Weekly Recap: End of My Summer

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It’s time to face the fact that my summer is officially over. It’s such a bummer, but with teachers coming back to schools this week and students coming back to school one week from now, there is no denying it. My summer of 3 day weekends is behind me. I have to admit, I’m not particularly disappointed that I’m also saying goodbye to 7 AM work arrival. Nathan will also go back to his teaching job at HPU at the end of this week, so his summer is coming to an end as well.

Since it is the end of our summer, we had the perfect opportunity to have one last weekend away. Back in May, we found out Nickel Creek was going to be in our area over the weekend, so we asked my parents to meet us for their show in Portsmouth, VA. They agreed and we lucked out with getting third row, center seats through the presale. With our tickets to the show secured, we decided that we should make a full weekend of it and add a trip to Busch Gardens in as well.

Great seats at a great show!

The concert was simply wonderful! I had never seen Josh Ritter live and he definitely did not disappoint. His songwriting skills are amazing! In addition, while I’ve seen Chris Thile perform with other folks, this was my first time seeing Nickel Creek. They were super fun! I love all of the other stuff Chris Thile has been doing (especially Punch Brothers), but I don’t want to see Nickel Creek disappear again. Maybe he can find a balance between both bands and all of his solo stuff. The man must never get a good night’s sleep.

Busch Gardens was great as well. We got a later start than planned, but it all worked out. The guys and I alternated between riding roller coasters and taking breaks to eat and ride smaller rides with my nieces. My Bug, who is just 4 years old rode the big swings and rapids for the very first time. Then our Bear, who is 6, surprised us all by agreeing to go on Verbolten. She decided that the sounds of the wolf growling and tree branches breaking during the inside part of the ride was a little too scary for her, so I don’t know if she’ll be ready to do it again soon, but she did say the ride part was awesome. Our big adventure of the day was getting stuck at the end of the ride. Our train was back at the station, but wasn’t able to pull in due to some problems one of the other trains was having. They had to come around with a special machine to unlock our harnesses and we had to use the walkway to get back to the station and exit the ride. I joked with Bear that I’ve never had anything like that happen to me on a roller coaster while she had it happen the very first time she rode a grown-up roller coaster. She was a little nervous while it was happening, but didn’t seem to bothered by it by the time we got out.

I did manage to get in a couple of short runs (Wednesday and Friday) and my knee exercises this week, but I’m not quite up to par. I was going to run Sunday, but after a late night at the concert on Friday and all day at Busch hiking from roller coaster to roller coaster, I decided to sleep in a little before we had to get on the road.

This week is going to be even busier than last week in terms of work, so I’m going to squeeze in runs where I can. I want to get to the gym and start lifting again, but between house hunting and finishing up some last minute presentations for the week, my evenings are going to be pretty well booked up. I’m not ruling it out, but I’m not stressing it either. I’ll be keeping my runs in the 3 mile range for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week. On Sunday, I’ll be in DC, and if everything goes well this week, I’m going to go for 4-5 miles. I haven’t done a long run in a month now, so I don’t want to push up my miles too quickly. Wish me luck!