Mile by Mile. Pint by Pint

Race Ready

Since we’re getting close to summer and trying to get ourselves ready for a Fall Marathon, we thought it would be a good idea to sign up for a few races.  The next thing we knew, we have 3 on the schedule in the next 2 months:

1. Run to Remember 5 Miler
2. Tory Row 5k
3. BAA 10k

Whew!  Should be fun!  As long as we’re race ready… which remains to be up for debate at this point.

On Saturday I had this:

Followed on Sunday by homemade this:

Which means, today, I’m in desperate need of a lot of this:

Unibroue for St. Patty’s Day

We hit up our Mug Club spot on both Friday and Saturday nights.  We’re just too close to finishing to not keep going and get this thing done.  Friday night was a good time.  I conspired with our waiter to bring me easy drinking beers as quickly as possible.  I wanted to make up a few on my drinking buddy.  He’s been 7 ahead of me for quite some time, but I’m dead set on us finishing the same night.  I don’t think it will be as fun to go through all of this together and then not get our mugs at the same time! 

We went back on Saturday for St. Patty’s day, knowing full well we wouldn’t be drinking anything Irish, but we were ok with that.  We got there and it was PACKED.  We don’t like to go while it’s packed, so we creepily walked by… and then walked by again… and then again… We were hoping a hoard of people would suddenly get up and go.  They didn’t.  So we got ice cream.  And then walked by again… and saw a table!  But, now we had ice cream :( so we just kept walking.  By the time we finished our ice cream and headed back for the umpteenth drive by, that same table was still there, so we headed in and continued knocking them off the list.  I’m pleased to say that I finished the Unibroue category.

At least I wore some appropriate St. Patty’s day gear.

So close……..

Well, I think it’s official that we’re on the home stretch of our Mug Club journey.  We’re hoping to be finished in the next couple weeks, and boy are we glad about that.  It’s definitely been fun, and we have definitely tried a lot of beer that we normally wouldn’t have otherwise (some of it awesome, some of it not so much!).  But, I think we’re both in need of a little break.

Our last trip to Buk’s I had a beer that I really enjoyed.  It certainly fell in the category of beers I’d never order otherwise.  It was the Jan de Lichte and I think it’s classified as an Imperial Wit. 

I thought it was funny that it was basically a beer in a bag.  But, I guess this was a fancy beer in a fancy bag.  It was really good.  I used to drink a lot of wit beers (or more properly - “witbiers”) and then kind of stopped once I found out that I liked stouts and browns.  This just tasted “crisp” and delicious.  Not too strong on the alcohol, which I always worry about in these 750 ML behemoths. I would definitely recommend it if you want to try an awesome witbier :)

It has taken us up until now to figure out some sort of balance, but better late then never.  We have both been hitting the pavement pretty regularly the past couple of weeks and getting the miles in.  We’ve also been better about cooking and eating at home, all good things.  Signing up for the Marine Corps Marathon must’ve been the kick in the butt we needed.

Discipline? What’s that?

So, as with anything else we ever do that requires discipline, planning, and follow-through, we have let the blog get a little behind.  Over the past few weeks, we’ve had a decent amount of things going on, we’ve continued to chip away at our Mug Club list, signed up to run a marathon this Fall, and tried to make a better attempt to hang out with friends.

I think about 2 weeks ago when I last posted, we were still well under 100 complete on the Mug Club list.  Since then, we’ve invited a few friends to come drink with us on a couple different occasions. We had Light Beer night with one of our friends, who drinks exclusively light beer and brought his own coozie to the bar (awesome!), and tried to knock off several of those.  We brought Jay’s sister along one night to hang out.  She doesn’t drink beer, but tried a couple different types of ciders.  And then the other night, one of our friends who lives close by came along to hang out for the night.  It’s been a fun few weeks.  I’m up to 107 and Jay’s up to 113.  We’re getting really close to that 135 and to securing our Mugs! 

We also just last week signed up to run the Marine Corps Marathon again!  This will be Jay’s 3rd marathon (and 3rd MCM) and my 2nd (and 2nd MCM).  I’m excited to get on a marathon training plan and have something to shoot for in October.  With this winter being so warm, I’m hoping we’re not due for a crazy hot summer, but we’ll just have to wait and see!  

We’re hoping to be better about updating this and keeping track of what we’re up to, where we’re running, and what we’re drinking.  Happy Monday!

Winter Warmer

Can you believe how warm it has been this winter?!  I think everyone here in New England is still on the edge of their seats waiting to see if we get slammed in March. Our first winter here, we experienced a pretty hefty St. Patty’s Day snowstorm. Hopefully that doesn’t happen this year! 

We’ve decided to take the week off from the mid-week Buk’s visits. Try to get in more days of exercise and more days of cooking at home. Our last trip there was on Saturday when I ordered the infamous La Trappe as my first beer of the night. A few weeks ago when Jay ordered it, the bartenders referred to it as the “Game Changer” and when I ordered they called it “Blackout Friday”. Either way, I was scared of this one. I was definitely glad to order it as my first of the night so I could just ease into it. It was delicious. No game changing or blacking out. But, I think that is a good thing :)

I also ordered the Genesee Cream Ale.  It came in a can and was pretty low ABV. It tasted about what you would expect for beer in a can with low ABV. I mentioned to my dad that I had tried this one, and he said “Good old Genny Cream!” Apparently this was one of those beers they had back in the day when they wanted something other than Busch. Kind of funny.  

In other news, I ran 3.6 miles last night! At a pace right at 10:01 (which is fast for me). This guy better watch out: