Here are the #Coffeeaday entries. Voting ends on Sunday (April 14th). Vote for your favorite, tell all your friends… There are a lot of really cool coffee mugs going on in here. Good luck! :-)
Good morning Coffee
Starbucks Sunburst
Tim Hortons Chills
Coffee Bean Square
First Cup
Hallmark Rim Shots
Minnie
Coffee and Biscoff
Birthday Coffee
Car Coffee
Coffee-Latte
Whole Foods Coffee
What’s Mine Isn’t Yours
And now you can vote:
Question for you: Favorite coffee mug ever?
Just kidding, I can’t do wordless posts. I can do wordless posts about as well as I can force myself to not talk during races… I am going to use this as an opportunity to tell you to be wordless and email me a photo of your #coffeeaday entry though. (but you can always add words if you want too).
So far I have 6 entries. You could win some good prizes and a lifetime of fame.
I decided now that I finally have some free time I will be hosting another #coffeeaday contest. For those of you who don’t follow me on instagram, every morning (or afternoon or night) I post a photo of coffee. Normally just one and it’s mostly what I use my instagram for.
coffee in a Russian hat
gas station coffee with lots of whip cream
coffee in a shoe
Anywho this isn’t really about me though, it’s about you! I have been asked to have another #coffeeaday contest and I loved doing it and seeing your coffee photos. Since I’m biased towards gas station coffee, this will be reader’s choice again (so hopefully it gets some publicity so people will vote…though winning by 1 vote because no one else voted is still a win).
Here is the dealio:
From now until April 7 (that is one week) you can email me (lolzthatswim at gmail) your best coffee photo. It can be instagrammed…not, with you in it, with text…without…be creative!
3 travel mugs of coffee
Then from April 7-9th, I’ll have a voting poll here on my blog.
Depending on how many people submit photos, I’ll have a second round vote (with the top 4) from April 11-14 on my facebook page.
hoarding lots of coffee cups
So what are the rules?
Anything goes as long as you have coffee in it. You can be crazy, silly, funny, artistic, selfie style…2 ounces…24 ounces…whatever you want. So good luck and email me a photo.
The winner will be the one with the most votes. They will win a coffee related prize which I will mail to you.
No questions today…
Travel for me means throwing most of my cares of nutrition and training out the window and I don’t really deny that. Lucky for me, Tim likes to run and I like to run so I can get some easy runs in so I don’t really throw any sort of run out the window or feel like a bother basing a schedule around when we run. Recovering from the Shamrock half though I felt somewhat bad that we would be running much slower than he would like. Oh well we still ran 71 miles together this week.
But this post isn’t about running. It’s about some of the delicious food that I got my hands on. I actually didn’t have very much that I was disappointed in (normally when you go out to eat for 15 meals, you have at least one that was like meh). I am contemplating adding more dining experiences into my blog. Since I can’t cook but enjoy blowing my budget at various restaurants it seems like a good idea.
Let’s start with breakfast because those are my favorites.
This seems like it was a million years ago but I got breakfast with Shannon a couple Friday’s ago at a local favorite of ours Broken Egg Bistro. 
If you are ever in the VA Beach area, I highly recommend it. It’s a small breakfast café and their eggs (not to mention pancakes) are always the bomb. I tend to go every single time I’m home and every single time I see Shannon. They refilled my coffee cup at least a dozen times and you know if I can report that I’m good to go. (OH and they have French vanilla creamer for your coffee on site. If that isn’t enough to convince you…well…I don’t know what is).
always perfection…Coastal Omelet (ie: omelet with crab meat inside)
Moving on to Texas-
Anyways Tim and I also got breakfast twice in the San Antonio area (post runs) at a little café called the Egg and I. The Egg and I quickly became a Texas favorite of mine since you could get different types of coffee…instead of house you got the choice of house, hazelnut, rainforest and something else tat I forgot. We chose the hazelnut.
The first day I got the Medetterian Frittata (I still don’t know what the difference between that and omelet is that…both are eggs with things in them). I tend to get a lot more egg related foods going out to eat because I cannot cook eggs to save my life. The fresh fruit was actually fresh (that sounds funny but it wasn’t like soggy or weird ha).
We certainly got called out the second day being there again but I’m always a regular places. I had an Avocado and Chicken Omelet. I think the avocado and chicken was a little more my style because it was a bit more filling and after running 15 miles…you kind of want that. I really like avocado (look at me being foodie…what foodie blogger isn’t obsessed with avocado?).
On my last morning before leaving Texas…Tim asks how early I am willing to get up for pancakes. Which in our case was 3:50 am. I showered and was ready to leave by 4:15 (I’m pretty high maintenance…just ask when I decide running an extra 10 minutes is better then an extra 10 minutes in the shower).
For these bad boys at the local diner called Skillets (no website). It’s Tim favorite restaurant and now one of my favorites too. I got healthy chocolate chip pancakes. Just kidding, I don’t think they have voodoo pancakes there…I asked a few times though. Like I’ve said a few times, I normally get egg type things at diners because I can’t cook eggs…I try but fail. They come out burnt and crispy or the yolk breaks…ect. However, you don’t just not get pancakes at a restaurant with a giant pancakes sign. These were really good and I know for a fact when I go back to Texas (not if…when) I will be eating there…a lot…everyday…
Anyways, I have a lot more restaurants that I went to (and will continue to post about). I’m thinking of doing more restaurant related posts.
Question for you: What is the best breakfast place you’ve ever been too?
You know this seemed like a great idea to do about 2 weeks ago when I got the notification that I had gotten into the actual race…but when it was snowing and windy all I wanted to do is bond with my personal heater and coffee.
Yes this is makeup from the night before…no I didn’t go out and drink so I can’t type a post of how I raced hungover.
From when I left my house and during the 45 minute driving, during my warmup and to the front of the race…I wore my Russian headwarmer. I think I’ll be notorious up here for it. The race itself was freezing (it’s on a lake and who knew Upstate NY is always cold…) but they gave out hand warmers at the start (let’s not even pretend I didn’t take about 10 of those!). I immediately started off in 3rd place for females…where I stayed…the whole time. I thought maybe I had a chance to catch the second place girl but she kept creeping away since that is what faster runners do.
The course was out and back twice and being on the lake, it made for really windy one direction and not so much the other. It started to snow right at the start (not white out snow but coming down enough) but that is better than sleet, hail or rain at that temperature. My splits ranged from 6:19 to 7:14 depending on the way the wind was blowing.
Oh you know running…the wind is blowing my headwarmer off…
During the race I mostly kept to myself, I was with a pack of different people but once we got to around mile 2, I basically stayed in the same position. Thanking the poor volunteers that were working the race. One said “You are at the front of the race, you aren’t supposed to talk to me”. Yeah, they better get used to that.
My watch kept measuring every single mile short. The mile markers were at .9, so I though oh finally a short race…ain’t no one got time to run a full distance half marathon…then they added some weird loop at the very end. So 12 miles I read at 11.81 and I finished at 13.29…that was the worst experience of my life. I would not have minded a short race. (maybe I would have been under 1:30).
Other thoughts:
This was a good race for me. It wasn’t great or amazing (and four minutes from my PR), but I’m sure I’ll get those comments that it was amazing. It was still a good race for me. I didn’t take any gels and that is something that I really would like to work more on. I’ve been running 90 minutes almost every morning on nothing but water, but I’ve been running 10 miles not 13.
About a month and a half ago I ran the distance series 20k (12.4) at around a 7 minute pace on completely flat ground and no wind. (I also can count it as a top 5 worst race of mine) so this was a bit of confidence booster that I am inching towards PRing. Finally for your comical amusement I had to drive through a white out to get home.
I am getting the award for best Russian hat (Can you tell I’m obsessed with that thing?)
So in short…I ran 10 miles the day beforehand, I have done no speed work and it was cold and windy. I’m also still using one of the thousand hand warmers that apparently never go bad. 
Question for you:
Ever done a race in the snow?
How about in long pants? (This is only my second race ever in tights)
Have you ever been to upstate NY?
