Whirlwind Weekend

Whew! I'm back. Is it really Monday? I feel like this weekend was more than two days long. Oh wait - that's because I had a THREE day weekend. I know, you can be jealous now.

On Friday we hit the road for a trip down to Maryland for my cousin Matthew's wedding. We took the rando way of cutting through PA for most of the trip out to western MD, which also meant that we got to stop at the hunting mecca of the world - Cabela's. For those of you not in the know - or perhaps don't get magazines like this or this or know the difference between a 12 gauge and a 20 gauge shotgun - Cabela's is quite possibly the Costco of hunting, fishing and various other outdoor activities. I mean, they have this inside:

And also, you can find things like this:

Those two people in the back are not at all happy to be in this picture.

So anyway, we stopped at Cabela's so that I could buy a knife (no, really) and stayed for what was possibly the shortest amount of time anyone has ever spent in the store before heading back on the road. By the time we hit Gettysburg, I thought for sure that SJ's head was going to explode due to the long duration of time spent in a vehicle - I guess our foray into Cabela's wasn't enough to keep her going.

We got to the hotel and tried to check in only to find that our rooms were not ready yet. Suckers. Of course they wouldn't be ready yet! We only drove from Long Island and are craving a shower, a run and a nap (not in that order, mind you) to prepare our bodies for the obscene amount of liquor liquid that we would be imbibing shortly, so why would our rooms be ready? So SJ and I opted to forgo the nap (luckily for everyone else, we chose to omit this one and not the shower) and just go for a run. So much for those 6 miles at race pace that I was supposed to be banging out - oops. I maybe managed two miles before calling it a wash and heading back to the hotel to get ready.

Shower beer anyone? Why, yes please! Can't go to a wedding without a little Dutch courage! Oh, you mean you don't need Dutch courage when it's not your own wedding? Whelp, oh well! Beer me!

Shower beers drank. Hair did. Make-up done. Clothes on. Off to the wedding.

It. Was. Fantastic. There were multiple reasons why this may have been such a good time - the booze, the dancing, the booze while dancing, red velvet cupcakes, family reunion. I suspect it was probably a combination of everything said above, as well as the fact that we were celebrating such an awesome event. Here are a few pictures to satisfy your interest:

As you can tell, the ceremony was gorgeous - beautiful venue and the perfect day, and then it was on to the cocktail hour and reception. Unfortunately I was having too much fun to take any pictures at the reception, and also, it's really hard to hold two drinks and a camera at the same time so whatever, use your imagination. Or go stalk me on Facebook.

Saturday morning we woke up to this disaster - 

Apparently, in the middle of the night, someone came in and ransacked our hotel room. Or it could have been us. I'm not sure. We are still working with police to put the pieces of the puzzle back together. (Side note: Walking home from the after party we were stopped by the police and questioned about where we were going. Shockingly enough, he said that we were being quite loud. Never would have thought it.)

I had to hit the road Saturday afternoon with Michael while SJ, pops and Mary stayed for the post-wedding gathering at my aunt and uncle's house. I had the Huntington Sprint Tri on Sunday morning, so needed to get home at a somewhat decent hour so that when 4:30am rolled around Sunday morning I wasn't too much of a zombie. After a throwback car ride where we were forced to pay cash for every toll because Michael had somehow managed to get his EZ-Pass taken away, we arrived home in one piece around 9ish. I barely had time to close my eyes before my alarm went off on Sunday morning and I was up and at it for the triathlon.

I'll give a full race report later on about the Huntington Sprint, but I can let you know that it turned into more of a duathlon rather than a sprint due to someone not reading the farmer's almanac and knowing that it would be low tide at the time of the race start. FAIL!

After the race, mamadukes and I hung out for a little on the beach before heading home. The day was too nice to be spent inside so we wandered over to Cow Harbor Day in Northport to treat ourselves to some ice cream after a job well-done in the morning's race. After that, it was back home to hang out with SJ (who had finally arrived home after getting stuck in the city with a front row seat to some kind of parade) and Jer for an afternoon of football and an evening of the Emmy's (and also football, since there was no way I could watch a three whole hours of the Emmy's without killing myself).

Essentially, I got nothing done training-wise this weekend. My two mile run on Friday hardly qualifies as training and I didn't do a long run after the tri yesterday. I need to manage to squeak an 18 miler in this week somewhere, though, since I can count yesterday's effort as speed work. I don't have my full numbers with me right now so I can't give you a breakdown, but I had a decently high running mileage week again, even without the long run. 

I hope everyone that raced this weekend in the Cow Harbor 10k and any other events did well and enjoyed their respective races! And I would also like to give a shout out to Jenny D., who told me she is now up to running three miles - I see a hungover 5k in Seaside in your future, girl.