks ago. YIKES.

 

That about wraps it up! Thanks for reading and looking at all my purdy pics.

Exciting baby update coming in a couple of days! Lots of good stuff has been going on. We even found out if our little gummy bear is a boy or girl! Anyone care to guess before I reveal?