Orange October

October is my favorite time of year - the month brings pumpkin spice lattes, chilly running weather, fall colors, and post-season baseball! In between trips this month to Boston and Cleveland (where I ran joyfully through forests of yellow, red, and orange!), I've been spending my time watching San Francisco Giants baseball, cheering on the hometown team through their playoff run.

Cleveland fall colors

With the fam at Game 7 of the National League Championship Series

Orange October came to a glorious conclusion last night with the Giants sweeping the Tigers to win their 2nd World Series in 3 years! I've got to say, I picked the right time to be a San Francisco resident - the past 3 Octobers in this city have been pretty epic :)

Celebrating in the streets last night as all of San Francisco goes crazy!

In between all this baseball I've been running - oh yeah, that thing I do. In recent weeks running has been tough - I've found it hard to motivate myself to get through long runs and challenging workouts. After back-to-back-to-back weekends of racing and with a full plate at work, I'm a little burned out and mentally out of gas.

So, it's been really nice to be caught up in the baseball post-season, focusing my attention on balls and strikes rather than mile splits and paces. I've taken a few weeks to just run, grabbing my headphones as I head out the door, listening to Jon Miller narrate the Giants game on the radio while I traverse the trails of Golden Gate Park. 

An #OrangeOctober SF Sunset in honor of the Giants :)

In the midst of enjoying October baseball and fall colors, I have done a little racing - I earned my second Top 20 finish at the USA 10K Road Champs in Boston a few weeks ago (*race recap blog post to come shortly!) and I ran a fun local 5K in Cleveland during my recent visit (finished 1st woman, 2nd overall, new 5k road PR of 16:34).

Top 3 finishers at the Tremont Steeplechase 5k in Cleveland

Now that the baseball season has come to a close, it's time to turn my attention back to the track and get re-energized about running. I'm hoping to borrow some of this World Series enthusiasm and infuse it into my own training and racing. And in the short-term, I'll enjoy the final days of Orange October with some joyful runs.