You can take the boy from Carolina

But you can't take Carolina away from the boy.  I had to spend most of this week in DC on a work trip.  It was a good trip overall.  I got a ton of work done and had a bunch of fun.  I drove up, and it was nice to have some extra freedom.  Sunday night I got into town about 6:30, which was dissapointing since the GPS said I was going to get there at 5 pm.  I lost the extra hour and a half due to traffic between Richmond and DC.  I still got to meet up with my fraternity brother Shawn and his new fiancee:

We had a great dinner and I really enjoyed getting to hang with my  friends.  They are going to have a fun wedding coming up, and I'm sure Shawn's batchelor party is going to be a blast.

Monday morning I got up and knocked out 4 miles in 29:32 on the hotel treadmill.  I was staying very close to my office in Tyson's Corner, and it's way to traffic'ed to get out and run on the roads. Plus it was about 100* that day too, which is rare for DC.

Monday was filled with meetings as we kicked off some exciting new projects for fun clients.  But the day finished with a crab crackin at the Quarterdeck in Arlington.  All you can eat crabs and pitchers of beer just can't be wrong.  It can be delish, and this certainly was.

aaaaaah, so good.

Needless to say, I didn't work out monday night or tuesday morning.  Originally I was supposed to have a couple of meetings on Tuesday and head back to NC.  Well, plans change and I ended up getting roped into more meetings on Wednesday as well.  So the good news was that I ended up having free social time tuesday night!

And the bad news was that I was completely exhausted by Tuesday night.  I had dinner plans with a cousin and running plans with Katie and other social plans with other friends.  I was originally very excited to have the extra time.  Then I ended up in bed falling asleep by 8 pm.  Something about the heat and the intensity of the work environment up there just put me under.  It was nuts.  I feel horrible about making so many plans and breaking them all but it was a struggle to get dinner from the hotel bar.  insane.

However wednesday morning I got up refreshed and had a good progression run, finishing a 5k including a warm up in about 22 minutes.  I also squeezed in a coffee with my old friend Jen.

I haven't seen her in about 5 years so that was absolutely fantastic grabbing a cup of coffee with her.

I had my wednesday meetings and came on back to Raleigh as a big ball of mush.  Great trip, I had a lot of fun, but it was pretty exhausting and I didn't get to stick to the regular workout schedule.  Should make for an interesting weekend. 

This saturday is the Big Deuce.  I hope I'm ready for a 2 mile open water swim race!  Maybe all of those crabs will give me some extra undwater special superpowers or something.