Friday! Friday! Friday! was my friend Kerri's 27th birthday. We hit up the Nitty Gritty, which bills itself as Madison's birthday place, for dinner.
The birthday boy/girl gets free beer all day on his/her birthday (free juice or soda for those underage or who want to start the party at 8am). Daniel and I got there early and sat at the bar and watched a lot of excited tween girls with birthday balloons and shirley temples go by. Gritty burgers were ordered all around (spoiler alert: the secret sauce is Thousand Island dressing), and the birthday girl got a mini ice cream sundae.
After dinner we went across town to the Capital Brewery in Middleton to see a coworker's band play. They had a pretty good jam going for a bunch of grandpas (literally).
It was a nice night and a nice venue for seeing music. You can walk in and out freely and people can bring kids. There wasn't much parking, but that's typical for Madison.
Saturday I drug myself out of bed early for a long run. 12 miles in 1:49:35. Not too bad overall since my first and last miles were abysmally slow. I looked back at my workout log, and I was only a couple minutes off what I was doing on my long runs back in March and April when I was "in shape", and back then I was doing 20min hard 10min easy intervals. It will be interesting to see how that plays out in an actual race in October.
After running, I went to the Red Cross and gave blood. I'm O+, so the blood people call me to come in 8 weeks and 5 seconds after the last time I donate. I actually tried to give blood a couple days after my birthday, but my iron was just a tiny bit too low. This time I decided to stack the deck and took my vitamin an hour before my donation appointment, and my iron was at the top of the scale. It's funny because for all the modern technology at blood banks, I can't help but think I've stepped back into the 19th century whenever I do my donation. Sunday was my day off from working out and this week is a cutback week for running so I have plenty of time to recover my little red cells before I have another tough workout.
Saturday afternoon I was supposed to go to a baby shower, but plans changed when the baby was born on Friday! Doctors thought the baby was 5 weeks early but the parents thought it was more like 2-3. The baby was fully developed and went home yesterday so yay for that.
I was actually kind of glad that I had a break Saturday because Sunday was a whirlwind of church and trying to stay out of the way of the Ironman and making a diaper cake for another baby shower and going to our singing group and getting ready for this week. I really could have used another Labor Day yesterday.
Whew. That's a lot of rambling. The only other news is that we are *crosses fingers* getting our new computer tomorrow!
Sounds like a great weekend! And what is with simply running 12 miles without leadup? And running it at almost the same pace as you ran when you were running lots? Goes to show that you are staying in shape lifting and doing lower milage runs.
ReplyDeleteI can ALWAYS use a long weekend. :-)
shoot. you changed your blog during my move! well i'm glad i re-found you.
ReplyDeletea place where the birthday boy/girl gets free beer? ummmmmmmm that needs to roll out nation wide. stat. and by stat i mean before my next birthday :)