Vacation #1 & A New PR!

So this time of year things get really busy, for us especially as this year we have Tony's graduation from grad school the week before Christmas, and we have our annual trip to Las Vegas for a conference Tony has to attend for work the first - second week in December. For Thanksgiving we knew we wouldn't be flying anywhere to be with either of our families and driving to Vermont or Florida was out of the question. Luckily my BFF invited us to join her and her hubby in Asheville, NC to celebrate the holiday. We left Wednesday and spent the next 4 days there. It was wonderful! We had delicious turkey breast made in the crockpot and all the trimmings. The meal was awesome and Jess did a great job!

Our Thanksgiving Day actually began with the four of us touring the Biltmore Estate in Asheville. Let me just tell you how huge this house was! It is on 800 acres and the house has 250 rooms. Yeah, needless to say it took us about 2 hours to go through the house and then another few hours to tour the winery and some of the grounds. All in all though it was an absolutely fabulous time and I am so glad we went! I know Tony has been wanting to see it for a while, so it was well worth the $51 per ticket we paid. If you are ever in the Asheville area and want something fun and touristy to do, I highly recommend going to see this place.

So, now we have about 4 more days until vacation #2 to Vegas. I'm really excited to go back. This year we will be staying at Paris and going to see Blue Man Group. Last year was the first time I went and we stayed at Rio and saw Cirque du Soliel. Our big plans while there include eating at the top of the Eiffel Tower and watching some of the Rock and Roll Marathon on Sunday.

Which leads me to my next topic, today I set a PR (personal record) while running!! I decided since I had spent about an hour walking around the exchange and commissary today that I was sufficiently warmed up for my date with the treadmill and went ahead and skipped the 5 minute warm up walk. I went straight into running and set my Nike+ for 4.5 miles. This is my goal for now, increase by .25 miles per week. The first half was rough, I had to stop a couple times to stretch and to fix my shoe, and I still ended up with blisters on the arches of my feet, ouch! I definitely need those new Injinji tow socks like stat, I hope Santa brings me some! But I digress, as I was saying, the first half was rough, but the second half was cake. I think the runner's high set in and I sped through. I ended up straight running 4.58 miles in 47:42, with a pace of 10:24 min/mi (although I forgot to pause the ipod/workout for about 30 seconds while I was fixing my shoe, so my pace may have been a few seconds faster). I am so proud of myself today! I hope to continue this for the rest of this week, try to squeeze in some running in Vegas, although it will have to be outside since Paris charges a fortune to use their gym each day. And I leave you with the stats from my Nike+ for most of my running journey thus far:

# of workouts: 30

Farthest: 4.58 mi

Total Distance: 79.16 mi

Total Time: 15.19 hrs

Total Calories: 8834