Wow! I can’t believe August is coming to an end and that it will officially be September tomorrow. I just finished calculating everything up for the month of August and you can see the statistics for the month here. August was my highest running mile total to date with 146 miles! It beat my previous high back in January of this year by 1 mile! August was a good month, even with the heat and humidity!
We finished off the month of August with a trip to the Columbia/Ellicott City area. We did a little bit of shopping at our favorite running store, RoadRunner Sports. Rob needed some new undershorts and I needed a new pair of shoes, so I can start breaking them in before the marathon in October. I already have 260 miles on my current pair and we still have a lot of training miles before the marathon. I will only be wearing the new pair for our shorter runs, so I don’t even get to wear them until sometime next week! These will be my marathon shoes this year…
and I got some Yankz! Actually, we both got a pair of the Yankz! They look like they will come in handy for triathlon training as well. Anyone else use Yankz!?
After all that shopping at RoadRunner Sports we were getting hungry so we headed to Leelynn’s in Ellicott City for some lunch. They were pretty busy for a Friday afternoon, but it was still a nice lunch date with Rob. I had the Leelynn Salad with grilled chicken and Rob had the Leelynn Burger with house-made chips…
It was delicious! Rob had never been here, so I thought it would be nice to go, since we were already in the area. We don’t go out to eat very often, so this was a special treat for us.
Our main reason for heading over that way was to go and drive the tentative bike portion for the triathlon we are thinking about registering for. I say “tentative” because the official course isn’t up yet, so we went off of last year’s course. It is definitely a beautiful course, but it has some intimidating hills…mostly to me! Rob doesn’t seem to think that they will be that bad, but he has bigger legs than I do! 🙂 We are giving ourselves plenty of training time, almost 7 months, so we have time to strengthen our legs and get ourselves in the best shape possible to finish the triathlon. Our goal is to finish the triathlon, and, to do so smiling! I believe that will be possible with the training we will be putting in.
After seeing and driving the bike portion of the course, we are really excited to start training (after the marathon and some rest), especially Rob, although he is a little nervous about the swim portion. The good thing is is we have each other to work through the training and will be able to help each other with our weaknesses.
We also wanted to enjoy some of the beautiful weather we had today, albeit a little bit warm for the end of August, but beautiful nonetheless. So, we headed back to Centennial Park after our drive. Centennial Park is where the swim and run portions of the triathlon are held, and of course, where the bike portion starts and ends. We took a change of clothes and changed when we got there, since we really didn’t want to go to lunch in workout clothes. We changed and walked part of the run course. This is definitely the part of the triathlon that I am the least worried about. Here are some pictures from our walk today…
It really is a beautiful area. This is one side of the lake.
There is a lot of wooded area around the lake and park as well. We even came upon some fawns playing out there. It might be a little bit hard to see them, but we were a little ways away from them. They are to the left side of the path. They were chasing each other around. The smaller one on the left stopped and watched me as I took this picture.
I tried to zoom in more for this one. I didn’t have my really good camera with me today, of course, but they were actually playing in this picture.
A shadier part of the path.
One of my favorite parts of the path, even if the bridge is a little loud and shaky to run across. You get a nice view of the lake from here. We even saw a couple of turtles in the water from the bridge today…
Just a little guy here swimming right along!
And, maybe the mother or father here! This turtle was much bigger!
Another view of the lake.
Absolutely beautiful on this side of the lake! This is where most of the swim portion of the triathlon takes place!
Same side of the lake…just a little bit further down the path and still part of the swim.
This is closer to where the swim starts.
This definitely looks like a beautiful area to do a triathlon. All three parts of it have wonderful views. So glad we took some time to go over and get an idea of what the courses look like. It puts everything into perspective a little bit better and you get a better idea of what the hills are like. It is so hard to tell from the course maps and elevation charts online.
A wonderful day was had by all today! Now, it is time to get fueled and rested up for tomorrow’s long run!