Weekly Rundown- Plates on the Bar
Whew, what a week. I’m sure it was an unusual week for most people. Thanks as always to Kim and Deborah for hosting the weekly rundown. And thanks to San for organizing NaBloPoMo– we’re in the home stretch! Here’s how the week of workouts went down… Sunday Ugh. My son got home late, late on Saturday night and I didn’t get to bed until after 1 am. I woke up to a rainy Sunday with a headache. I wanted to stay home and make a big breakfast…. but I HAD TO get out and do some sort of longer run. I did 7 miles, and never felt good for the whole run. Of course I was thinking, “How am I going to run a 50K in April if I can’t even run 7 miles now?” Oh well- I got it done, and returned home to find both kids still asleep. Monday Day off! I got eight hours of sleep and it felt amazing. Tuesday I did a 4 mile run, which felt great except that my stomach hurt. I can tell every run from now on will be accompanied by thoughts like this: “How am I going to run a 50K if my stomach hurts?” Ha ha… this is going to be a long four months. Wednesday It was the day of the BIG TRIP TO THE GYM! Remember how my son and I were going to go together? Here’s the timeline: 9:00- wake up son. Remind him that we’re going to the gym at 10:00. 9:20- check on son. Son mumbles sleepily. 10:00- enter son’s room wearing gym clothes. Threaten to leave without him. Son mumbles incoherently again. 10:20- leave for the gym alone. YES. I went to the gym all by myself! Not only did I work out, but it turns out I haven’t been there in so long, I get a free complimentary training session, which is scheduled for next Wednesday. Ironically, the trainer’s name is Paul, the same as my son. Noon: return home to find Paul (my son) JUST GETTING OUT OF BED. When I told him I have a session with my new trainer, Paul, next Wednesday, he said “Oh, I see I’ve been replaced!” Well, yes- if you’re not going to come to the gym with me, I’ll find a new Paul! Thursday Turkey Trot! It was a 5K and I also ran a mile to warm up. It was possibly the slowest 5K I’ve ever “raced,” but that’s okay- I just tried to enjoy it. It was also possibly the hottest Thanksgiving ever- I think the heat index was in the upper 80s by the afternoon. Sigh. Friday Woke up with sore legs- not sure if it was from the race, or the squats I did at the gym on Wednesday. I didn’t want to run, and I didn’t want to do any strength work because the plan once again was to go to the gym on Saturday. I ended up walking for two miles, and then doing a Caroline Girvan 15 minute abs workout. And, we decorated the tree and are in the process of Christmas-ing up the house! Saturday Okay, who are we kidding. We’re not going to the gym. I worked in the morning and then neither of us felt like it. But we have big plans for Christmas break! My son will be home for a whole month, and we’ll be going to the gym together then. I hope. Instead I did Day #24 in the Caroline Girvan Iron Series- it was a full body workout. I actually- temporarily- skipped over Day #23 because it was glutes and hamstrings, which seemed a little too intense for the day before a long run. There were legs in this one, but at least it wasn’t ALL legs. Sunday Boy, we really nailed the worst travel schedule ever this time. My son arrived home late at night last weekend, and this morning his flight leaves at 6 am. My husband will take him to the airport, but I’ll still be up at 4 am to make his breakfast and see them off. But a long run must occur! I have to make it happen, especially since I didn’t do it last week. This week was both festive and a little frantic- I’m torn between feeling sad that it’s over, and relieved to get back to a normal schedule. I only went to the gym once, but I did go- and I’ll be back next week for my training session. It’s a start! How was your week? Did you keep to a workout schedule, or have to modify because of the holiday? Are you happy or sad that Thanksgiving is over?
Thanksgiving Recap!
I hope everyone had a great holiday (for those who celebrated.) Ours was really nice- a couple glitches as always, but overall a success. Let’s start with… Thanksgiving Eve This was a day of pie making and Christmas tree getting! We like to get our tree the day before Thanksgiving, but we wait till Black Friday to decorate it. Our cat was very interested in these developments… We had a Thanksgiving Eve charcuterie board! SriMu is a fancy-schmancy vegan cheese that we order for special occasions. Then the pie making commenced. After all my ranting and raving about pie, I felt like they came out EVEN WORSE THAN USUAL. Seriously. I know I said I’m not that great at it, but I’m not usually THIS bad. The crusts looked great before they went in the oven, so I’m not sure what happened. The fillings were all good though… so we still got to eat pie, and that’s the important thing. Thanksgiving Day Everything went great! Nothing burned, the house didn’t fill with smoke, and we didn’t forget anything… EXCEPT THE CRANBERRIES. It was around noon that my son asked about the cranberry sauce, which is when I realized I somehow forgot to put it on the shopping list the day before. My husband was elected to run out to the store- always fun on Thanksgiving Day- and returned home with a can of Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce. Mmmm! High fructose corn syrup! That’s okay… I wasn’t eating it anyway, and the family thought it was just fine. The biggest triumph of the day was this… We always say we want to eat Thanksgiving dinner at 4:00, but never manage to have it ready in time. It’s usually around 6:00, but as you can see, this year we ate at 4:07! My son and husband made this salad, which deserves its own picture: After we ate we went for a walk, then watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Then we had pie! And it was still early enough for the food to digest before bed- yay. Black Friday Groan. I always work on Black Friday, while the rest of the family lounges at home. To cheer myself up a little, I stopped at Starbucks on the way to work, and when I got home, the first thing I did was eat a piece of pie. Then we decorated the tree! We made the controversial decision to move the tree away from the window this year (I think it fits in the living room better this way.) Also controversial is the star. Our old one stopped lighting up, so my son and husband ran out to get this one while I was at work. I think it’s a little small- what do you think? The rest of the house is about halfway decorated. It’s a big job, because first it had to be de-pumpkined. I’m a little sad that pumpkin season is over, and sad that my son goes back to school tomorrow. This was such a fun week. But, onward! It’s time for gingerbread and Christmas music! I can’t be sad for long. How was your Thanksgiving? Did you forget anything? Any emergency trips to the store?
Turkey Trot Runfessions
I’ll be back tomorrow with an exciting (?) Thanksgiving recap (hint- there was an emergency trip to the store!) but since it’s the last Friday of the month, I’m joining Marcia as she opens her runfessional. On this Black Friday, I have to “runfess” that I almost didn’t run my Turkey Trot yesterday. The last few days have been crazy, and by Wednesday I was exhausted. As we crawled into bed on Wednesday night, my husband said “Couldn’t we just sleep in tomorrow?” It was tempting. I haven’t been doing any speedwork, so it’s not like I was going to crush this race. Why would I voluntarily get up at 5:30 am on a holiday, instead of getting a good night’s sleep? Then I thought about how I would feel if I didn’t run it. I could roll out of bed mid-morning feeling… groggy and awful. I told my husband we should run, but after the race we would re-evaluate the situation and decide if we want to do it next year. Thanksgiving morning dawned, hot and muggy! Will it EVER COOL DOWN HERE??? The race started at 7:30, and it was 75 degrees at that time. Ugh! Well, good thing I wasn’t shooting for a PR. I decided to just run and not stress about the heat, or my time, and simply have fun. Of course there was the obligatory young child dashing past me at the finish, but my favorite was this: Yes, a guy dressed in a full-body turkey costume beat me. By a lot. I asked him afterwards what his time was- 21 minutes. I give up! I heard someone say there were 1.700 runners at this race. There’s something touching about the fact that all these people- most of whom probably aren’t serious runners- got up early on Thanksgiving to be there. As we were walking back to the car afterwards my husband said “Well? Are we running it next year?” Oh…. I guess so. Did you run a race yesterday? – I may not have had the fastest time, but I think we won for “hottest Thanksgiving ever.” #nablopomo2022
Time to Trot!
To everyone celebrating today- HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! I hope your day is filled with fun, family, and lots of delicious food. A giant thank you to everyone who reads this blog- I appreciate you guys so much. And now I’m off to run a race… Have a great day!