018. Happy Thanksgiving

This year I went with Chris to Thanksgiving with his dad's side of the family. It's always interesting to experience the holiday traditions of other families, and sometimes it's a little frustrating too! My family is small, and Chris' family is, well, not small. I think it takes a lot more work to orchestrate a meal with that many people.

My camera battery was dead and then I forgot to take it with me so I didn't get any pictures from turkey day, but c'est la vie.

Chris and I started Thursday morning with omelets and hash browns. I made hash browns from sliced baby red potatoes with onions and chopped garlic, and we at them with our Canadian bacon, onion and cheese (and broccoli for me!) omelets. We ate breakfast around 10:30 or 11:00 am (we slept in and it was glorious!) and dinner was planned for 6:30. Since breakfast was incredibly filling, I had a snack of an apple and almond butter around 4:00. I figured I would be fine, and I would have been...except dinner didn't hit the table until almost 8pm! I snacked on some cheese when we got to Chris' cousin Annie's house. I had maybe an ounce or two, but I was totally famished by the time we actually sat down to eat! We had the usual Thanksgiving fare - turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberries - as well as some traditional Korean dishes since Annie's fiance is Korean and his family came to dinner as well. Overall it was pretty phenomenal.

I've had some really good runs lately. Thanksgiving morning I went out and ran just shy of 4 miles around the neighborhood. Yesterday and today I knocked out about 3 miles each running through the St. Xavier University campus. For having lived so close my entire life, yesterday was actually the first time I'd set foot on the University campus. It really is a gorgeous campus. There's a small lake, Lake Marion, on campus with a trail around it. It really is gorgeous.

Yesterday I ran all over campus and down around the Br. Rice and Mother McAuley high school campuses which share the same area with the University. Today I stuck to running the trail around Lake Marion. I also integrated some strength training intervals on one of the benches along the lake.

It's about 1/3 of a mile around the lake, and it's about 2/3 of a mile from my house to the lake path. I ran there, did 5 laps, and ran home for an even 3 miles.

First lap around I did some incline push-ups. Second lap I did calf raises. Third lap was seated knee lifts, and the fourth lap was tricep dips (which are incredibly hard!)

I'm going to take tomorrow off I think, but my next run, I'm going to do a strength interval at each of the 6 benches around the lake.

I think I've finally figured out the key to getting myself to do strength training. It needs to be in short intervals. I hate the idea of going to the gym and moving from machine to machine. I also don't like the concept of having a 30 minute strength work-out. If I can do strength exercises here and there - like the 30 Day Shred video a couple days a week, 5 - 10 minutes of ab work in the evening, strength intervals in my runs - I do them. If I set out to "do strength training" I totally blow it off.

Today I'm heading to my parent's house to put Christmas lights up on their roof. My dad and Nick (the older of my two brothers) are afraid of heights so they won't get up there. Alex will go up there, but he won't go alone. I've also got to go steal some Christmas decorations for my place. It's Nick's (22nd) birthday, and as his gift, I'm his designated driver for the evening. My camera battery is in the charger so there will be plenty of pics tomorrow!

I should make myself some lunch and get on with my day.