7 miler and California vacation

I'm back!!!
I've been back for over a week now. Last week I was super busy with training, preparing for my triathlon, cleaning up my house post-vacation, and taking my final exam for my Sports Nutrition Certification.

Before I went to California I ran in the Hotshot 7.25 mile trail run. It was a charity run put on by a local event coordinator in honor of the Hot Shot firemen that died fighting the Yarnel wildfire in Arizona. Some of the proceeds from the event went to the Hot Shots charity.

 Cool tech-T huh? It's really nice. I love when event coordinators give out nice tech-T's. This shirt is actually pretty flattering on too.

 My best friend (of a ba-zillion years) ran this event with me. She is also training for a half marathon and was happy to up her mileage during a race. This race was hosted at Colossal Cave mountain park South of Tucson, AZ in Vail. It was gorgeous weather; cool and overcast. It was wonderful! The event coordinators explained that the course was on paved roads and trails, but in actuality it was more of a trail-run than anything. It was so much fun! It was a blast running up and down mountains!

 Above are my race stats. I thoroughly enjoyed this course. My splits were really uneven, but that was due to the course terrain and weather (it started raining and made conditions slippery). There were a lot of legit AZ athletes at this event. Speaking to people, I found out that local people were bumming out over the Summer and how few events there were this Summer. I'm guessing people were itching to get out and race again, so they signed up for this small event to take care of the "race bug". It really is an addiction all its own. I have it and I love it. Overall, I really enjoyed this event and I will sign up again next year if they put it on again.

My husband and I went on a week-long vacation in San Diego, CA the very next day. It was so nice to see the ocean again. I've missed it terribly. Once there, the first thing we did was head to the beach.

The weather was a little warmer than the norm for CA, but being from Arizona the warmer weather was PERFECT. I loved it! Derek and I were very active on our trip. We put an extra 40 miles on our Strava activity logs. Pretty impressive I think.

 We discovered this cool local path that goes directly to the Oceanside Harbor/beach. We hopped on our bikes for a long ride to the beach. It was gorgeous out (perfect weather) and the path was flat. It was easy to just crank it down to the beach! How cool is that?

Pure elation that we made it to the Ocean.

Beach Squirrel! 

The rest of our trip was relaxing and fun. We spent lots of time with our friends/family/loved ones. Our last run was spent in Balboa Park. I read that it has some of the best running trails in the San Diego area. We were spoiled by the mild San Diego weather; we were able to sleep in until 9 A.M. and then get ready without rushing. There was really no need to wake up early to beat the heat because it never got too hot for us to run. Fabulous!

The gorgeous rose garden in Balboa Park. I had way too much fun running circles through these roses.

Posing in front of a beautiful fountain. Like my compression socks?

 Balboa Park was huge! We ran a 10K across that park and didn't even make a dent in it. There are so many different parts and sections to the park. We went from running through courtyards, to perfectly manicured lawns, to standard park-scapes, to city streets, to trail runs, to rose gardens, and back to the museum courtyards.
I had the best time in California. It was the best trip I've taken out to the west coast. I love how active my husband and I were. I felt great, the weather was fabulous, and it was great to see my loved ones.