Running and Celebrating

Friday is almost here, woohoo! It’s been a wacky week month two months. Sunday I drove to a nearby hilly trail for a change of scenery for a long run and the weather was perfect.

I only saw one snake and it wasn’t a rattlesnake. And the rest of the scenery was gorgeous with blue skies and greenery.

Plenty of spring flowers.

And I cut off into a gorgeous trail for the second part of it.

I’m looking forward to heading back to that trail soon!

It’s been such a packed week that I don’t have a new recipe, but I did make a delicious salad with garlic ginger avocado dressing and baked squash for dinner one night.

And have been going through a lot of breakfast smoothies at work.

Smokey has not been having a crazy week, but she’s been getting in as much lap time with hubby as she can.

And if you work in an office, chances are you’ve had to do some personality “colors” training exercise. Our department did True Colors this week and it was an interesting, eye-opening experience.

I’m no where near as daring and exciting as I like to think I am and tend to lean towards loyal and conventional and probably won’t be skydiving anytime soon!

For a fast lunch one day, I remixed curried quinoa and sweet potato leftovers chilled over a salad with hummus dressing for a simple and filling lunch.

And it was this guy’s birthday this week! Like his new watch from me?

We celebrated with an awesome vegan dinner from Zocalo starting with a pitcher of margaritas.

Yeah, I paid for that a bit on a weeknight, but it was his birthday! Zocalo does not have a huge vegan selection on the menu, but my favorite item is the veggie enchiladas with fruity and savory chocolate mole sauce.

The sauce makes this dish with a unique blend of rich cocoa with a playful fruitiness and warming spice, such a clever flavor party. We had a great evening chatting and shopping, a little taste of weekend in the middle of the week. And I’m hoping for a great weekend since I am taking on my 3rd half marathon in a month! Why not? It’s a fun local and inexpensive race that I wanted to support. After that I will be holding off on longer races as the weather gets hotter and am considering my first trail race on a challenging trail next month while doing more hill and pace training. Then cranking up the mileage at the end of summer again for half and full marathon training if my ambitious plan works out!