Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving morning Sean and I woke up early to go for our Turkey Trot in Colonial Williamsburg, The Blue Talon Bistro Turkey Trot. Our friends Sonny, Suzy, Jami and Ryan were racing too. It was a perfect morning, 48 degrees and sunny.

As I wrote before in another post I wanted to break my PR from last year's Turkey Trot, 22:25.27, but since I haven't done much speed work this year I was hoping to just break 23 minutes. I ran the Governor's Land 5K on the 21st in 22:41, so I figured maybe I could run the same as that, or a little faster. Everyone tells me don't go out too fast, but that's the only way I can run, I HAVE to go out and run as fast as I can.

I felt good the morning of. YES I wanted to PR but I definitely didn't expect to. I started in the front of the pack, with almost 1,000 runners I didn't want to get stuck in the crowds.



I did my first mile in 6:43, usually I die after mile 1, and although my second mile was 7:18, that's a lot faster than my 2nd mile normally is.

I felt good until about 2.5 miles, but at this point I knew that if I kept a good pace I had a possibility of breaking my PR. I used some of the other runners to pace myself, and got to 3 miles in about 7:25. With only 100 meters to go I pushed it and kept a 6:00 minute pace pushing it to the finish.

I finished with an official chip time of 22:13.94, which was a 7:10 pace per mile. There were 76 finishers in the Female 25 to 29 age group and 909 finishers in the 5K Run division. My overall finish place was 95, my age group finish place was 2 and and my gender finish place was 16.

I was more than thrilled!

Sean had a great race too. He set an almost 3 minute PR at the Governor's Land race on the 21st and than was about 2 seconds faster on Thanksgiving. Just as long as he doesn't get faster than me I'll be okay, I love you babe, but I still don't want you to beat me.





After the race we came home, showered, I whipped up some pumpkin bread and than headed to Jami and Ryan's place for our own Thanksgiving dinner. The four of us spent the afternoon in the kitchen making everything from the turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and stuffing.

Happy Thanksgiving Guys!

Turkey's done

Ryan was in charge of carving

Jami does the mac & cheese

The spread

Sean is excited for dinner!

We finally sat down around 5 to a delicious meal with great friends.

After dinner we all crashed on the couch, and watched Four Christmases. Well most of us did, Sean ended up falling asleep. Luckily it was a short movie, and we got home and got to go to bed before it was too late.

Friday morning Sean got up early to start on some house cleaning, and he let me sleep in, although I only slept until 8. Our house never looked so good. We finally hung photos on our wall along with some new artwork we got from the wedding, almost 6 months ago. Our house finally looks a lot more like a home!

Sean went and played golf while I did a lot of baking. I wanted to make a bunch of food for our party we were having in the evening. I was finishing up when Sean came home. I finally ran out to grab a couple of things while Sean finished with the house. By the time I got home I had about an hour before we were expecting our friends. Just enough time for a mini nap. I got my nap in, drank a Red Bull and felt good.

Hanging out in the food near the kitchen

Jami & JoJo the Wii masters

JoJo

Ryan

JoJo

Cindy

Sonny

Karlyn, Jonathan, Janelle and Dan

Jonathan wanted to do a re-do from his wedding when I took a photo of him with lots of air

The Wii was a big hit

JoJo got an early birthday gift from Sonny & Suzy (JoJo Cookies and a water bottle filled with chocolate covered espresso beans)

Hanging out

Jami does the hula-hoop

We had a fun evening with great friends, eating food, playing Wii and just hanging out. I love my friends.

The best part about Thanksgiving weekend, besides wonderful friends and family, and of course the excuse to eat obsessively, is that it is a four day weekend!

I woke up this morning at 11. 11:00! I haven't slept that late since college. It probably was due to the fact that I had gone to bed close to 3 this morning, and my normal bedtime is between 9 and 10, even on the weekends. So yes it was still only 8 hours of sleep, but it was still 11. Now it is 2:00 and I haven't gotten out of my pjs. I'm sitting on the couch and I still have one more day to the weekend. Long weekends are my absolute favorite.

Thanksgiving is the best!