Delightful Weekend

I’ve taken the last two weeks off running and I have to say, I don’t miss it. At all. Actually, I’m tired of exercise in general (including crossfit) and have been forcing myself to exercise twice a week, down from my normal voluntary five days a week. I have three more races coming up in January, March, and April and I’m not even excited about them. You know what I’m excited about? Beach drinking and generally not moving.

That’s what I did last weekend and it was quite delightful. A few friends, hubs, and I took advantage of the fact that we have another friend with a dad that owns a condo on New Smyrna Beach. So we went to said condo and hung out for the weekend. This is the second time we’ve been there and this time we made it a point to go on the beach instead of just looking at it from maximum safe distance (a.k.a, the patio with a drink in our hand). Hubs, Jen, and Frank were the first to take the beach plunge.

#proof

New Smyrna is about an hour from Orlando. An hour is a long time to go without eating, so we were all starving when we got there. We stopped at this super cute restaurant called Norwood’s Treehouse.

Not my picture.

The bottom floor is an upscale restaurant (we were way under dressed for that) but the top floor was much more casual for our shorts and flip flops. They had really great food and I just love sitting outside, so it was perfect for that. I had a bacon cheeseburger that I didn’t take a picture of because you would just see that I left my fries and bun on the plate because I’m doing a stupid low carb diet to lose the weight I gained over the summer. Hashtag Lindseys. Eating low carb has seriously dropped my fun factor by half. I do not enjoy watching other people enjoy bread and dessert. Thankfully my no carb friends, rum and vodka, have been a big help with that.

After lunch, we stopped at the grocery store for food and drinks for the weekend. I came up with the quite possibly the best idea I’ve ever had: make Jamie cook brats for us.

I have never liked sauerkraut in my life but I liked it last weekend and those were probably the best brats I’ve ever had. I think it was probably a mistake for Jamie to make these because now I’m going to demand them all the time. If you have the opportunity, find a friend and make them cook for you. You won’t regret it.

The rest of the weekend consisted of sleeping, beaching, boogie boarding, pooling, and leisuring.

That’s the Brat Queen.

Before we left town on Sunday, we almost went back to the Treehouse for dinner but ending up trying a restaurant that Jamie had heard good things about called The Garlic instead. And man, I’m glad we did. The place was amazing minus the weird old dude that told us a dirty Santa Claus joke on the way in. The restaurant was built around trees, so it was partially indoors and partially outdoors. It was just the cutest, most quaint atmosphere I’ve ever seen in a restaurant.

I spy Jamie and hubs walking toward me in the pic above.

I feel like none of the pictures that I took really does the place justice. We sat in the outdoor area but indoors was amazing too. The place just had so much detail and personality. And yes, a lot of garlic hanging on the walls. You would be safe from the vampire invasion there.

Anyway, the food. Hubs channeled his inner fat kid and ordered the 16 oz filet mignon meatball.

It was delicious, but it tasted like a regular meatball. Not that that’s a problem. I guess I just expected a different flavor.  I got the wood-fired salmon (it was boring, just like my low carb diet) but then ended up eating off everyone else’s plate because everything was just so delicious. Jamie, Jen, and hubs ordered dessert and when you eat off of other people’s plates, there are no carbs. So I tried Jen’s flourless chocolate cake, hub’s lava cake, and Jamie’s tiramisu. All of them were incredible. I must go back.

So long story short, it was a good weekend. And if you’re in the area, go to The Garlic and thank me later.

 

Race Review: Armageddon Ambush

Armageddon Ambush is a 5k mud and color run. My friend, Daryl, had an extra registration and asked me to run it a few weeks ago. Until then, I had never heard of the race but it sounded fun from the Web site and I’m a sucker for races.

This one took place in Clermont, about an hour away from Orlando.

*Documenting that we were clean.*

This race is expensive – $80 untimed or $100 timed. (Some cities are cheaper.) Daryl bought the registrations for $30 or $40 on Living Social. Not bad. There was $10 fee to transfer the registration to my name – also not bad, but the registration wasn’t in my name when we picked up our bibs. Bib pick up was still no problem, but Daryl had changed it a week prior. You’d think for $10 bucks it would be in my name.

We just missed our noon wave, so we hopped in the 12:30 wave with no problem. I think there were about 12 obstacles. We ran though a lot of thick mud and muddy water, jumped over the littlest fire wall in the land, climbed walls and cargo net, ran through tires, made our way across swinging rings (kinda like monkey bars, but not), and ran through one lone color station. < — IMO, you can’t call yourself a mud AND color race and have only one color station

The obstacles were harder than Warrior Dash (< — that’s my race review). I had to skip four of them which hurt my Crossfit soul a little bit. I skipped the rope climb (because my forearms are not strong enough to lift this crazy body), two walls that were too high for me to jump without looking like a complete idiot to those waiting behind me, and a repelling wall at the end that I got half way up but was too tired from trying the other three failed obstacles.

This was the second to last obstacle.

It was by far the most awesome obstacle. You climb a cargo net in the back to get up and then slide down into a pool of muddy water. Only four people can climb up at once so there was a major back up. We waited 20 minutes to get on it which totally sucked. We came really close to skipping it but it just looked so fun we stuck it out. See the people standing behind it? They are all still waiting.

After the slide, there’s a mud crawl and a run through the finish line. By the time we got to the mud crawl, it looked like this.

All the ropes you crawl under were pushed into the mud. So we just walked through it. Again, this obstacle was right by all the volunteers and the main action. You think someone would fix it instead of leaving it like that. But what do I know?

There were two water stops on the course. By the time we got to the second one, the water was gone. It was only 1:00 pm at that point and waves were running until 5:30, so no one got water after us. For $80 or even $40, there should be water.

Once we crossed the finish, we received a t-shirt and a race medal, which I thought was pretty cool.

I definitely didn’t expect a medal.

I would advise against paying for a timed registration with the backup at that last obstacle (and several others). They do have specific timed waves, but I can’t see the backup not happening. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong.

There is only food and drink for purchase afterwards, so keep that in mind if you’re the hungry or thirsty type. The food looked really good, I’ll give them that, but for such an expensive race you would think you’d at least get a granola bar or a bottle of water.

I liked the race and the more challenging obstacles but it just suffered from…a lack of volunteers? I’m not sure. It wasn’t bad by any means but this race has a lot of room for improvement.

Either way, I still had fun getting dirty with a friend. 🙂