The Race that Wasn’t – With a Heaping Side of Italian Food

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This past weekend, we traveled upstate to visit our cousins Doug and Kathy and their kids for a couple of days. Our cousins invited us a couple of months back for the Kingston Shamrock Run, which was Sunday. I immediately said yes because I knew we’d have an awesome weekend. I didn’t even bother looking up the details of the race, blindly assuming it was a 5K timed race.

So began the weekend of eating the most amazing homemade Italian food (you know, carb-loading in preparation for the 5K…right?). Exhibit A: Homemade pizza. Please note I couldn’t even get a photo of one of the pizzas before someone already took a slice.

Exhibit B: Doug and Kathy’s son makes fresh pasta from scratch every weekend. Just for fun. So on Saturday night we had completely homemade lasagna for dinner. It. Was. Amazing.

By the time Sunday morning rolled around, two things had occurred. One was that I had since discovered the 5K race was actually a 2 mile all-downhill fun run. The other was that I had spent the weekend indulging in not terribly healthy, but delicious homemade food all weekend – and I was okay with that!

We had so much fun doing the Shamrock Run! Fran elected to walk with Roman (they shared a number, which was very cute!) while I ran.

It was seriously just a downhill obstacle course of weaving in and out of the walkers – it ended up being a lot of fun. Kingston’s main street, Broadway, looked really pretty and the weather was just lovely and Spring-like.

Everyone really got into the St Patricks Day theme of the event. There were lots of costumes, lots of green, lots of spectators drinking Guinness and a few furry friends dressed up for the parade following the run.
Sometimes it’s okay to have a weekend where you eat richer foods than usual, workout a little less than usual and rest up more (there was more than one nap involved). It can actually help to recharge you a little. The key is making it only an occasional event. If this sounds like your weekend every weekend, it might be time to reevaluate habits. But it was so much fun, we had a great time with our family – lots of stories and laughing (and eating and drinking!). Today I was back to my normal way of eating and made sure I pushed myself a little harder in the gym.

Do you enjoy your occasional indulgent weekend? Do you ever beat yourself up about missing workouts or eating more than usual? Or do you just enjoy it?

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1 thought on “The Race that Wasn’t – With a Heaping Side of Italian Food”

  1. Melissa (LiveLoveNRun)

    Haha, I thought you were going to say you found out it was longer than a 5k!

    I had a semi-indulgent weekend while I was away. I had a cupcake, and guess what? Gasp! I still lost weight! lol It just goes along with your post and how a more food, less work, more sleep weekend CAN recharge you. There’s nothing wrong in playing a little more and working a little less once in a while. Not allowing yourself the rest can really hurt any efforts you’ve already made.

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