Hill Repeats, Book Club Postponed, and 2B Drinks Giveaway

Hi everyone!

Woot! The weekend is (basically) here! Of course, I'll be studying all weekend, but I'm also returning to that awesome Delaware & Raritan Canal trail with Ruthie for another long run, and either doing a short hike or spending some time on the beach. Both are causes to celebrate :)


Hill Repeats! (And a little thing called Law Review)
Remember how I was going to do hill repeats in the morning? Yeah, that got pushed to the early evening after I ate Greek yogurt and air-popped popcorn for dinner Wednesday night and felt like absolute shit when I woke up Thursday morning. Not my finest hour, but I'm all about the honesty here at Jen's Failure to Act Like a Normal Person's Life.

When Sourabh got home, he reminded me that I'm studying for the bar, so if I don't have the energy to cook and he's not home to cook either, I should just order delivery. #smartman

Right after getting the call. Mason was very excited, too.

Oh, speaking of Sourabh -- huge news! He was accepted onto the Columbia Law Review! Being on a school's law review is basically the highest non-academic honor you can get (and since they take grades into account, it's kind of an academic honor as well). People still mention the fact that Barack Obama was Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Law Review, even though he's, uh, President of the United States. So it's a big deal and I'm SO excited for him!!

And yes, I posted on Instagram about this on Monday then didn't mention it here. But after I posted on IG, Sourabh received an email saying to keep the news confidential. Oops. That's why I didn't post about it until today, after the official email had gone out to the whole law school.

Back to the hill repeats...

I ran 2 miles as a warm up then met Heather at the Central Park Boathouse. I had to run up Cat Hill five times, per Jess's assigned workout, and use the downhill as the recovery (ok, with a quick break for water -- it was hot!).

In case the sweat on my shirt didn't tip you off, it was a super sweaty and super successful workout!

I'd never done hill repeats before and was SO scared, but Heather reassured me that I'd be fine and let me set the pace (considering that most of my repeats were slower than her Boston qualifying marathon pace at New Jersey in May, I appreciated that!). It was amazing to have company for a workout I was scared of doing. Thank you, Heather!!

I think I could have pushed a lot harder in retrospect, but I wasn't sure how much to hold back since I hadn't done the workout before. The time of the first three repeats increased from first to second to third, so I was determined to have some kind of negative split -- we dropped 26 seconds from the third to the fourth repeat and then took off a full minute and five seconds for the final hill repeat!

7:41 pace up Cat Hill. Yes, I was wheezing at the end and could barely breathe, but I felt invincible. Weird how that works, right?

Next time Jess assigns me a hill workout, I'm going for all sub-8:30's and more of the sub-8:00's! I definitely think I can hit those paces now.


High (Noon) Tea
I'm pretty sure the success of my hill repeats was fueled by the scone I had at lunch, or rather tea, with Laura. Ok probably not, but let's pretend it was and that I've hit upon a brilliant new fueling method, mmkay?

Laura's birthday was Wednesday, so we celebrated by meeting at Alice's Tea Cup on the Upper West Side. I've been trying to fuel myself as "cleanly" as possible lately, but a little indulgence is important, especially on a friend's birthday, right?


Book Club Postponed
I'm SO sorry to postpone this month's book club, since I am loving RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel, but I will be studying in Washington during the weekend that Carrie and I were originally planning on hosting the June/July book club. I'll also email out about this, but we were thinking the first Sunday in August would be the new date. Let me know what you think?

By the way, what do you guys think of the book so far? So much of the idea that each person's body requires different training makes intuitive sense, despite the fact that we're often conditioned to think there's one road to success.

But I see from what Jess assigns other clients, like Theodora, that she definitely doesn't have everyone follow the same, rigid plan. For instance, she assigns me yoga every week, which I've found to be really important to my overall health as a runner.

I can't wait to discuss the book and my accompanying thoughts in August!


Giveaway: 2B Drinks
Finally, for those of you who couldn't enter Tuesday's Blogiversary Giveaway because you don't live in NYC, never fear -- I have a giveaway for everyone today!

2B Drinks offered to send me some of their drinks to try out a few weeks ago. They're only 20 calories each and are infused with aloe, the benefits of which my trainer Amanda recently wrote about.

I liked the fruit punch flavor the best, but overall found that they tasted a lot like Vitamin Water. Unfortunately, I don't like Vitamin Water that much! But if you're someone who likes Vitamin Water and don't want the high calories of most of their flavors, this is the perfect drink to check out. It's also partially sweetened with monk fruit, which is why they're only 20 calories per bottle.

2B Drinks generously agreed to send TWO winners 12-packs to try out! To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment telling me your favorite kind of non-water beverage. You have until 11:59 PM on Friday, July 19, to enter!

(And if you want to comment on today's but not enter, just let me know and I won't count your entry!)