NYC and the Ankle

This is a short tale of last weekend when I went to visit a college friend in NYC. We laughed, we ate, and we walked a lot. To summarize: it was a rather perfect weekend.

And now for the details...

I enjoyed my first visit to Chelsea Market which was amazing! Unfortunately, I didn’t eat anything there as the food just wasn’t speaking to our moods (however, the breads and soups smelled so good, I can’t wait to go back) so we wandered over to Vinyl for brunch. They had the closest thing to migas* I’ve had in a long time which they called the Latin Scramble. Major props to them for putting this on the menu, it made my day completely. It was missing salsa but otherwise it really hit the spot. I’ve been missing Austin lately and this filled that gaping void inside me. Anyways…onwards!

We wandered around the city for the rest of the day, just taking it easy and with no particular agenda. We wandered over to Sweet Revenge for amazing cupcakes. Seriously people, forget all other cupcake bakeries in NYC and just come here. It’ll be worth it, I promise. The pumpkin spice cupcake was perfect and was paired with a Pear Cider (from Sweden, which instantly meant I had to try it!). They went very well together and, combined with the general warm and relaxed ambiance of the place, I had an incredibly difficult time leaving. But we finally left, with hot cups of delicious Mighty Leaf tea in hand.

Sunday morning I had a healthy version of huevos rancheros – think of egg whites, mushrooms, salsa, turkey bacon wrapped in a spinach tortilla (yummy!!!) - and then caught my bus back to Boston. All in all, a very fun and delicious weekend! I succeeded in getting a [fake] Austin ‘fix’ and am now sure that I can mentally survive the impending Boston winter.

Physically surviving the winter is a whole ‘nother story! My horse bucked on my last week and I hurt my ankle in an effort to stay on and balanced. What I thought was just a muscle pull was seriously irritated with all the walking around in NYC and now I’m in serious amounts of pain. I’ve been taking it easy but I’m incredibly frustrated because my running has now been put on hold for an indeterminate amount of time. Sorry for the whining!

Off to enjoy a lovely weekend…

* If you don't know what Migas are, please look at this article and then go cook the Tex-Mex ones immediately! You won't regret it!

Special Moments

I hate to start my blog with an old post but I wrote this post as my first entry a few weeks ago and then got distracted, for reasons I may detail in the future, so here we go...

Lately, I’ve been having a certain type of day. It’s the type of day that is generally unremarkable, maybe even slightly on the disappointing or frustrating side of things. But then, something changes and suddenly the day is so remarkably different that everything else fades away. You have one of those “this is what life is meant to be” moments. Aren’t they fantastic?

And rather than spew out a stream of little moments that have happened to me recently, I’m going to focus on today. To give some context, last week I committed to running a half marathon with my college friend in February. Which is five months away, yes I know, but I haven’t runs seriously in a few weeks and I need all the time I can get.

Today was my third training run. It was also my third training run that I’ve done while battling a cold/allergy attack so I wasn’t really looking forward to it. But, I got out there. It was sprinkling that neat coastal rain which was perfect because it cleared the sidewalks of pedestrians and enabled me to go along my way. And go along my way is exactly what I did! I had an amazing run. The type of run that makes you think you can be a “runner”. Yes, it was that good. I did the first two miles (run three minutes, walk one) in good time and then slowed down quite a bit for the last mile because it was hills. I went longer than was necessary on the training plan but when something is working for you, why stop?

After my run I was stretching out in front of my apartment building and saw the tiniest maple leaf. It was so adorable and made the perfect end to my day.