Carl’s, Cara, and the Carytown 10K

This weekend was like no other – short and packed to the brim – with TONS of fun!

Friday evening Isaac and I drove to Culpeper to watch my niece’s dance recital. She did a hip-hop number and it was fabulous- she’s such a cutie. On our drive home we made a pit-stop to one of my ALL-TIME FAVORITE places – Carl’s. It’s an old-fashioned ice cream, technically frozen custard stand that started in 1947. I’ve been going there since I was a little girl and it’s the best soft-serve I’ve ever had. It’s so good that the often times the line wraps around the building.

They’re menu is straight from the 50′s with only vanilla, chocolate and strawberry and CHEAP prices.

Isaac, who was recently introduced to Carl’s (by moi) has fell in love and often times orders both a vanilla cone and a chocolate malt. It’s too hard to choose one or the other. Plus we don’t get to visit very often so you have to get it while the gettin’s good.

Just your average Friday night double fisting.

And, this pretty much sums up how good my chocolate/strawberry cone tasted.

Not a posed picture- I had my eye on ice cream that was melting down the cone and for obvious reasons didn’t want to lose any. Isaac thought it would be funny to take a pict. And in hindsight, it is funny. I look completely mesmerized.

Here’s what the picture was suppose to look like.

Fast forward to Saturday evening. Miss Cara came to Richmond, stayed the night and we ran the Carytown 10k on Sunday morning.

We were all pretty hungry when she arrived so we scooted over to Carytown for some Thai food.

I got the usual – Tom Yum Soup + Papaya Salad and split the beer above with Isaac.

It was delicious – I always think about order other items when I go to Thai, but I love papaya salad so much I can never resist it. Never had papaya salad? Here’s a yummy recipe.

After dinner we walked around Carytown, spotted that Secco Wine Bar was officially open and decided to give it try.

New wine bar = cool cork tables and delicious Pinot Noir. I’m already excited to go back for a second visit.

7 AM came early and we ended up waking up a little later than planned. This meant no time for stove-top oats. Rudi’s 14 grain with pb and Crofters, a banana, and some local berries did the trick.

The 14 grain bread is a mild, low calorie bread with only 90 calories per slice and 4 grams each of fiber and protein. It’s smaller in size than most breads but still big enough to make a tasty sandwich or eat toasted. I am really enjoying the Rudi’s bread that was sent for me to try out- so far I think the Cinnamon Raisin and the 14 grain are my favorites.

Cara and I decided it’d be awesome to represent FitBloggin- looking stylish and comfy in our Thriv tee.

Don’t mind the just out of bed face.

20 minutes later- we were off. The coolest part is the race went right by our house so Isaac just hopped outside and snapped a shot of us running by.

I look extra excited for some reason – probably because we hadn’t even passed mile marker 1 yet.

Post race Isaac and Olive were waiting at the finish line.

The race excitement wore Olive out.

My time for the race definitely wasn’t a PR or anything, but that was to be expected since I hadn’t run over 2.5 miles since the Monument Ave 10K back in March. This was more of a fun run for Cara and I do to together so we chatted the whole race and ran at a comfortable pace. It was nice not to be totally focused on the time.

The finish was kind of disorganized with a long line for water and not many vendors to check out. We skipped the plain bagels and oreos offered, headed home to shower, and then went out for coffee.

Crossroads is a cute little coffee/ice cream shop that I tend to forget about sometimes because it’s never on my direct route. Their menu items look delicious and homemade ice cream probably would have hit the spot at 10:30AM but I settled on an iced with soy milk.

Then we took Cara to the James River. You simply can’t come to Richmond and skip seeing it.

After walking along Belle Isle for a bit we headed back and met up with some lovely bloggers (Christie and Rebekah) at Ellwoods for lunch.

  

Everyone got the salad/hot bar and we ate and chatted for a little over 2 hours. It was a blast. Sadly, we forgot to snap a photo of all four of us.

Okay, I better get going. I’m in Northern Virginia for the next two days attending a Google Ad Words training session for work. Hopefully I’ll still have time to blog regularly, but we shall see.

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend. I can’t wait to catch up on everyone’s blogs to see what you all have been up to.

Happy Monday!

- Brittany

Tagged as: Carls Ice Cream, Carytown 10k