Tuesday, December 01, 2009

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

It's Christmas season, in case you didn't get that. I'm one of those people who refuses to give in to the day-after-Halloween-let's bust out the carols business, but when the day after Thanksgiving does arrive...I am FESTIVE...and my festivity is doubled this year because I don't have winter finals hanging over my head before the holidays...glorious! Yesterday I went to Yankee Candle and bought my 2 faaaavorite Xmas scents...balsam/cedar and cinnamon...so now the apartment smells amazing, and today I had to hold myself back from buying out the entire holiday decoration section at Marshalls...I mean...who DOESN'T want dishtowels with reindeer on them or santa wine glasses or glittery Christmas trees? I'm such a nerd haha. I did pick up a couple of things for the Toys for Tots drive that the alumni association is doing, so that made me happy...I love doing that sort of thing around the holidays, and it kind of makes me laugh that I spend way too much money at Christmas because I absolutely LOVE buying stuff for other people!

So, I admit I've been neglecting this blog a little bit this past week...I have just been BUSY [lol, I just accidentally wrote "busty" for that...which I most definitely am not haha]...and when I'm not busy, I'm sleepy. I've been training at my job which has been a lot of work and time, but I'm playing with puppies and making money, so I'm pretty happy. Running wise, I finally managed to get in a decent week last week - 37.7 miles. After the sad 20-25 mile weeks I've been putting in since the marathon, I was really happy to actually put some semi-respectable mileage on the board. I actually did 2 "long" runs this week - 9.25 miles on Thanksgiving, and 10.1 on Sunday. The Thanksgiving run was crazy. First of all, I was running really fast for most of it - there's another reservoir near me that is almost exactly 1 mile around, and I clocked one of my laps there at 6:54...tempo run what what! I had planned on doing 6 or 7 miles, then stopping at the grocery store to pick up a bottle of wine [which the BF and I had forgotten for our stuffing recipe] and taking the train home...buuut then Trader Joe's was closed, so I ran around to all the nearby grocery/liquor stores [there are a LOT within a ~1 mile radius!]...unfortunatly none were open. Duh Audrey, why would a liquor store be open on Thanksgiving? I wasn't THAT sad about it because I was happy to get in a longer run. :) And no worries, the wine turned out to be a pretty minor ingredient and the stuffing was perfectly amazing without it!

My knee started bugging me about halfway through my 10 miler on Sunday, which was too bad. The weather was GORGEOUS...it was like 55 and I actually ran about half of the time in just a t-shirt and shorts, then threw on my arm warmers when it started to get darker/colder. That's pretty much unheard of for me at that time of the year! I had to keep stopping every few minutes after about 7 miles to stretch out my leg, which was pretty frustrating...this damn knee keeps faking me out, making me think it's all better! Boo. But I was happy to get through it and realize that I do still have the fitness to do some longer runs.

Hmm...well I ended up with 112.6 miles in November, which is honestly more than I would have expected considering I've been semi-injured the whole month. It's kind of hard to believe that the marathon was a month and a half ago! I started off December with a very nice 5.5 mile run on my one and only spectacular "night run route" [well lit, busy streets, tons of runners, & Boston College!] and as a fitting beginning to December, I actually had to bust out my running tights! Sad? Kinda, but in my mind winter doesn't start until December, so I can tolerate it I guess haha. The thing I hate about winter is how early it gets dark...seriously...completely dark at 5 pm?? That's practically still afternoon! The only positive is that there are plenty of people finishing up work at that time, and so plenty of runners out and about which always makes me feel better. Another thing I don't mind about winter running? I have a full Christmas playlist on my iPod, and I don't feel bad about listening to it. Don't even worry about it. Manheim Steamroller = AMAZING!

And finally, to start off December right, I give you a holiday "classic"...always makes me laugh :)

1 comment:

Lindsay said...

thank you for waiting until after thanksgiving to begin celebrating christmas! i like listening to christmas music and all the fun (sorta-dorky) decor, but def not until post-thanksgiving.

hope that knee makes up its mind soon (and obviously makes the right decision!)