Gretch Runs

Welcome to part two of my trip recap post! We just left Izola and said goodbye to the sea, but were heading towards some of the most beautiful water and mountains I've ever seen in my life in Bovec, Slovenia. This is part of the Julian Alps, and Dan described this area as the "adventure capital of Slovenia". I can definitely confirm that! We stayed at Hotel Sanje ob Soci, which was probably my favorite place we stayed during the trip. The building is a beautiful A frame with incredible views of the mountains, and also had a sauna in the basement! It was right down the street from the tiny and cute downtown area and all of the workers were amazing.  Plus, the breakfast was incredible. One day we were the only ones who ordered breakfast and we had a feast set out for us right in front of a roaring fireplace. Our first full day was one of the highlights of the entire trip. We started in the morning by heading down the road to Nature's Way to meet up with our guide for ca...

Good morning everyone! I had my second tri of the year over the weekend, and also had a great week of workouts! Starting this week I'm officially in training for my longest tri ever- the Olympic distance. I'm equal parts excited and scared! I'll share more about my training for that soon, but in the meantime here's how a week of training and racing went- Monday 3 mile run Started the week with a lunch run. I was still really sore and tired from our backpacking trip, so I wasn't sure how this would go and was happy that I felt relatively good! I did another Peloton run that had intervals of jogging, running, and sprinting that helped the time pass by really quickly. Tuesday 12.5 mile bike This was one of my best training rides ever- I didn't feel like I was pushing that much but checked my watch at one point and realized I was going much faster than I thought! When I got home and uploaded to Strava, I saw that I set a PR on every single segment, which was crazy t...

Happy Monday!! I just got back from an amazing weekend trip (more about that below). This might not have been the best workout week ever, but I still managed to get some movement in every day. Let's just say that it's not easy to motivate yourself to run when you aren't sleeping well, and I've been sleeping really badly lately. Let's hope that's just an off week and I'll be back to normal soon! Here's a look at how the week went- Monday 2 mile run Started the week with a midday run. It's definitely feeling like summer out there, but it actually felt great! I did a little interval workout using the new Free section of the Peloton app (I used to have a membership but dropped it a few months ago, but they just came out with free workouts that you don't need to have any membership to access!) Tuesday 1300 yard swim I followed a swim workout today, and that really helped me to break up the swim and made it go by really quickly. I enjoyed it a lot whic...

Hello everyone! This post has been a while coming- about a month ago, I got back from the most amazing trip ever- probably the best of my life! To back up a bit, Dan and I wanted to take a trip this spring (we usually like to travel during shoulder season and end up going somewhere at the end of April). Dan is very passionate about planning and loves his spreadsheets, so he decided it would be fun to plan an entire trip and have it be a complete surprise to me! In fact, I found out where we were going when we were at the airport of our layover. And our destination? Ljubljana, Slovenia!! This is definitely a place I would never think to visit (and when he told me we were going to Ljubljana, embarrassingly enough I had to ask him where that was). When I think of Slovenia I think of the famous lake with the church on an island in the middle, lots of green fields, and mountains. Based on that alone, I was excited! I have to break up these posts just because we did so much in the 15 days we...

Over the weekend I finished my first triathlon of the year! I decided on the Triangle Triathlon because it's really close to my house and is in a beautiful park that I was excited to get to race in. As another plus, they have a sprint and mini sprint, which was perfect for my first race of the year. The mini sprint was made up of a 400 meter lake swim, 8.5 mile bike, and 1.5 mile run. As I was racing I was so happy that I signed up for the mini (which was about half the distance of the sprint) because it was harder than I expected and I was TIRED!! Here's how it went. Swim: 12:51 The swim was in Harris Lake and went around two buoys in the water. I liked how we stayed close to the shore so it felt very comfortable for someone like me who's not a very confident open water swimmer. As soon as we started, I tried to find a spot to start swimming and get some open water. There was so much chaos at the start (which is the only thing I don't like about triathlons) so I just k...

May was a very weird transitional month for me. We started the month in Austria at the end of our vacation, then hosted some family for a week, and ended it with trying to train for our first triathlon of the year. It definitely had some ups and downs that come from getting back from vacation and entering real life, but I'm excited for all that's to come in June! Let's start with a look at my annual goals- Annual Goals Korean Vegan Cookbook Unfortunately I didn't make anything from the cookbook this month! I blame travel but I'm going to get back on track this month and try some fun stuff. I'm excited because we're getting to the main dishes section of the book! Temperature blanket I just finished month 5 of the temperature blanket and it's starting to get large! It was tough to get caught up after being away for a few weeks but it's been a nice way to relax at the end of the day. Here are some stats for May- - I used a total of 3 colors  - The highe...

I missed last month of sharing my books with being on vacation (I promise- posts are coming soon!) but I'm back today to share my recent reads and reviews! To be honest, most of these were duds for me but there were a few gems. I'm hoping June will be a better month with lots of good pool reads!  The Villa by Rachel Hawkins This was a fun thriller- I liked the setting a lot and kept wondering what was going on with the female friendship in the book. The flashbacks were kind of a fun addition too, but sometimes felt like they were taking up too much of the book and didn't really add that much.  My rating - 3/5 The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks I was so disappointed in this- Greer Hendricks is one of those authors (or two authors) that I rush to read and enjoy so much, but this one was such a snooze! It dragged on and never seemed to have a good direction of where the book wanted to go. There were so many loose ends by the time I finished and I regretted wasting time readi...