A Crazy #NationalRunningDay

I know, I know. Enough with the running, this is a ballet blog. I promise there will be more ballet things soon, running has just become a big part of my life and has helped get me more and more in shape (which is helping with ballet too).

Today is National Running Day, and although I got a later start than I would have like (it was already starting to warm up a fair amount), HQ–my boyfriend if you don’t already know that–and I set out to run on the Schuylkill River Trail here in Philly instead of the track here at Temple University. While it’s nice to have a nice, soft, flat surface to run on, running in circles kind of drives me crazy. It doesn’t do much for my motivation either–I always want to quit early. Running on a trail means I essentially need to keep going because I have to get home somehow.

On our way there, while waiting for the subway, we heard a cop tell the subway attendant that a building had collapsed in center city and were interested to see if we could see anything of what happened during our run. We stopped in 30th street station (I had to pee as usual) before heading down to the trail and saw how crazy it looked on the news.

Anyway, it was a good run (albeit slower than I would have liked) and we stopped to take some pictures along the way by the river.

HQ by the river!

HQ by the river!

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And Me!

We decided to run around lunchtime because I learned on Twitter in the morning that my favorite lunch truck in Philly, Mac Mart, was going to be at The Porch at 30th Street. I LOVE this truck–and since my favorite mac and cheese was on the menu for today (Bacon, Ranch and Tomato aka BRAT Mac) I knew we just had to make it part of our running trip.

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The most delicious mac and cheese.

We had planned to walk to Ulta to get some things we had planned to pick up before (but we didn’t have coupons with us–hello broke college student/broke college grad status), so we got to cross over by where the building collapse had happened.

How often is it that you find you can just walk straight down the center of the Market Street Bridge?

How often is it that you find you can just walk straight down the center of the Market Street Bridge?

We were then detoured down to Chestnut Street (which was the direction we were headed anyway) on the foot bridge that connects Market and Chestnut (which I sadly never knew existed despite living in Philly for four years). They still had the rode blocked off there.

An empty Chestnut Street near where I used to work.

An empty Chestnut Street near where I used to work.

Finally we made it to Ulta, which I love now that we finally have one in Philly. I even got an extra workout here as it’s three stories and I probably went up and down them 4 times to get different things. Overall, our journey ended up taking us about 5 miles (3 of them running on the trail). I’d say it was a successful National Running Day!

How did you celebrate if you’re a runner?