Thanksgiving and Beyond!

How was your Thanksgiving?

Mine was great!  The holiday started with the turkey trot.  I met up with some friends and earned myself some extra calories for the day.  It was great weather and an electric atmosphere.  A record turnout of over three thousand runners!  Pretty good for a small town race. 

The stats of my performance aren't necessarily worth mentioning.  A mile in I felt like I was running in place.  Had a good amount of tightness where my shins meet my feet and I couldn't shake it.  My running compatriot Bryce smashed his PR though.  Way to be!

I don't know what it is about running, but it just puts me in a good mood for the day.  Put that good feeling and Thanksgiving together and I was on cloud nine.  From the trot me and the fam fam (mom included) headed down to Columbus to spend the day with my sister and her lovely family.  Played some football with my nephews, joked around with my family, hid the remote so I could keep football on all day, and ate some AWESOME food.  One of the appetizers was a stuffed jalapeno pepper wrapped in bacon....

mmmmmmmmmm

Along with that was home made sweet potato casserole, my wife's amazing broccoli casserole, my mom's cheesy potato casserole, and all the usual suspects of a Thanksgiving meal.  For dessert there were four pies and a pumpkin roll.  FOUR PIES!  Now that I think about it there were 6.  SIX PIES!

I may have eaten more calories than I burned that day......

That's OK though!

The grossest/funniest story of the day goes to my soon-to-be 1 year old niece Kaylee (KK).  My brother in law brings her down from her nap and notices she's got one of those looks on her face.  My sister wants to see her baby girl so she grabs her and proceeds to open the fridge.  As soon as it's open KK vomits.  Projectile.  All over the floor and the bottom half of the fridge.  How a small child like that has enough fluids to cover a refrigerator and a couple feet in front of is beyond my comprehension.  I'm pretty darn impressed though...

ANYWAY!!

Since Thanksgiving I've been streaking.  Today is day 6 and it's still going strong.

Wait a second.  There's been a development in my shoe complaining that I mentioned in my previous post.  I got new shoes!

Sunday we celebrated both mine and my mother-in-law's birthday (She's the 22nd and I'm the 29th).  A few days before the party Aimee told me she spent $60 on my birthday gift.  Hearing this made any thought of running shoes fly out the window.  She even told me that she swears she only spent $60 and you know what?  The bugger wasn't lying to me.  She teamed up with her sister, parents, and my mom to buy me a nice new pair of Newtons:

Ooooooo... Ahhhhhhhh...

The excitement can't be described.  She knows me so well.  I'm a lucky man!

So yes, the streak.  6 days down.  About a month to go.  Oddly enough the pain I felt at the turkey trot hasn't persisted.  Hooray!  Chalk it up to improper stretching I guess.  There was one run where my ankle was on the brink of imploding but the pain was temporary.  Life goes on.

As far as the new shoes go they are a different breed of running shoe.  They require me to break them in slowly so I'm running in a couple different pairs.  Weird feeling between the two but the future is looking bright. 

This Saturday Bryce and I are running in the Jolly Jingle 5K supporting the Minerva Area Christian School.  The race director also organizes the Jolly Jaunt 5K supporting the MACS.  The jolliness of it all is borderline unbearable.

I look forward to filling you in on all the jolly details.

Have a great day everybody and thanks for reading!