Thanksgiving, running, self-imposed injuries....and whatever else comes to mind......

Lots going on this past week. Thanksgiving, hockey tournaments, company, family, food, running!!! I'm not working today so a chance to get caught up on the holy tornado that went through my house this weekend. First on the to do list, restocking Max's underwear drawer with clean socks so he is not stuck wearing socks with butterflies on them to school again.....(they are not butterflies actually, they are FIERCE dragonflies...and very very small...and hardly noticeable....and I'm pretty certain he's wearing bare feet in his boots right now....)

Random week in review:

*Wrote out like 45 checks for never-ending hockey gate fees, raffle tickets, team warm-ups....I'm feeling better about this since Lindsay is going to buy a bunch of raffle tickets from me if I wear my total body zebra leotard in my next race. SO worth it!

*Headed to Grand Forks on Wednesday for a Thanksgiving meetup at my sisters and also a chance to run a mock HM with a super FAST friend. We chose the HM distance simply because I HATE it:) My HM PR is over 2 years old and I've only several since but only one real "race" attempt. Anyway, I had some idea of what I wanted to run and we decided on an attempt of 7:10-7:15 avg. I was not sure if I could run this in a RACE much less a training run at this point but this was a perfect opportunity for me to go for it.

Now, looking at these splits it's obvious that at about mile 10ish I was feeling fantastic but just decided to pull back because my training needed more 7:30ish miles.....Highly sarcastic-ha! Generally, I'm a much more progressive runner and I was NOT in shape to take off like this right now and I paid the price. To my credit, my Garmin was taped and I was just following the PACE CHALLENGED leader (I hope you read this:):) So, in a nutshell, I collapsed a bit physically and then mentally and had great difficulty with a race simulation in the last few miles. I almost "willed" my shoes untied in here. Seriously, I was staring at them cross eyed and then trying to step on my own feet so they would untie-ha ha! Very happy with this overall as my final time was the goal I was running for and I feel like I'm able to take a lot from this forward. I won't run a HM race until February but I'm quite confident I can improve on this!

*We spent Thanksgiving Day at home this year. We invited some neighbors from down the road over who are 90 and 91. They have no family here and really great to have them. They love my kids and so gracious and thankful to have been invited. I took an impromptu unscheduled day off from running when my husband put a wine glass in my hand at exactly noon after I did THIS to myself

I actually did this on purpose as to avoid having to do the dishes. It was really a small price to pay. There were A LOT of dishes-ha! We ended up spending the rest of the day playing Scrabble and Jenga and watching You Tube videos that almost made me throw up from laughing. I tell you, if you don't have a teenage daughter, go get yourself one. Crazy funny humor.

*The weekend was FILLED with hockey. Both Ryan and Reese sailed through the weekend STILL undefeated for the year. Reese's team won the championship on Sunday afternoon. She was SO excited. My whole family had come to watch this tournament and she put on a show!

*I officially started my unofficial training plan today:) This 4 weeks is pretty flexible as I'm still messing with a few things and maybe a couple of short races but the 20 week countdown has begun!!

I'm just getting a chance to catch up on blogs and all the races from last weekend but best of luck to all those racing this coming weekend at CIM, Baton Rouge, Vegas!!!! My sister is running in Vegas and I'm signed up for athlete tracking and SUPER pumped to stalk her!!!

And to close, a picture of my son eating his 4 food groups.