Girls Night!

Happy Hump Day, only a few more days till it is FRIDAY! My first week at internship is actually going very well! I am doing a lot of organization type things, but I am having a good time chatting with my colleagues and getting used to being back in high school!

On another GREAT note, my knee is feeling MUCH, MUCH better!!! I haven't gotten new sneakers (hopefully this weekend), but I took yesterday off again from running. Instead of running (I had to hold myself back because my knee was already starting to feel better) I went to the gym and did 30 minutes on the stair climber (varying between levels 10,11 and 12), 15 minutes on the bike and a few ab exercises. I then stretched and headed home.

Today, with no knee pain, I gave myself the green light to go running. It was a beautiful day in Boston, so I decided to run outside. As far as my workout, I had a hard time figuring out what to do. I wanted to do a somewhat challenging workout because today was supposed to be my "workout" day, but I did not want to push my knee too hard (especially with my 5k race on Saturday). I decided to run around 5 miles and in the middle incorporate running Beacon Hill 3 times. If you are not familiar with Boston, Beacon Hill is a long gradual hill that is probably around .3 of a mile. Here are my splits from the run.

Distance: 5.2 miles
Time: 45:23
Mile 1: 9:08 (started out easy to confirm there was no knee pain)
Mile 2: 8:49 (Hill running)
Mile 3: 8:42 (Hill running)
Mile 4: 8:27
Mile 5: 8:20
Mile .2: 1:54

Overall, I felt great! No knee pain and my legs/body felt ready to run. I am glad I started out easier and gradually sped up, just to make sure I felt no pain. I definitely think I will be ready to run the race on Saturday! YAYA! Once home I stretched and iced both knees for 10 minutes (while eating a yogurt).

On to girls night....

A few months back some high school friends and I were talking about starting a book club. We all like to read, but most of all we all love to get together and eat and drink wine. So last night was our first meeting and I was the host. Our first book was "The Girls from Ames" by Jeffrey Zaslow. We felt this would be an appropriate book to start with because the central theme is female friendship and the book club is a group of female friends.

The evening started with some red wine and many appetizers that my guests kindly brought over.

While munching on the appetizers we discussed the book and the universal theme of friendship. My friends brought up many good points on the differences between male and female friendships. We also discussed reasons why we liked and disliked the book. We went around the room and labelled characters we most related to and explained why. Our good friend (who lives in DC) was able to chime in via Skype!

After we came to a good stopping point we were ready to dig into dinner. I made a KERF recipe: Chicken Sausage Pasta Bake. I also warmed up some garlic bread from Whole Foods. Everything came out delicious!!

My Portion

After dinner we did more discussing and had more wine, while we tried to make some room for dessert. I had a brownie that my friend Laura made. It was VERY good! I had a wonderful night with delicious food, good conversation and GREAT friends!!!!!!