I am now officially five weeks into my half marathon training program! Roughly 19% of the program is behind me. This week was short run week so I did a pretty fast 2 mile tempo run on Tuesday, a comfortable 3.11 Runtastic Story Run on Saturday and then an “active recovery” 3.32 mile walk with Erin this morning. This, of course, in addition to my three days at Title Boxing Club. Feeling great but was a bit tired toward the end of the week. Could’ve been due to a couple of things:

Wednesday was the first annual First Day of Fall Cookie Crawl at the office where folks brought in homemade cookies, received markers for their desks to show others where cookies were, and proceeded to chow down and socialize for a few hours in the afternoon complete with warm cider and milk “shots”! I did two things for this party: First, I made these chocolate cayenne crinkles from Budget Bytes. I’ve made lots of food for the folks at the office but I’ve never had anything go over as well as these cookies! I brought 30 cookies and all were gone in a little over 15 minutes! My cube was swarmed and as cheesy as this sounds my heart was also swarmed with emotion since I’ve accepted that making food for other people is one of my favorite things on the planet.

The second thing I did was eat close to 20 cookies in one afternoon. I am not proud of that. Justin two years ago would’ve been, but I’m sort-of embarrassed to say this. I ate a lot of cookies and I now have a zit on my nose. I can’t help but think it’s related.

My second possible contribution to my fatigue this week was the dinner party we hosted on Thursday night – sort-of a make up party for those that couldn’t attend Erin’s graduation party last month. The pressure was off a bit for this one and my confidence level had grown exponentially so stress wasn’t really a factor, I just like to cook good food. So for my guests I prepared chicken parmesan that I hand-breaded with panko, pan-fried and served over spicy Italian sausage that I had fried with fresh basil and garlic, and a side of rigitoni that was tossed in some homemade, and my favorite, pasta sauce. I made up a batch of my guests’ favorite parmesan bread twists (would link these but I can’t remember where the recipe is from) and finished with some pumpkin swirl brownies. Add a single glass of Freakshow cabernet sauvignon and a few hours of laughing and story telling and you have a very tired boy that still somehow made it to the gym on Friday morning.

A great week for my physical activity – a great week for my culinary expeditions.

So to satisfy the other part of my headline I figure now’s as good a time as any to formally announce my registration for the Covenant Health Knoxville Half Marathon on April 3, 2016! It’s official! It’s on digital paper! Now I don’t have much of a choice here – It’s either keep up my training or be lame and walk half of it. It’s hard to believe that I, of all people, am motivated enough to stick with this even with the winter fast approaching. I’m totally digging these cooler temperatures we’re experiencing lately, though. And since I’m announcing race registrations I’m also participating in this year’s Light the Way 5K at Dollywood on November 13 (happy birthday, Chuck!). This will be a cool race for several reasons: 1) It’s at Dollywood 2) It’s at 11:00pm 3) The Christmas lights will be on and there will be Christmas music playing throughout the park 4) A group of friends from work are all going and we’re competing as “Team Scripps” and probably my favorite part: 5) Erin is doing this race! She’ll get a bib! She’ll get a time! She’ll earn that Steak & Shake stop we’re planning for midnight post-race celebration! I’m PUMPED!

One last thing before I leave with the distance table. I’ve been shooting some video with my DSLR with various lenses and lens attachments lately. Mostly of my dogs but a few other things sneak in there every once in a while. I made this fun video composed of, again, mostly my dogs but consists of footage shot while on short vacation to Dillsboro, NC, a trip to see the folks in Bristol, VA, a bit of my first dinner party (that I was sober enough to shoot….sort-of), and finishing off just in the back yard. Music is by my friend’s band The Lees of Memory. Dig it!