On the road again

All it really took was a good whine about my knee to get back on track with my running.  I have been trying out new routes near my house, going north towards Land's End/the ocean rather than south into Golden Gate Park, where I've logged most of my running miles over the last 3 years.

I sometimes forget how close we really live to the ocean because you can't see it from our house, and it's 2.5 miles away through the park, but in reality, China Beach is about a mile away and has some truly glorious bridge views, especially for a pre-work  Thursday morning run:

 

I've been toying with the idea of doing a trail race (ultra?) at some point after my May marathon, so today during my long run, I decided to run along the Land's End trail from Lake Street down to Ocean Beach.  It's a mostly flat or slightly downhill stretch with some stairs that really got my blood pumping. See, that's one sweaty self-portrait right there.

I really enjoy being out in nature, and I love hiking (although I don't do nearly enough of it) so I think a trail race would be a good impetus for more time spent hiking/trail running, probably on Land's End during the week and up in Marin County on weekends.

Other things I've been up to include:

Writing for a different, work-related blog.

Happy hour with coworkers!

Photo by Julie Rivera

Facilitating our family's flexitarian lifestyle (guess which plate is mine?)

And which pizza (I'll give you a hint, the one on the right has 3 kinds of cheese and the one on the left has zero kinds of cheese):

And whittling my stack of library books from a constantly revolving stack of about 15 cookbooks to 8 books total - most of which are running related.  That's right.  I made my way through all the possible vegan cookbooks, save for a couple with exceptionally long waits that I still have on hold.

I have some new recipes on the menu for this week, so I should hopefully be posting more about those soon!