Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Week 6 in Training and a Christmas Eve run with the guy who started it all!

 Week 6 was a lot of fun because my sister and her husband Kevin were in town and they are the people who got me into running. Kevin is a big time runner and him and Naomi encouraged me to sign up for my first race ever, a 2 mile turkey trot.  


That turkey trot made me catch the running bug and 7 months later Kevin ran by my side to help me finish my first marathon. He normally runs marathons about an hour and a half faster than I finished mine so he really took one for the team to stay with me. 
Yeah, my brother in law rules. 

On the 2nd day they were here, Kevin, Taber and I went out for a nice 6 miler. It was so fun running together and we were cruising along at a nice 8:30 pace even with some solid hills.

Then on Saturday (Christmas Eve morning) we put on some Santa hats and drove over to the Applefest course to show Kevin (who lives in flat Chicago) some real hills.



 It was FREEZING that morning. Had to do some jump shots to stay warm : )

Me and Santa Taber with the sun rising behind us

and Kevin taking one of his famous self portraits. He always makes the most flattering faces. ; )

I was only planning to do 12 miles and I was kind of dreading the applefest hills, but once we got going I felt awesome and I just powered along. I ended up doing the whole half marathon course with them and we finished in 1:58:06.

Here's what our splits looked like:

We took the first mile easy to warm up but by mile 3 we were moving along.  We ran slower through the hills but we picked it up again at the end and finished strong. (Taber went on to do an even 14  miles and Kevin tagged on 2 extra miles for 15 just because they're cool like that.)

It was an awesome way to start off the morning and we got lots of friendly honks and waves in our Santa hats!


 Also major props to my sister Naomi who watched all the kiddos while we ran. She is the stud of the universe!

Here's the full summary of what week 6 looked like:

Monday: 3 mile tempo run on treadmill: avg pace 7:53 ( Felt like pushing it that day)
Tuesday: 3 miles interval sprints on treadmill: avg. pace 8:01
Thursday: 6 miles outside with Kevin and Taber: avg pace 8:33
Saturday: 13.1 miles outside with Kevin and Taber: avg pace 9:01

And I'm throwing in a picture of the kids with Santa because cuteness like this must be shared : )


Hope Everyone had a Merry Christmas!

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like an amazing holiday. Your run pace was great and your kids get more adorable each post, I swear.

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  2. You're getting SUPER SPEEDY!!! And also, that Santa photo is the only one I've seen in which one of the kids isn't crying. :-)

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  3. Dang, when a 13 miler just isn't enough and you feel the need to keep running... those guys are crazy! Love the Santa hats, you guys are fun. :)
    Way cool of Naomi taking one for the team and staying home with the kids. Although waking up at the crack of dawn while you're on vacation to run in the freezing cold for 13 miles does sound kind of easy to turn down. :)
    Anyway, once again- way to go on all the awesome (FAST) runs lately, you are amazing as usual!

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