October is my favorite time of year - the month brings pumpkin
spice lattes, chilly running weather, fall colors, and post-season
baseball! In between trips this month to Boston and Cleveland (where I ran joyfully through forests of yellow, red, and orange!), I've been spending my time watching San Francisco Giants baseball, cheering on the hometown team through their playoff run.
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| Cleveland fall colors |
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| With the fam at Game 7 of the National League Championship Series |
Orange October came to a glorious conclusion last night with
the Giants sweeping the Tigers to win their 2nd World Series in 3 years!
I've got to say, I picked the right time to be a San Francisco resident
- the past 3 Octobers in this city have been pretty epic :)
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| Celebrating in the streets last night as all of San Francisco goes crazy! |
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In between all this baseball I've been running - oh yeah, that thing I do. In recent weeks running has been tough - I've found it hard to motivate myself to get through long runs and challenging workouts. After back-to-back-to-back weekends of racing and with a full plate at work, I'm a little burned out and mentally out of gas.
So, it's been really nice to be caught up in the baseball post-season, focusing my attention on balls and strikes rather than mile splits and paces. I've taken a few weeks to just run, grabbing my headphones as I head out the door, listening to Jon Miller narrate the Giants game on the radio while I traverse the trails of Golden Gate Park.
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| An #OrangeOctober SF Sunset in honor of the Giants :) |
In the midst of enjoying October baseball and fall colors, I have done a little racing - I earned my second Top 20 finish at the USA 10K Road Champs in Boston a few weeks ago (*race recap blog post to come shortly!) and I ran a fun local 5K in Cleveland during my recent visit (finished 1st woman, 2nd overall, new 5k road PR of 16:34).
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| Top 3 finishers at the Tremont Steeplechase 5k in Cleveland |
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Now that the baseball season has come to a close, it's time to turn my attention back to the track and get re-energized about running. I'm hoping to borrow some of this World Series enthusiasm and infuse it into my own training and racing. And in the short-term, I'll enjoy the final days of Orange October with some joyful runs.
