Happy Humpday! I cannot believe we’re less than a week away from Christmas?!? I really love the Holidays, but they can also be difficult being so far away from family. It’s funny how ‘Christmas Day’ doesn’t exactly feel like ‘Christmas Day’ when it’s just Alex and I to celebrate. It kinda just feels like a weekend with a few presents in there. I’m all about creating traditions, so we’ll be doing Chinese for Christmas Eve (it’s been our tradition for the past few years) and hopefully we can create some sort of tradition for Christmas Day. It’s always way too busy to ski at our mountain normally, but a nice little cross country ski or snowshoe will be nice.

Got in my strength yesterday morning after an easy 6 mile run (done by 6:30am?!?). Tuesday & Thursdays are two of my harder workout days for Eugene training cycle, so I’m trying to get in a schedule now. They’ll be harder in the sense that I’ll have some sort of speed or tempo work in my run and then will also be doing strength so I can take my easy run days really easy and recover well. I normally have just fit in strength whenever I can, so I’m excited to create this habit and see if/how it helps me for Eugene!

Monday, 12/10: 5.25 miles easy 9:44 127’ up. Literally “ran” some errands during my lunch break, since it was much too cold to run in the early morning (unless I wanted to freeze).

Tuesday, 12/11: 20 minutes of strength & 7 miles easy 11:05 1, 013’ up. SO cold on this run (single digits?!?). I made it out alive though, so there’s that.

Wednesday, 12/12: Rest Day

Thursday, 12/13: 7 miles (25 min EZ/ 10 x 1 min surges (7:13-6:48 pace) with 1 min recovery between sets / 20 min EZ). 30 minutes strength. First bit of speed since Vegas last month and it felt hard, but a good kinda hard!

Friday, 12/14: 30 min hike on the treadmill @ 3.5mph 10% incline. Originally was all ready to hike up the ski mountain (and then ski down), but when I got to the base it was -10* out and honestly, I draw the line when it’s below freezing (ESPECIALLY double digits below 0!)

Saturday, 12/15: 5.25 miles easy 9:56 316’ up/ 20 min recovery yoga

Sunday, 12/16: 6.19 miles easy 9:30 356’ up/ 30 minutes strength/ 10 minutes on the spin bike

Total Mileage: 30.69 miles

Total Elevation Gain: 1, 821’ up

————————————————————————

Also I’m totally that person. You know, the very messy one at the gym that just leaves their stuff everywhere. I’m completely a neat-freak at home, but get me to the gym and I will sprawl out all over the place. I blame growing up at the ice rink and carrying twenty million things with me (and then proceeding to sprawl out with all my things in between skating sessions). I’m super annoying that was at the gym and maybe this should be resolved in 2019? I’m not optimistic about that.

—————————————————————————————-

When do you like to get your strength work in?

How will you celebrate the Holiday?

Any fun Christmas traditions?!? —> I also heard someone say that they do a scavenger hunt on Christmas day, which sounds like so much fun so I think I may need to do this for Alex. How does one even go about putting together a scavenger hunt?!? Stay tuned..