My new toy! And the 8 miler...

I had the best of intentions to run Saturday morning. My alarm went off at 5:30 so I could in theory be out on the road around 6 since I had a ton of stuff to do during the day. When the alarm went off I realized I was not well rested as my cough had resulted in a pretty fractured sleep. I turned the alarm off and rolled over and decided that running was just not happening that day. The rest of Saturday was crazy busy as Neil and I were hosting a wine tasting and tapas party at my place. We prepped a ridiculous amount of food - raw oysters, bacon wrapped blue cheese stuffed dates, garlic mushrooms, albondigas (a.k.a. meatballs) in a chipotle sauce and chicken with peppers, onions and chorizo. Plus cheeses and olives courtesy of my brother and sister-in-law. All followed by a chocolate fondue. People brought two bottles of the same kind of wine with them - one to taste at the party and one to go into the wine exchange pot so people could take a new bottle home with them. We wound up with 8 or 9 bottles to taste among 14 of us and it was a great time. I may have made a little too much food as I can probably get away with not cooking all week. Umm, needless to say when I woke up on Sunday morning I might have been a little hungover. So....no run on Sunday morning. I eventually felt human enough to head down to Bowcycle to do a little road bike shopping though! I had been eyeing the Cannondale Synapse Femenine 7 but my size was no longer out on the floor. I looked at the Specialized Dolce and Dolce Elite and the Kona Lisa RD. The Kona Lisa was a few bucks less than the Dolce Elite, it fit better and had better components than all the other bikes I was looking at. After a test spin around the neighborhood I was in love.

So there we go folks, I am now the proud owner of a brand new bike. Calgary has a great system of bike paths so my goal is to commute into work via bike as often as possible during the week. There is a monster hill between the end of the bike path and my neighborhood so if I don't cycle in straight from my house I can at least drive down to Edworthy Park and cycle in from there if some days my legs aren't up for the climb. I also wanted a bike that would be usable for the day I want to branch out into duathlons and triathlons.

Anyhow...after all was said and done I wasn't sure whether to bag my run or not. My cough was feeling better but I sounded awful (hello laryngitis). I knew I would feel really disappointed if I didn't get any miles in over the weekend though, so at 7 pm I set out for my run. I must have managed to rehydrate well enough because the run went pretty well. Since I was running through my neighborhood it even came complete with some pretty good hills. I finished up, cooked up some rice and microwaved some albondigas and pretty well was out for the night after that. I'm definitely happy I didn't skip my run, and I cannot wait to take my bike out for a proper ride..!!