As much as I love nothing more than a weekend jam packed with Terps football and various other sporting events, over the years, I have come to love and appreciate the bye week.


Loving football Saturdays

The bye week usually symbolizes a weekend of blissful nothingness.

I don't have to set an early alarm to wake up for a tailgate. I can choose not to watch one bit of football all weekend if I really want to (ok that never actually happens, but it's a possibility...)

But I have all this extra time to get stuff done, and it's a great feeling.

This past weekend was actually our second bye week of the year, and boy did I make the best of it.

I got all my grocery shopping and errands done. I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom -- Lysoled the counters, mopped the floors, deep-cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed everything.

I backed up my computer and installed a new operating system.

I worked on my syllabus for the journalism class I'm teaching in the spring, and I started to organize some of the assignments.

Oh and I even managed to fit in a short run on Saturday -- 30 consecutive minutes of running. My longest run to date post injury. I'm happy to report I'm still not experiencing any pain in my foot when I run. But I can definitely tell my endurance is crap these days -- especially when I'm running up hills.



Saturday's route was a bit hilly and by the time I was finished I was sucking wind and had a pretty solid side stitch going on. But those are all things I can cope with for now. I'm just happy to be running.

Sunday I did spend some time watching the Eagles game -- my little bit of football for the weekend -- and I was pretty pumped with Nick Foles' performance. I'm just hoping it wasn't a one-time fluke. (In case you missed it, Foles tied the NFL record for passing touchdowns in a game. He threw 7 in our win over the Raiders.)

And before I stop prattling on today, I want to say a huge congratulations to the #IronSiblings -- Meghann, Kelly and Ben -- for rocking their first IronMan in Florida this weekend. Also congrats to everyone else who raced this weekend, especially everyone who rocked at the NY Marathon!

Did you have a productive weekend?