Two days ago, I had a fun surprise in the mail: I received my award for winning the 2014 Brooklyn Marathon: a $1000 gift card to JackRabbit Sports. AMAZING. Do you know how many pairs of shoes this can buy?! A lot. And how many Sparkly Soul headbands and winter tights and bottles of WIN detergent I can get? Mucho.

Then, yesterday, I got a new box of these super tasty Amrita bars. And since I’m leaving in a few days for a service trip to Guatemala, you can bet these bad boys are coming with me.

And then today, Christmas came early in the form of a gift from one of my favorite retailers: City Sports.

It was full of beautiful bright clothes that are perfect for running in these shorter (gloomier) winter days. HUGE thank you to the awesome people at City Sports for being so generous and supportive of a local urban athlete. I can’t wait to get my workout on in these!

I haven’t gotten this many exciting things in the mail since I was applying to college, and even then, it wasn’t so much about exciting things as it was “oh god is that a thin envelope?” While I’m not expecting to get anything else today, I kind of feel like giving my mailman a hug, just to thank him for bringing all this awesomeness to my door.