Lots of Running Lately :)

I've been loving my running just-for-fun lately and have been putting some serious (for me) miles in.  Saturday I got in 7.5 miles with my fav girls from our group.  I joined the group in June and still look forward to our Saturday long runs as time to catch up and have fun with friends!  Love it!

Sunday was the GOTR 5K with the girls from my school and then some more miles with my dogs.  It was great to run with my girls and their parents. 

Monday was my favorite running day so far.  Our school has been offering a Turkey Trot on the Monday before Thanksgiving for five years now and I never took part.  I had a bunch of reasons:

1) the first three years I wasn't a runner and didn't think I could make it around the property once (1 mile).  How sad is that?  First graders could do it, but I was too nervous...

2) Nov 09 I had just started running and should have done it then but was too embarrassed to "Run Out Loud" - what would the kids say, what would the parents think??

3) Nov 10 I should have ran with the kids - I had just finished my first half marathon - why wouldn't I run with the kids?  I was still afraid of what they would think/say and didn't want to be seen in my spandex pants!  Ha - I'm an adult afraid of what K-8th graders would say to me about my outfit and running skills - are you kidding me?  hello, self-esteem issues....

So FINALLY, Nov 2011 was my year to finally run the Turkey Trot at school with our kids.  I started with the mile fun run with a group of 2nd graders then made another loop with the 5K starters.  I ran out of time to finish the 5K (so yes, I only ran 2 miles), but I run the After School Program and had to go be ready for the kids to come to me once they finished the 5K (before me).  

In conclusion, it took me RUNNING A MARATHON to be confident enough to run 2 MILES at school with my kids.  Hmmmm, something sounds off here.

I will say that I had a blast and it opened up all sorts of FUN conversations with kids AND parents about my running!  Hooray, I'm finally out of the running closet at work :)

Tuesday night was a soggy, soggy run with 4 other friends from our group.  Typically we have about ~25 runners on Tuesday night and even though it had been raining hard all day, it really didn't cross my mind to skip the run.  Apparently, I was in the minority, since only 5 people showed up!  We rocked out an awesome 6.2 hilly miles in the POURING rain and cold weather.  After a certain point, it really didn't matter that it was raining anymore, we were beyond the point of saturation and our only goal was to avoid the big commuter busses splashing us on the sidewalk.  The 5 of us had a great run and it only took a long hot shower, bowl of soup, cup of hot chocolate and fleece pjs and blankets to warm me up afterward :)  

So, in 4 days, I've logged 21.7 miles :)  I know this isn't a lot to some people, but it is a lot for me.  I rarely run consecutively - in fact Sunday and Monday are my typical rest days.  It feels great though to run back-to-back-to-back days like this though, who knows, I'm shaping up to be a L.B. Jr :)  Go check him out, he's on 46 days of consecutive running!

I'll probably get in some miles today before we head out for shenanigans tonight and some more solo miles Turkey Day morning before going over to see our family... then with Fri-Sun off, this could be an awesome trend!

Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!!