6 miles at 6 a.m.!??!

Last night I had an absolutely fab happy hour with two of my best gals, Kate and Sarah.

Here's an oldie but a goodie of me, Sarah, and Kate on Sarah's birthday last year. Good times.

We went to Il Gato in Uptown and I hadn't been there yet. They have a pretty decent happy hour with $3 drinks and $3 apps. Well needless to say I downed a few (ok, more than a few) beers and we all shared a bunch of apps. And next thing I knew, it was 8:30. I'm really bad at keeping happy hour to just an hour, if you know what I mean.

So we headed home around 9 p.m. and Sarah and I made plans to meet up at 6:30 the next morning to burn off our nonstop happy hour with a morning run.

6:15 this morning came and I had a text from Sarah saying she didn't feel well. Not booze induced, I think :-) With this news I really wanted to roll over and not run at that moment, but Jack was already up so I got out of bed to let him out. Then I saw that it had rained and was lightly misting! Hmmm did not plan on that.

Again, I thought: OK maybe I won't run this morning. No big deal, right?

But then I stopped myself: NO! You're going running. Plus, it's not like I haven't run 6 miles in the rain before! Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? My plan was to run 6 miles. All before work!

So I put on the trusty iPod and set out.

It was lightly misting, but I wore my hat to keep the rain out of my eyes and the run itself was absolutely fabulous!! I felt great, I was into my music (plus Lake Calhoun was pretty empty so I got to sing along a little bit), and the rain wasn't bothering me a bit.

I did run into some sideache issues around mile 4, but I just took it slow and stopped when I needed to and I was able to power through. And I finished the 6 miles in 1 hour 4 minutes. Not too shabby!!

In all my sweaty glory. I guess I was a little pink-faced, huh? And those are my headphones hanging on my shirt. Kind of looks like some kind of a lizard is coming out of my shirt...

And you know what I was thinking the whole time? 6 miles isn't scary. I can run 6 miles.

There is never a time in my life when I ever would have guessed that I could think that. There was never a time when I thought 6 miles was no big deal and something I could accomplish before work.

There was also never a time when I thought I'd be training for a half marathon! I'm just feeling a little proud of myself today! And dang, am I in a good mood because of that!

And I have one heck of a weekend on the books. My 25th birthday is tomorrow! I'm hitting the beach all day (it's supposed to be gorgeous!) and then am having a workout-themed party and mini bar crawl. People are instructed to wear their workout gear and I put the finishing touches on my outfit last night. We're even giving people race bibs. Can't wait! And what I also can't wait for: wearing tennis shoes out to the bar. What a treat!

Happy Friday everyone!