I hope everyone had a wonderful and
relaxing Thanksgiving. I was blessed to
sit around, catch up on homework, play board games, visit with friends, and run
for about five straight days over the holiday and weekend. My grandma came from Phoenix and my aunt
Tonya came from Rochester for the weekend.
My brother Dylan graduated from Carleton a few days before Thanksgiving,
so he was home and stress free. A couple
of his teammates biked fifty miles from Northfield to join us for Thanksgiving
dinner. They got lost a few times, so we
ended up eating without them, but they made it before the snow got too heavy.
I ran my first ‘hard effort’ of the
season at the Lifetime Fitness Turkey Day 5k on Thanksgiving Day morning. My teammates who are running Club Cross
Country Nationals on December 8th (Meghan Peyton, Heather Kampf,
Ladia Albertson-Junkas, and McKenzie Melander) all ran the race, except for
Meghan who got to go do a 5k in San Jose, CA.
Although the race is not the best place to put in a serious racing
effort, it is lots of fun, and I will not give up the tradition of running the
race every year. I started participating
in the race as a fun post-cross country activity in high school, followed by a
great way to catch up with high school friends while I was in college. Now the race serves as a rust-buster in the
fall before the Team USA Minnesota team starts our serious racing. Thankfully, this year I was not harassed by
older women who I got in front of at the starting line. However, I did have to dodge some young
children, old dudes with headphones, and a guy in a giant turkey hat who had
not quite figured out start line etiquette of road races. Which is: if you aren’t one of the top men or
women, start behind them. I took 3rd
in the race behind McKenzie and Heather and ran around 16:50. Not bad for a hard effort without crossing
the line into racing.
My favorite part of the weekend was
my double-run on Friday morning. I ran
twelve miles with a couple Run n Fun friends, Joe Sepe and Frances Eanes, as
well as my roommate Elizabeth. My mom,
aunt, and grandma made eggs, bacon, fruit salad, and pancakes from scratch for
us to munch on after the run. No sooner
had we finished eating then eight of my Southwest High School teammates came
for a short run around Lake Harriet, followed by another brunch prepared by the
wonderful women in my family. I was so
lucky to get to hang around my friends without worrying about cooking or
cleaning up. I don’t know a better
combination than eating, running, friends, and family.
You are so sweet. We had fun doing it. Love you.
ReplyDelete