Friday Five – March 7th – Spring Forward

March 20th, the first official day of Spring, cannot get here soon enough!  This weekend marks the beginning of Daylight Savings, when Sunday morning at 2am we’ll spring forward an hour.  I love Daylight Savings.  While there is a loss of an hour, I always get excited when its lighter outside into later in the evening.

Why is it that I love Spring so much?  What am I most looking forward to about this coming Spring?

1.  Spring in DC means that the Cherry Blossoms will bloom.  Each year, I always look forward to walking around the Tidal Basin and enjoying our country’s beautiful gift from the Japanese.  Earlier this week the National Park Service released their predicted peak bloom dates for the Cherry Blossoms.  I can’t wait to enjoy them!

One of my favorite views of the Cherry Blossoms has always been how they beautifully frame the Jefferson Memorial!

2.  This year I’ll be running my first Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run, which is an annual DC tradition.  Because of its popularity, its historically been a difficult lottery to get into.  Preston ran this race back in 2012, and has told me that this is one of the flattest and fastest courses that he’s run in the DC area.  There’s uncertainty about whether or not I’ll be able to run next weekend’s Rock ‘n’ Roll USA Half Marathon (my next appointment with the neurologist is Monday morning), but if I am able to run next Saturday I won’t be as well trained for it as I’d like to be since I haven’t run since last Wednesday.  The Cherry Blossom 10 Miler will be the next race that I can actually race.

3.  Spring means that the days will become longer, which will make it much easier to run outside after work.  Regardless of the temperature (and we’ve had a very cold and snowy winter), during the winter its pretty much impossible for me to safely run outside during the week.  It gets too dark too quickly for me to run outside after work in the winter, which results in lots of treadmill running.  I can’t wait to enjoy more early evening runs on some of my favorite local trails.

4.  I can’t wait to enjoy seeing everything in bloom.  There’s just something about seeing the trees and flowers all in bloom that brings about general happiness.

I can’t wait to enjoy more scenes like this outside and not just on a table in my apartment

5.  The arrival of Spring also means that my birthday is near.  I don’t have any plans for a big birthday celebration this year (unless Preston has something up his sleeve that he isn’t telling me about), but I can’t wait to have a low key celebration with a couple of close friends at the end of the month.

QOTD: What about Spring are you most looking forward to?

As always, thanks to the DC Trifecta Bloggers (Courtney from Eat Pray Run DC, Mar from Mar on the Run, and Cynthia from You Signed Up For What?!) for hosting the weekly Friday Five Link Up.  Be sure to check out their posts as well!