Giving thanks for a great 2009 Thanksgiving!

HAPPY Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful day! This year was probably the first year that I can honestly say that although my meal was great…this day was NOT about the food! I woke up this morning and began my day running a 4.75 mile road race with my co-worker/boss (a race which surprisingly enough is considered a world-class eve t considering it draws people from all over the world to our state…). Now time wise this year it took me about 10 minutes longer to run it than last year…but overall this year the race was so much more fun and when I cmpleted it I found myself more proud of my accomplishement than I ever was last year! This was the first time in months that I have run that long of a distance and at the end felt like I could keep going (granted it helped to run at my co-workers pace and not my own since that meant I was conserving energy)! Plus to be in a position where you can encourage someone else and push them along to help them prove to themselves that they can do something that just 6 weeks ago they didn’t think they could do is an AWESOME feeling! Top that off with the fact that we ended up running into another co-worker at about the 4 mile mark and stayed pretty close to her throughout the rest of the race…which meant after booking it to the finish line the last 20 yards (the only time I separated myself from my co-worker) I could turn around and cheer in TWO friends of mine as they finished!!!   All in all I feel amazing and like I proved to myself all over again that I can do whatever I put my mind too!

Then after the race (and a few extra miles of walking because for some reason I missed where the shuttle pick up was and we NEVER saw one…luckily we ended up running into our other co-worker again who gave us a ride back the rest of our way to the car) I went to my parents house for my main meal (And I was so proud of myself cause I only had one plate and that plate consisted of just a little (almost like 2 tbsp) of each thing we had offered us (which was more than I could expect). Then after dinner I took my sister (who is slowly getting back into the “I want to be healthy and lose weight” mindset) and went for an hour walk (just to burn a few more extra calories ..plus it beat having to listen to another hour of non-sense blabber coming out of my other sister’s husbands mouth)! After that it was one plate of dessert, along with some coffee, and two hours of playing apples to apples (the greatest family game ever)! Then to top it all off I came home and cleaned two bathrooms. So I’m thinking this turned out to be a pretty awesome day for me.

Tomorrow it’s back to the grind off work…and working out, but the good thing is I now have about six weeks to focus on weight training and strengthen my core before I hop back into another 20 week training program for my third half marathon (yep no matter how often I find myself in the middle of a race thinking “What the hell was I thinking when I signed up to run a half marathon”, I always find myself wanting to do it again when it's done…and this time I’ve convinced my co-worker to come along).

So for now I relish in my awesome day and look ahead to the next journey that awaits me!

Jess