In our household, we have “The List”, and if you want to do anything it needs to get on “The List”, and especially with 2 kids, the “The List” is very important. Now toss in 4 more adults in your house and “The List” goes out the window, unless you are my wife. My lovely and talented wife was able to schedule the whole Christmas Eve and Christmas day including full meals and a church service both days. Now with Lolo and Lola (Grandpa and Grandma in Tagalog), you can't pass up the free in house babysitting. So we didn't! My brother Chris was out and about shopping. Jen and Melanie (her sis) were also out shopping. It was on the schedule for me to run from 2-4 and be back in time for Church at 5.
A few things were left off the list such as the neighborhood luminaries (I have pictures) that needed to be set up for the evening along with a few other minor things. It ended up being that I did not leave until 2:15 and I debated WHERE to run. There is Concord Park, which is very close to my house and is all single track trails. I didn't think that I wanted an arduous run on Christmas Eve and the other strike against it was that even though I have it mapped out for mileage, I wouldn't know until I got home and looked it up. There is Lakeshore, which I have talked about before. I can easily do 2.2 mile laps and they have a little bit of everything (hills and flat) but it's a 20+ minute drive. I could also choose Alcoa Greenway, but again, a long drive and not a loop, so I would have to really know what I am doing before I get out on the course. I need to learn to like the Campbell Station Greenway and the Turkey Creek Greenway (both of which would be congested).
I ended up doing Lakeshore and with the time constraint figured I could do 3 laps without going over in time. This would just mean that I would have to take a shorter shower when I got home. I loaded up my MP3 player with Phedippidations and took off for a nice 3 lap scamper. I know that my first lap was around 18 minutes and change, but my watch has lost the lap splits since I ran… oh well. I did 3 laps, each progressively slower than the previous, but that is okay because I was able to go the 6.6 miles and was not sore for the rest of the evening or on Christmas day. THAT is a good sign. I probably ran the 6.6 in about 58-59 minutes or so… whatever that works out to be pace wise.
I know that I won't be able to get the runs that I want to this week. Although Pete and Janet are coming to town and that might mean that I can get a “super duper” long run on Saturday. Perhaps even run the New Year's 5k and tack on another 8-10 miles. I think that would work out real well. Depends on Church related activities and all that good stuff. I'll blog on the rest of Christmas Eve over on the family site since it deals mostly with E the Elder. I'll need to put my Christmas Loot and stuff real soon. So we will see.
PLANET3RRY 