Fitting In Some Miles

What a fun and busy Thanksgiving weekend! On "Thanksgiving Eve," hubby and I got a sitter and went on a date night. We went to a Japanese steak house and enjoyed the food and the chef's entertaining demonstration. I carbed up quite well for the next morning's run. On Thanksgiving morning at 7:30 a.m., my running club had scheduled a special group run called the Frosty Five-Miler. Only four of us showed up, but it was still a great run. I guess everyone else was busy. I can't imagine what they were doing. :-)

The weather was perfect--- sunny and high thirties to start, then low forties. Is that great running weather or what? We took our time, chatted, and burned up our calories so we could eat with abandon the rest of the day. I, for one, should have run farther because the seconds (thirds?) on the sweet potato casserole alone surely made up for all 500 calories I burned on the run!

During our chat during the run, another running club member said she reads this blog (Hi!) and there was much poking fun at both of us (ok, mostly me): "The only thing worse than reading somebody's blog is WRITING a blog." I should have said, "Dudes, don't knock it until you try it!" But whatev.

After my enormous, gluttonous lunch, I felt like I should run five more miles, but by then I was too sleepy from the apparent sedative in the turkey.

On Friday, I just worked on putting the new house in order. It's like shoveling snow in a snowstorm to try to do this with three kids home from school. As I put away, they got more out. We came to an "understanding" finally. (I threatened to lock them in their rooms for the rest of the day if they didn't stop making messes.)

I had planned to run on Saturday morning and even had two options: a trail run with the running club of four extremely hilly miles (would have been my first actual trail run) OR a run at my favorite flat, paved trail with my old running buddy Kelle (back on the road after time off--Yea!) to work on speed.

It was good to have options, but neither happened. It was sprinkling, then pouring at the time I was supposed to run. I quickly decided to run indoors at the Y, but then the rain suddenly let up to a sprinkle. It was 38 degrees, overcast, and sprinkling. Great for an outdoor run, no? I popped on a baseball cap and three layers on top, one warm layer on the bottom and ran 4.5 miles in my neighborhood alone. BUT I did work in 6 good hills and one mile at race pace, so there. Hills AND speedwork. Mission accomplished.

A quick shower was followed by breakfast with Santa (my two-year-old's first encounter with Santa--EVER. She was always terrified before.). My eight-year-old isn't a believer anymore and my six-year-old isn't sure. They point blank asked my husband if the Tooth Fairy was real a few months ago and he didn't want to lie. He figured, how important is the Tooth Fairy anyway? Well, my son is pretty sharp and he figured out if the Tooth Fairy isn't real.... I wish he could have stayed a believer a little longer.

So, all-in-all a good holiday has been had by all (and it's only Saturday at 4:30 as I write this). I'm so glad I got to get a few miles in. It really makes such a difference

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get three kids to cooperate for one half-way decent picture???