Joy to the Run week 1

 Ah, my favorite time of year!  The end of my birthday month and the beginning of the Christmas holiday season.  I can officially start listening to Christmas music without getting dirty looks and most of my holiday shopping is already done (whew), so I can just enjoy the season.  I started early with Andrew this year because they had such great deals on several of the Lego sets he wanted, and I decided to get Tony and Andrew Chief's jerseys and they had a great deal on those on cyber Monday.  Mom wanted a Keurig like ours so again Cyber Monday got that taken care of, and got my step dad's annual photo calendar done.  Now to figure out what to get a few close friends and will be done done!

Running wise, Monday was an off day and Tuesday had Girls on the Run and then PTO.  We did run down to the local grocery store to sing and collect donations for the Wamego Christmas Bureau as our service project, but Robin and I ended up not running back and hooked a ride.  PTO was next and post PTO, I was just tired and didn't feel like getting back out into the cold, so pushed my run till Wednesday.  Boom and I got a quick 3 in and called it good.

We started our second year of Joy to the Run and Rockin Robin signed up so we could have fun together again.  Our first run of the week was song intervals. You started with a 5 minute warm up and then as the songs changed, you changed your tempo and got faster.  We got lucky that the Christmas songs we had for easy and medium were longer and the one we got for hard was short.  We can't wait to do this one again as it's speedwork that's actually fun!  We had decided to get 3 no matter what, but thanks to our speedy run on the medium and hard (thanks to the dogs pulling like crazy and getting into the spirit), we only went slightly over the time frame.  Since we are officially training for our race at this point, we will probably modify all runs to fit what we need to be doing (or should be doing LOL).  

The second Joy to the Run session was on Friday and it was just a short have fun run.  When we started it was feels like 61.  When we ended 3 miles later it was feels like 47.  The wind was ferocious!  Our goal is to take a picture with each lit up object in the park for posting to the AMR page to hopefully win a gift card.  I got home, put on my snuggie, and fixed a cocoa bomb to warm up.  

Since we had our girls on the run 5K on Saturday, we moved our rest day over to Saturday and moved our long run (Fancy Pants run) to Sunday.  We thought we had every girl covered with either a running buddy or a community member, so neither of us would need to run, but we were both ready just in case.  It was SUPER cold at the start which meant lots and lots of layers for our runner girls and coveralls and lots of layers for us to hand out medals.  We had a few girls out sick (major bummer), but most came with smiles on their faces and families excited and nervous.  Since our girls had been consistently running over 2 miles for multiple practices, I knew no one would have issues and was super excited to see what they could do if they chose to push themselves.  This truly has been one of our best seasons in all of our years of coaching.  With a big group (2 teams of 15), there has been relatively little to no drama and this season has just been a delight to coach.  

I also got my annual jump for joy picture with one of my most favorite girls.  Her family and my family have spent many a winter sitting in gyms full of wrestling mats.  Her mother was the one we lost unexpectedly this fall and my heart is still very broken for her.  She is now in middle school and on a different team and I have missed her dearly this year.   When her and her dad came over to ask to take our annual picture, I shed a few tears and said YES, let's do this!   She truly is one of my most favorite kids and I just lover her so much.  Mark my words, this kid is going to do something very awesome some day, just watch!

The rest of the day looked like this.  A quick cup of coffee at the Brew in our fancy pants.

Watched the Wildcats beat TCU and become big 12 champions and get a bid to go to the Sugar Bowl.

Went to the local sip and shop and had a few glasses of wine and bought some amazing products from local creators including our favorite cookie vendor.  

Sunday was long run day.  Since I was slowly going back up to 10 miles before I signed up for my spring race, I had 9 miles on the docket. I think I am going to just follow a very conservative 50K training program, one that I have done several times now and has worked well for us and then whatever I get post the 50k is just bonus in the race.  It's a 12 week program so technically I don't have to officially train for another 2 weeks.  We caught glimpses of eagles, we had lots of discussions, and we got it done in some nice cold but non windy weather.  I wish winter could be like this all winter, NO WIND!   

We also tried a pop up Christmas bar down in the bar district in Manhattan.  I had heard it was pretty magical and they were right.  Lots of lights and decorations, Christmas music on the speakers, and fun mixed drinks.  We tried several drinks, ate some pizza, and tried some very yummy dessert.  

You could even buy the cute little mugs and I had to have the T Rex Santa.   SO much fun and wishing we could have something like this in Wamego.  

Have a great week y'all!  With the Joy to the Run program in full force, we will be running Monday, Tuesday, Yoga on Wednesday, and running Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with Sunday being a rest day. I am sure we will shift things around as needed and there are options for cross training instead on a few running days. We will see how it shakes out for sure.