One to always plan ahead, I ran mid-day on Monday in anticipation of Thursday’s annual turkey trot which my entire family has been running for years. I headed out for an easy five-mile run on the cool, beautiful day after training my morning clients.

 

Once home, I showered, foam rolled, etc. and then did a few random chores until it was time to train my final client of the day. I had a workout planned that included both TRX and kettle bell exercises, and since she’s quite fit and strong, I planned some challenging moves into her workout.

I’m smart enough to know not to demonstrate difficult moves when I’m not warmed up (I learned that the hard way) so I put my feet into the TRX stirrups to carefully demo the mountain climber move without really doing the full on exercise. I would have her complete this core exercise for one minute as a cardio interval between super sets.

All went well until I felt a slight twinge in my extreme lower back on the right side. Once I stood up my right leg felt tingly and slightly numb, a common occurrence since my back injury several years ago. As the evening progressed, I could only walk bent over and with a limp, and had to lead with my left leg on each step when climbing stairs.

I felt no better on Tuesday morning, so I continued to take Advil, something I normally avoid if at all possible. At this point, I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn’t be able to run my race on Thanksgiving morning. 🙁 During my spare time, I researched SI joint exercises and stretches and did those every few hours throughout the day. After two days of the combination of the exercises, stretches, and the Advil, I woke up on Thursday morning feeling pretty good, but not a hundred percent.

I decided to run my race on feel and if I felt like pushing it I would. Once the race started, I pretty much forgot about my pain and ran strong. I finished about a minute slower than last year, but still snagged an age group win – gotta love moving up into a new AG; although, I would have won if I’d still been competing with the 55-59-year-old youngsters! I’m hoping to have the race recapped by later this week unless something unexpected comes up.

Photo credit: Bill

After the race, our Cruiser friends returned to our house for our seventh-annual post-race champagne brunch. We had a wonderful time catching up and I love that the race and brunch have become a big part of Thanksgiving for our family.

Photo credit: Bill

I had done almost all of the cooking and had even set the table the day before so my Thanksgiving Day was much more relaxing than usual. As soon as everyone left, I hit the shower so I could get the turkey into the oven for our 4 PM dinner. I use convection roast which cooks so much faster than regular roast. The bird was ready almost as soon as our guests arrived, but the problem was, I didn’t plan on serving dinner for another hour or more. One day my bird is going to come out of the oven at the right time!


Our guests brought the antipasto platter and pies, but I didn’t get a picture of them. Trust me, they were beautiful and delicious!

 

Bill and I got all the dishes washed, dried, platters put away, etc. before we headed to bed on Thursday night. Friday morning I was so grateful to wake up to a spotless kitchen.

I spent almost the entire day on Friday, putting away our Thanksgiving/fall decorations and putting up Christmas decorations. I took a mid-afternoon break to clean up and put away things on our deck as I’m a bit slow this year on winterizing out there.

By the time I went to bed I had almost everything done except for decorating our Christmas tree, something I always save for Saturday afternoon while watching college football’s rivalry weekend games.

Saturday morning I headed out for a solo run around 7:30 AM. It was a gorgeous morning and I was glad that I hadn’t slept in any later.

 

Just as I approached construction of a new overpass along the trail, my stomach started complaining bitterly about the Whole Foods chipotle dip and chips I’d devoured the night night before while nervously watching the VT/UVA Commonwealth Cup rivalry game. I started looking for a place to stop, and low and behold there was a porta potty complete with a hand washing station right before my very eyes!

I did my business and headed back onto the trail to continue on with my run, but not before returning to the porta potty two more times. Seriously! As Bart Yasso once famously said at a pre-race seminar I attended, “All those runners carbo-loading before the race are probably going to be uncarbo-loading behind bushes along the race course.”

 

Feeling much better and lighter 😉 , I paused to share my Glympse with Bill before continuing on to my turnaround point.

 

About two miles from home, I saw an MRTT friend and stopped to chat. While stopped for about five minutes, Bill happened to open up my Glympse to see where I was and saw the following. For some reason, it looked like I was running all over the place as if I was being attacked. Just as I said goodbye to my friend and continued on with my run, Bill called to check on me, and then took this screenshot so I could see it when I got home.

 

Back home and showered, I spent the rest of the morning washing sheets, towels, etc. and getting the bedrooms ready for Christmas visits from the kids, while also putting the finishing touches on the mantels and a few other things I hadn’t gotten to the day before. By early afternoon, I decided that I had procrastinated enough and started decorating the Christmas tree. There were several very exciting college football games being played so I was well entertained and the time flew by!

Later in the evening I made toasted almonds and relaxed with Bill as we admired our gorgeous Christmas tree…

 

In case you missed it on the blog, this past week I posted:

Looking ahead to this coming week, tomorrow I’ll post my November Race Linkup. Please feel free to join me and let your friends know which races they can find you running in December and into next year. I have also committed myself to finishing my OBX Half Marathon and my turkey trot recaps this week. I have races the next two weekends and if I don’t get on top of my recaps they’re going to snowball into next year and that will freak me out!

In addition to the turkey trot and other two runs, here’s a run-down of the other workouts I completed this past week…

 

Fitness tools beyond the equipment in my gym that I used during the week included:

Cameras used for blog photography include:

 

  • Questions:
  • How did you celebrate Thanksgiving?
  • Do you think you’ll join me tomorrow for Race Linkup? 
  • Did you race this weekend? 

 

Have a great week!

 

Disclaimer:  This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on the blue product link and then make a purchase, I will receive a commission for referring you. You will pay no more or less for the product; however, Amazon will show their gratitude for my referral by paying me.

 

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I’m linking up with Holly at HoHo Runs and Tricia from MissSippiPiddlin for their Weekly Wrap. Be sure to check out not only the hosts’ posts, but the other great bloggers joining in on the fun!

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