Post-Christmas Round Up

Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope you all had a great holiday with your families.  I did.  Christmas for me means lots of time with my parents, my siblings and my adorable nieces and nephews.

It was also my first white Christmas that I recall. It started snowing hard mid-morning on Christmas Day and pretty much snowed all day here in Alabama.  It didn't accumulate much, not like it did in Charlotte, but it was beautiful to watch falling softly out the windows.

I know I write a lot about running. I hope it doesn't bore you, but I guess it's such a favored topic because it continues to challenge me, and is easier to be honest about than food.  Anyway, I took two much needed days of rest from exercise on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Before that, I had exercised for 14 straight days, and had doubled up several of those days.  I needed to fit in a long run of 3.5 miles over the weekend, and fully expected to do it, until it started snowing on Christmas.  Somehow, I just wasn't interested in running with snow or ice on the ground.  So, I guess I kind of wrote it off then, but then my sister reminded me today.

So I headed to a park just off of downtown Leeds, because circling my parents' neighborhood could be maddening on a longer run. Although when I got to the park, half of the trails were closed due to construction, which made the available paths even less than what I would've had in the neighborhood.  So I took off running towards downtown and then ran back to the park and circled a few more times.  It was amazing. I don't know if it was the days of rest, the extra fuel I've had lately (delicious Christmas goodies), or the new scenery, but it was a great run.  It was 3.5 miles, and it flew by (even though it was 30 degrees, and with wind chill it felt like 20).  So I think my new thing will be whenever I'm out of town somewhere, I will take my running shoes and get to know the place on my two feet with a run.  There's so much more to see that way.

I'm still continuing not to weigh or count calories.  I will get back to this when life gets back to normal, but for now it has been nice to have a mental vacation from it all. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself there before Christmas, and I don't like it when I'm like that.

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas!  Care to share what your favorite memory of Christmas 2010?  Mine was probably my niece telling us over and over again "Nice to meet you, I'm Caitkin Rose Sookey" or singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."  My least favorite was definitely the lack of sleep I got from having a baby in the house...I don't know how parents do it. I require too much sleep.