Thankful for Running

Thanksgiving was wonderful.  I ended up getting to spend 3 full days with my family since the traffic didn't look so intimidating Wednesday evening after all.  I had planned on leaving for home on Thanksgiving morning and taking time to clean and relax Wednesday night, but when I got home from work in record time I threw clothes in a bag, grabbed Maddux and hit the road.  Dad and I ran our own version of a Turkey Trot Thursday morning on the trail and it was so nice having my running buddy back!  My dad has always been my favorite running buddy and is a big reason why I run today.  I guess a part of me still wants to make my daddy proud.

Thanksgiving dinner consisted of tons of delicious food, many carbs, cheese, wine, and BACON.  Apparently my stomach did not feel that this was proper running fuel because what was supposed to be an easy run Friday turned out to be a sluggish 2 mile run (WITH WALK BREAKS.  ON TWO MILES.)  Not good.  I even had my ipod.  I blame the hills.  It had to be the hills, not the bacon, right?

The past two weekends I have skipped out on my long run.  Oops.  Oh, hello Hot Chocolate 15k, you came up very quickly.  In 4 days I will be running your 9.3 mile torture course.  My goal is 1hr 35 minutes.  I feel that this is going to be reaaaaallllly good considering my last "long run" was 3 weeks ago and only 6.5 miles.  Oops again.  Hopefully it will go ok.  Hopefully I will realize that I really need to do better if I want to PR on the half marathon in March.  We shall see.

Tomorrow I will head out to the race expo and I hope I will get more excited rather than sick to my stomach about my lack of training I've put in!  I love being around other runners and talking about running.  I hope to see people who like me do not appear to be serious runners.  It always makes me feel better, even though those people also will end up kicking my butt.

It's ok though, at least I get to come home to this sweet boy when they scrape me off the course: