Tuesday, July 7, 2009

virginia is for runners

hello! yesterday i came back from a nice long weekend getaway to virginia. i was there visiting with some close friends from high school, and it was a fantastic trip.

i took the train from nyc down to richmond, which was super easy and relaxing.

i had a late lunch on the train, which was healthy and filling. i grabbed a box of mixed greens with roasted veggies, and hummus and 2 pita points, from a local cafe before getting on the train.






i also had a white peach honest tea. it was good- just a tad sweet, as the bottle said, although surpisingly there was still a good amount of sugar in the drink.



i also snacked on some trail mix during the train ride (not pictured).

for dinner, i had a whole wheat bagel with some peanut butter and a little bit of strawberry jelly.


i arrived in richmond late thursday night, and it was so nice to just hang out and catch up with my friend. on friday morning, we woke up early to go for a run- we did a nice and easy 5 mile run through some of the suburban neighborhoods in richmond's west end.

it was definitely a nice change of pace from city running - it was so quiet and relaxed, and people were so friendly and even said hello to us! that's certainly very different from running on the good ole streets of nyc.

also, i was finally able to get my garmin to work! i figured out how to set it to track a workout for a certain distance, to display the distance, and to display the pace after each mile. i think one of the problems i was having with it before was that in the city, it takes a little bit of time for the gps to kick in because of all of the buildings.

but in virginia, it's wide open spaces so i had no trouble at all! i also played around more with the bezel- it's definitely touch sensitive and i don't think i was really pressing it hard enough before.

anyway, it was nice to finally use and for us to be able to track our distance and pace on our run! i still want to figure out how to track the pace as i'm running in between miles, but i guess i just have to play around with it a little more.

my friend from richmond is running the nyc half with me in august, and it was great for us to be able to go on a run together- we've run some races together in the past, but since we live so far apart we never get to train together :(

i grabbed half of a kind bar before our run.

afterwards, we made smoothies with bananas, frozen berries, fage 0% yogurt, and a little bit of juice. very refreshing! i also had the other half of the kind bar.



then we sat and relaxed by the pool- it was fabulous!

for lunch, we came home and made quite a lovely spread. we had tuna salad, hummus, pita chips, a huge salad with peppers, tomatos, and cucumber, and some fruit. everything was great!













i ate a ton of the salad, some pita chips, hummus, and half of the tuna sandwich. for desert i snacked on the grapes.

after lunch we headed to the store to pick up some things for our trip to va beach on saturday. we went to trader joe's. it was definitely busy, but compared ot the one in nyc the aisles were wide open with lots of space for us to roam around with our cart- it was heavenly! i hate having to rush around and always squeeze past people when i go to the one in the city- it's always so stressful! this was a very delightful shopping experience.

we bought some snacks and wine, and the ingredients to make sangria!

afterwards, we headed over to target and i got some new workout gear. i love the C9 line they have- everything is really comfortable, and also relatively inexpensive, although it can add up quickly if you get a lot, which i usually do since i tend to hoard when i get the chance to go to target!

after hitting the strip malls of suburbia, we came home to relax for a bit before dinner. we watched bride wars, which was cute and funny. it wasn't the best movie ever, and the plot was a bit weak, but it was fun and perfect to watch on vacation. i especially enjoyed it since i'm planning a wedding too!

after the movie we got ready to go to dinner in downtown richmond. the neighborhood is called shocko bottom, and it's a cute area with cobblestone sidewalks and lots of restuarants and bars. we went to an italian tapas restaurant called eurpoa.

the atmosphere was great, and the sangria was yummy! unfortunately i forgot my camera, so there's no pics of the food :(

they brought out rosemary focacia bread to start- it was nice and soft, but the flavor was very slight, and i think it needed a tad more salt.

we ordered the spanish cheese plate as an appetizer, which was great! it came with 4 different types of cheeses, including manchego, which i love (i spent a semester in spain when i was in college!). i'm not sure exactly what the other cheeses were, but they were all delicious! it also came with some toasted bread and roasted red pepper.

it took a long time for our meals to arrive, and by the time they did we were stuffed from the cheese and bread!

we both ordered the shrimp and vegetable risotto. since i was already pretty full, i didn't eat much of mine, and to be honest it wasn't that great. the shrimp was actually really good, but the flavoring of the risotto was a bit off. again, i felt like it needed more salt, and they went way overboard with the pepper. some bites were extremely pepper-y. it was also pretty oily, and they topped it with shredded cheese, which i could have done without.

it was still ok. we both ate a little bit of ours, and saved the rest to take home as leftovers.

we skipped desert, because we had a treat waiting for us at home!

earlier, we stopped at an ice cream shop called maggie moo's, where they sell the best thing ever- ice cream cup cakes! i love ice cream and i love cupcakes, and this combines two of my favorite things- how can you go wrong?

you can't! they were unbelievable. i got the cake batter cupcake, which was yellow cake, cake batter ice cream, a caramel topping, and vanilla icing. totally amazing. the icing was more of whipped cream icing, but becuase it was frozen it was really good, and the caramel topping was actually in the center of the cake.


at first i couldn't taste the caramel, but then i got to the middle and it started oozing out- SO good!

my friend got the chocoalte marshmallow cupcake, which was chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, fudge icing, and marshmallow topping. hers was also fantastic!


we headed to va beach early saturday morning- more on that later!

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