Happy Trails to You

Ahhh, how nice it was to not be training for anything. It's amazing how in one week my mind went from "Hey, running is fun!" to "Git r done."

I hit the trail this morning, 6.5 miles. Trail running is always tougher than street running (unless you're running into a wind tunnel like the other day) so I wanted to make today a good run. It was: 10:09/mile average pace. That's pretty good when you take into account this monster:



Oh, that hill. That hill! I turned around at 3.25 miles and I couldn't for the life of me imagine charging up another 2.75 miles of uphill like I had over the summer. But if you don't use it, you lose it. I haven't done that kind of run in awhile. Isn't that sad though? That it takes so little time to lose stamina and strength? Maybe it's the mental edge, too. I knew I didn't *have* to keep going up the hill so I didn't. If I knew that's what I needed to do I guess I would have done it. That tricky brain, it's always coming up with ways to get out of doing stuff.

Anyway, good run. I'm very satisfied with my pace and strength. I loved being outside on a sunny, chilly day. It actually warmed up during my run, I took off my arm warmers and if I had gone any longer I would have taken off my earwarmer-headband-thing.

Now I have more Christmas crap to do. Baking, wrapping, and that. Christmas cards never got done this year and I'm fine with that. I have a pretty small quotient for festivity this time of year.