A blissful weekend

It is actually pretty nice not to train too hard for anything in particular…

I woke up on Saturday morning at 7 am. After having alarm set at 4:30 am every day, week or weekend, it is a sleep in! No crazy long run in the plan, no race, no obligation to meet anybody in a middle of a forest…After spending an hour sipping coffee, I woke up Oleg and we drove to Tryon park for a couple of hours of run. After the first few minutes we parted our ways – Oleg is a faster runner, and I never feel comfortable anymore running with him, unless it’s a 30 miler. It was peaceful, the weather perfect, and lots of people on trails (considering how late it was for my usual run, I was quite surprised to see that much traffic). I ran at a very good clip, never broke into a walk and was very happy about the whole thing. Wonderful! I am getting back on track. It felt really good.

As we made it home and showered, the idea was to go Portland to Saturday market. Don’t laugh, but I don’t think I’ve been to Portland much over two years we live here. It’s always work, run, home. Never play. So the whole place was a discovery for me, with shops, lazy walk, food courts and live music. We then put down a blanket and read books for an hour. Ah, perfect day…

Sunday went just as slow and nice. We decided to make a trip to the beach. Drive took us a better part of 2 hrs, but was worth the time. We found a beautiful isolated spot between big rocky hills and spent about 5 hrs doing nothing. At first it was rather cold, as we keep forgetting we are on West Coast now, and beach is not hot and sunny, not to mention the water is freezing and the waves are high. But after 2 pm the sun came out, and it gotten better. Stephen loved it the most, hard to pick between the sand and the ocean.
The weekend ended with me giving two of my boys a haircut - I've been doing it for all of them since the day we married (and had kids soon thereafter). It took some practice and ugly looks before it gotten close to perfection:)

I am back to putting more effort into exercise routine and making plans (keep my fingers crossed) for a couple of things still this year. I won’t spill the beans, although some of you know it. I am also thinking of where I want to run next year - like really badly, so I pick a fewer things to spend less time away from home, but be happy. I might not even apply for WS100 and take a break for a year. There are so many trail runs I would like to get to!

I am also getting out of comfort zone here. First I took off all my piercing – you know, the image thing. How I wanted to be cool and popular when a teen and never was, so I was trying to get it been an adult. Gone. Skirts, blouses and nice earrings (eek!). Tattoos are permanent though. I asked Oleg to put a password on Internet at home so I don’t get attached surfing the Web. I got out my old cook book and already we used a real recipe to make chicken (as opposed to “throw it on a skillet or in the oven”). Our backyard has two wonderful fruitful pear trees, so I am up for jelly-making soon. School starts in 2 weeks – yay, homework! And the soccer practice began 2 weeks ago, so I am a soccer mom this season. Life is good. Now, next step will be to think of what I want to be when I grow up:)