Justin's last 20 mile run before NYC!

It was summer time in DC this past weekend (and this entire week, too)! With temps in the mid to upper 70's, we took full advantage of what could be one of our last warm weekends and spent a a lot of time outside. Saturday, Jus and I headed out to the Shenandoah Valley - I wanted to see fall foliage. We drove the Skyline Drive from the most north entrance and completed about 35 miles where we ducked out and drove through farm towns back to DC and did a last minute wine tasting (our first wine tasting ever!). It was a lot of fun! We got a bottle of red wine that will be at it's peak in 2018! That will be stored away until Justin's 36th birthday!!! HA - kinda scary to think about!

The Shenandoah Valley was not as colorful as I thought it would be but the weather man did say that the colors are very muted this year. It was still very pretty though. We stopped at scenic views and did about a two hour hike. Picture is from a stop we made along the drive. It was very quiet and creepy at times at how secluded the trails were. I was freaking out the entire time again about bears because the guide said are in hibernation BUT will come back out on mild days to do some last minute eating. At 73 degrees, I'd say that's a mild day. So of course, I was on edge the entire hike. Fun times!!

Sunday morning was the Army 10 miler (pic above). Lucky for us, the course went right by the street we live on at mile three. We rolled out of bed at 7:40 and made ourselves cozy on the middle medium by 8 to hear the first wave gun go off. 8 minutes later, the first runner came by - that's 4 min/mile pace!!!! 30,000 people run this race which is A LOT but I found it to be pretty cool. We stayed out from the very first to the very last person. The runners were SUPER friendly and were screaming their thanks to us for being out there and cheering them on. It was a fun way to start our Sunday.

After that, Justin did his FINAL 20 mile run - WOOHOO!!! He told me he would write a blog post about it, but look how successfully he was at doing that! I'm telling ya, I'm going to change the name of this blog soon to cut his name out of it! :) Feeling motivated, I decided to try to run 13 miles (or 2 hours, whichever one came first). I've let myself get way too lazy and thought this would be a nice way to shock my body ;) I trailed behind Justin for the first few miles up and through Rockcreek Park and then started slowing my pace down. I don't need to hurt myself. Rockcreek Park is a REALLY nice run. There is a sidewalk throughout the entire park AND one of the roads is closed off completely on weekends to cars so lots of people head out to bike, roller blade, walk, run or just sit by the river and relax. I took some pics, as usual... here they are...