Second to last week

Well, last week's goals went well for the most part. I successfully tracked everything I ate for the week and, even though I ended up being in the red for my overall points for the week, I feel really good about at least knowing what I ate and knowing that tracking helped me keep some splurges down. I also probably underestimated my walking around Paris points, but no matter.

I've bumped my runs up to at least 5 miles at a time, which takes me about an hour, and I'm hoping to continue to lengthen my runs as we move forward. My best run for the week was Sunday night, when I plotted a great run that took me from our dorm to the two islands in the Seine, where I was fortunate enough to be able to watch the sun set. I pre-planned it using mapmyrun.com and then printed out a map in case I either a) got lost or b) decided I wanted to lengthen/shorten the route. I ended up only doing 5.5 miles instead of the 6 I had planned because I took a wrong turn, but it's all good. Here's the route as Mr. Garmin tracked it. I've noticed that MG has a lot of trouble acquiring the first GPS signal when I turn it on, which is a pain, since I get really impatient, since as soon as it look like it's almost finished acquiring, the bar jumps back down and I have to wait again... Irritating. That said, there's at least .5 miles missing from this map since I started the timer and started running while the signal was still being acquired, so my results might be a bit skewed too?

This is my pre-planned route
This is my actual route, minus the untracked bit of course, but that follows the planned route perfectly.

Here are a few photos from my lovely iPhone that I snapped during the run... next time I run at sunset, I'm bringing my real camera...

Crossing over to Ile de la Cité via Pont Neuf... which, despite being named "New Bridge," is actually the oldest bridge crossing the Seine.

Another view from Pont Neuf
It's really hard to photograph yourself with an iPhone...
Casually jogging by Notre Dame
Either Pont Louis Philippe or Pont Marie crossing over to the Rive Droite from Ile Saint-Louis
A view of the sun setting and the backside of Notre Dame de Paris from Pont de la Tournelle
A view of the Panthéon in the distance as I jogged around the outside of the Jardin du Luxembourg
Overall, I really enjoyed this run, though next time, I want to start with the city part of the run, so that I can end up on Ile-de-la-Cité a bit later so I'm there exactly as the sun is setting. The only thing I wasn't prepared for was the steady incline that I encountered on Rue des Écoles... I ended up stopping mid-run to buy a bottle of water. Through this experience I learned that the only way to avoid having a French salesperson complain about you not having coins to pay for small items is to appear in their store, panting and drenched in sweat, and apologize for only having a 20 EURO bill to purchase your 1E10 bottle of water. I've also learned through my recent runs that one must use an iPod and earbuds when running in Paris. I know that I run in skin-tight underarmour and am running through a city filled with people, but still, I really hate getting constant cat calls and, shall we say, audience commentary as I am running. On this particular run, I had a garbage truck pace me for half a street while the guy in the passenger seat hung his head out the window checking me out/cat calling. That said, the iPod serves to filter out a majority of the less blatant comments and make for a more peaceful run, for which I am oh so thankful. As beautiful as Paris is, I am looking forward to going running back at home since a) other walkers/runners are more friendly when you pass them and b) less "audience commentary." Allez-y, mademoiselle!

This run was great because it was the longest I'd run without doing any loops. As such, I'm finally starting to get a sense of where things are in relation to one another, at least as far as the Rive Gauche and a tiny bit of the Rive Droite is concerned. Lately, I've also tried to cut back on my metro use and start walking instead. As of late, I'm starting to find the metro a bit suffocating and tedious. Plus, walking around randomly has also led to me finding a majority of my purchases as well as some fun cafés and such. The extra activity points don't hurt either. ;-) Then, if I get lost, I can just use the iPhone to get a map/directions to walk home... not too shabby.

Aside from running, the past week was pretty eventful. Aside from our usual schedule of class in the morning/museum in the afternoon, on Friday night, we all went on the Paris Pub Crawl in Montmartre. For the 12 EURO fee, we were able to go to 4 bars and get a free shot with each beer/cocktail... Let's just say we had a lot to drink. It was a ton of fun--I even got to make friends with a nice guy from Québec named Guillaume who indulged my dorky side and talked with me about the linguistic and dialectal differences between France French and Canadian French. So fun!






Finally, this week also involved a lot of shopping... I've almost got all of my presents for my family (and Jon's, of course), though I'm still stumped on a few people...

We made a first visit to the famous Parisian puces or flea markets, where I snagged a pair of fake wayfarers for 10 euro (sadly, I think I still want the real tortoise shell ones...). I'm going to have to go back with more cash next time so that I can get some more presents. I've also learned this week that having an H&M close to our residence is really bad for my wallet, but wonderful for my wardrobe. Today, I went in looking for a tank top to go under this interesting sweat shirt/shawl thing I bought at Zara and left with a new jean jacket, a pair of red flats (10 EURO! Too hard to pass up!), and the tank top. The best part? The jean jacket fits and it's an American size 10!

I made Abby take a photo of me so I could see what the fakeys looked like... not too bad!
All in all, it's been a successful week. I didn't make it to WW, but Judith and I want to go this week (or next) so I can at least check a meeting out and, hopefully, bring back some French language materials to show everyone at our meetings back home!

I guess that's all I've got for now... Next time, hopefully I'll have another good run to talk about, as well and Judith's and my highly anticipated visit to a hammam in our arrondissement. I went to one last spring in Arles with my friend Nolwenn and it was amazing, so I'm hoping this one is great too! Hope you're all doing well, I'm sorry I've been so bad about reading/commenting on your blogs, I promise I'll get back into the swing of things as soon as I have more free time!

PS- Jon and I are signing up for the Hocking Hills Indian run on September 18th! Since it's a trail run (and we're trail run virgins), we're going to do the 10k distance. I know it's not the half marathon I was hoping to be running, but I'm still so excited to get back into race-training mode and to run another race with my boy! :) It'll be a packed weekend since the race is near Athens and we're going to my mom's birthday dinner that night in Cincinnati, but it's definitely worth it--I wouldn't miss either thing. It's shaping up to be quite the weekend. :)