Christmas in New Orleans

Ben and I spent Christmas Eve through New Year's Eve visiting my family in New Orleans. It was a good trip, with lots of good food and fellowship. Some of the highlights included going to the French Quarter to Cafe Du Monde, eating mufaletta's from Central Grocery, and eating gelato and spumoni from A. Bricota's. Ben also learned how to make this Sicilian focaccia that my grandfather used to make every Christmas. Before he died, he taught my uncles how to make it, so now the recipe has been passed on to the next generation. We all agreed that Ben's first loaf was molto bene! Enjoy viewing some of pics from the week. I will admit that a disproportionate amount will be of my aunt and uncle's rabbit!
These are the Christmas presents we gave to our family. They are wine bottles in canvas bags with homemade wine holders (courtesy of the Ben Evans woodworking shop).
My cousin Jennifer and her husband Jonathan, me, Ben, my cousin Leslie, and my grandmother.
In the French Quarter the day after Christmas.
This is Babs, the 6-year old rabbit that belongs to my aunt and uncle. She lives in the backyard and can often be found basking in the sun or munching on grass and plants. Babs is somewhat of a super-rabbit because she survived Hurricane Katrina and was without water for 10 days. But she is doing well now and she is plump as ever!
Babs in the yard.
Me and Babs
A bunny close-up.

Another semester over

The fall semester is now finished, well at least for me it is! For the first time in my higher education history, I had no finals to worry about. That's right! ZERO FINALS!!! HA!!!

Now, I must not lie here, because even though I have no finals, I do still have to turn in grades for my PE class on Wednesday. Also, I am continuing to collect thesis data up through the 21st, so really now it's more like working a job rather than doing schoolwork. There will be some days (like tomorrow) where I will have to be at school before 8am to meet a subject for a session and stay until after 5pm to meet another subject, but I really don't mind it. As long as it gets me closer to getting all my data collected, I'll take whatever I can get.

Half Marathon pics

Here are two pics of me when I ran my half marathon at the beginning of the month. The top one is of me crossing the finish line, and the bottom is us running through downtown Raleigh. I like the bottom one because it looks like I am leading a pack of people (notice most of them are guys, haha!)

Extreme Cuteness

I couple weeks ago, I was over at Andy and Michelle Casad's house, hanging out with Michelle and having some quality girls only time. Andy and Michelle have a small farm, and among their animal menagerie are a family of Holland Lop-eared rabbits. Above are some pictures of me holding a couple of the bunnies. They are so soft and SO INCREDIBLY CUTE!!!

No more tests

Last night, I had a midterm exam in my Exercise Testing and Prescription class. The class itself is 3 hours long, one night a week, so naturally the test was also 3 hours long. This test was also the last test I will have to take for my masters degree (I don't have any final exams, and next semester is all thesis work). So I am done taking tests! Well, at least until next year. . .

Training-the final result!

Today was the day! This morning, I ran my first half-marathon: The City of Oaks Half Marathon in Raleigh. My day started at approximately 4:45am, when my alarm rang. I got up, got dressed, ate a light breakfast consisting of a cereal bar and a glass of orange juice. I left my house at about 5:15am to drive to Raleigh. The race organizers recommended that we get to the race an hour before the start so that we could find places to park and such. So anyway, as I was driving down I-40 this morning in pitch black, I was thinking, "Some part of me must be crazy to be driving to a road race before dawn on a Sunday morning!" But I guess that's part of being a runner!

The race started at 7am by the Fairgrounds. It was a really pretty morning; sunny, cool, and crisp. The race took us through downtown Raleigh, past NC State, and over by Meredith College, looping around other parts of Raleigh that I'm not familiar with, and we ended back where we started. I was feeling great throughout the whole race, and my official race time was 1:50:37, which is a pace of 8:27. My goal time was somewhere in the vicinity of 2 hours, so I definitely met my goal, and I feel like I did better than I thought I would. So I am really happy with the result of my first half marathon. I can definitely say that I want to do this again next year. I will be honest though; my legs are really sore, and I think I may be feeling this for a few days!

As all of you know who have been reading my blog, I started my half marathon training 16 weeks ago. Very auspiciously, Runnersworld.com launched a free online training log at about the same time, which I have used to record every workout. In the past 16 weeks, I have run a total of 503.6 miles. In addition to completing my overall goal of running a half-marathon, I have improved my training run pace, and set a new PR for my 10K race time. My next goals are to keep improving my pace and to run some more 10K races and do the half-marathon again next year!

Training-Week 15 summary

Half-marathon: Last week was my last high-mileage week for the training period, with a record-long run of 14 miles on Sunday. Since this week is my final week in the training period, it is an easy week with 3 4-mile runs and 1 5-mile run. The race is on Sunday in Raleigh. I am looking forward to it. I also found out that one of the first-years in my program is running the full-marathon portion, and one of the doctoral students is doing the half-marathon like me, although I think he will be running it considerably faster than I will! I am also looking forward to the post-race refreshments, haha!

15 weeks down, 3 days to go