Weekend

Buenos dias! Are you all ready for Wednesday?! It's pretty rainy around here, so snuggling under my blankets seems a lot more appealing than heading off to school...ah well, gotta do whatcha gotta do.

This weekend marked my one and only overnight meet of the season - down south in Albany, Georgia.

I started Friday (a loonngg day) off right with a big, fluffy bowl of pumpkin oats and Justin's Maple Almond Buttttteeerrr!

I also packed quite a bit of food, because that's just what I do. 

(I don't have any pics of any food on the trip, because, well, it was mediocre at best. Picture Subway, granola bars, bananas, and pizza. :P)

We met at the school around 9, and then the road trip commenced - two coaches and three girls all crammed into a small car for four hours. Excellent.

Ignore the turban...

Once we arrived at the hotel, we all took naps and then headed out for an easy run on the course - and can I just say - it was beautiful!! I sadly slacked majorly on the photography front, but imagine something like this:

We ran at a middle school with a pecan orchard near the campus as a part of our course, and it was just amazing. The course was flat with little to no incline, curvy, and with lots of shade - pretty much anything a racer could want!

After our light run (~35 minutes), we headed back to the hotel, showered, ate, and then went for our little "excursion" at a mini-putt-putting place. :) We actually rode go-karts, mini-golfed, and played in the arcade for 2 hours! The things that will entertain a big group of teenagers....

I'd like to say my roommates and I got a long night's sleep, but, well, ya know....at least it was sufficient.

The next morning we were up at 6:30, got our grab-n-go breakfast (although I just ate my half a banana and peanut butter I brought), and were off to the race.


Fast-forward to 9:45 and that's when the JV girls ran. Peeps, it was HOT. But luckily we were under a lot of beautiful trees and foliage, so shade was aplenty. Again, the course was flat with little incline, and lots of curves. We were told by my coach to "racecar" it. :)

I PRd (dudes this was my fourth PR) with a time of...25:57! I was aiming for 25:30, but hey, I was actually just aiming to get out of the 26 times. It felt so crazy accomplishing to tell people I ran "25-something" rather than "26-something." I know that for some people (hem hem most of my team and V runners), this is a kind of slow time, but this is my first cross country season ever, and I just started running this summer, so pshyes, I felt great. :)

Plus, my crazy talented team (we're talking sub-20 PRs at this race) were all still super proud that I pushed out of the 26 times. I love those girls!!

I don't have any other pics, but my grandparents actually live 10 minutes away from where we were staying, and my grandfather picked me up after the race for an early lunch at Moe's.

New PR + fajitas in tummy + quality time with Papa = happy Jess.

My friends and I slept the entire 4 hours home, and then the rest of the weekend was low-key - just how I like it. That night I watched the new movie Epic - if you haven't seen it, I really recommend it! I thought it was hilarious and the designs/concepts were really cool and beautiful.

Sunday I woke up to a lovely bowl of my favorite version of overnight oats: chai-spiced pear, Sunbutter, and, of course, coffee. Even better after 2 days of blah eating.

After volunteering at church, I ate food, slept, ate some more food, and was supposed to go on a long run, but that ended up not happening. To make up for it, Reibs and I went on a long, sloooww walk. :)

Oh! And one more thing. I got a huge baking urge because we had 3 really ripe bananas and a bag of chocolate chips, so obviously that means I make:

Vegan Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins - possibly one of my favorite muffin recipes ever. They're so moist, chewy, chocolatey, and healthy - just the way I like 'em.

Have an awesome rest of the week!!!