Group Effort

With a crazy week behind me of tough work hours (again) and our sick 1 year old (she threw up 5 times in three days), it goes without saying that I was looking forward to the weekend and really beginning to think about Christmas. As I write this, John is watching "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" (again) and Audrey is feeling much, much better. Shopping is almost done (courtesy of Katie....thank you, dear) and ginger bread cookies are in the process of being made. Tonight will bring around a foot of snow, and we'll spend some time tomorrow sledding in the yard. This really is the funnest time of year.

I was able to make the first group run of the year this morning. I missed the chance to be at the last team meeting, so it was nice to be able to make it today. As I left the house this morning, it was still pretty cold (high teens), but a little warmer than yesterday morning went I went for a run (5). I picked up the remnance of "Frosty" in the yard before tonight's snow, and I drove up to today's location in Lexington at The Greater Boston Running Company. We all worked out way inside for a quick update on DFMC members, team news related to fundraising efforts and instruction on the route we'd be running from Jack. Not being able to make to Crossroads on Thursday nights, I found myself looking around and trying to match faces with the various blogs we're all linked to, and I was able to pick out at least a few familiar faces.

We crossed the street as a group and started out along the Minuteman Bikeway for our out and back run. I paired up with the other Mike M. on the team and we started out down the bike path. Having not run as much as I would have liked recently, I had planned to go 7-8 miles today. We started off with a relatively slow pace for me, and a really slow pace for Mike. After about 2 miles, we picked it up a little bit to around 8:30 a mile, which is my usual pace but still slow for Mike. The first half of the run proved to be slightly down hill and the wind was at our backs, so it didn't feel terribly cold. We were able to keep up this pace and have a good conversation pretty much the whole time.

As we hit the 4 mile mark, my plan was to turn around and head back and let Mike keep going. But after about 10 seconds of convincing by Mike, I decided to keep going with him to the end of the trail about a 1/2 mile away. As we turned around to come back, the little bit of wind that was there hit us in the face and it quickly got a lot colder. Even with the slight but steady uphill climb, I felt decent until we hit the 7 mile mark. At that point, I started to get a little tired. It hit me that I hadn't run this far since the half marathon in October and that I needed to be careful not to push too much. There was no need to get hurt on the first long run of the season. I ended up walking for a stretch while Mike stopped for water and then caught up to me. I had one more short walking stint toward the end and completed the run in roughly 1:20. I say roughly because it was so cold, my IPhone froze up and, in the process, my GPS tracker went haywire around mile 7.6 (my IPod froze around that time as well).

http://bit.ly/79WewI

All in all, it was a great 9 mile run. Thanks to Mike for hanging back with me (I promise I won't make you do that all year once I get back in shape), and I felt better than I expected during, and after the run. I'll plan on taking tomorrow off and get back into a better routine over the next two weeks. I still need to get that treadmill.....

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!!