2013 Holiday Running Streak (Read 698 times)

I could easily have tapped out today on a yucky Monday after racing both days this weekend and celebrating a little too hard at the pub yesterday afternoon, but went out for a soupy, slushy, wet recovery jog in between concalls instead.

8 miles on a treadmill for day 14. 1st time I used the 'mill. I dragged it home from a neighbor's house who was throwing it away. All it cost me was a little time restoring it. I'd rather be outside but today was the first snow event around. Figured I give the local drivers another day to remember how to drive in the stuff.

Got a nice run in tonight. Not very long - just 2 miles, but at a good pace for me. Sad part was knowing I missed out on Saturday and Sunday. I was down for the count with a bad bug -- never got out of bed. UGH!! Good news is I strung 10 days together for my longest streak ever.

Hit "Reset". Bounced right back and felt great tonight - 15 degrees, no wind, BEEA - UUUT-IFUL!!

How does being out sick affect participation? I really want to see this through.

2.8 miles in 4 degrees F, -11 wind chill. Really wanted to make it into the more miles than degrees club but I had a moment of clarity and decided to say "Fork this, it's cold out here."

Well, I kept my streak going, just barely.  I planned on sneaking a run in after a meeting at 1:00 this afternoon before my 4:30 flight out of town.  The meeting ended up running late and when it was over about 2:30, I checked my phone and I had 5 missed calls and a voicemail from my co-worker who was traveling with me telling me that the 4:30 flight was canceled and Southwest had called us and said if we could get to the airport by 3:15 they could put us on another flight that would still let us make our connections to Phoenix.

A speedy trip to the airport and I met my co-worker and we are at the ticket counter and there is a new person trying to check us in and figure out the connections to still get us to Phoenix.  After about 10 minutes it's looking iffy and the lady is moving slow as molasses and finally prints something out and hands it to us and says we are going to have to go to the gate to get our boarding passes.  We check our bags, breeze through security and go to get our boarding passes at the gate.  The lady at the gate is a long time employee that I recognize and I ask her to double check to see if we are set for the best possible connections since the new lady didn't inspire a lot of confidence.  The first lady had us getting into Phoenix at 10:15 with a 3 hour layover in Dallas, and the lady at the gate switched us to a double plane change with a 20 minute connection in Dallas and a 45 minute connection in Albuquerque and that got us into Phoenix at 8:15 which was an hour earlier than our original scheduled flight!  It wasn't a "scheduled" flight and the connections were technically too tight to book it normally, but she set us up with it.  She couldn't print a bag check tag with the double bag change so she had them fill out an old school bag tag manually for us with the 3 different flights on them and go find our luggage and swap out the bag tags for the original ones.  From there everything went super smooth for us, and our bags even made it!  When we got to Phoenix we checked on the flight the first lady had put us on and it ended up getting cancelled in Dallas so we were SUPER thankful to the lady at the gate that switched us around to get us in when we did.

Still had a rent car to pickup and a 1 1/2 hour drive and checked into the hotel at 10:45 local time.  At 11:00 pm I was changed and out running my laps around the hotel in 35 degree weather which was a little cooler than I was expecting.  Knocked out 4 miles and called it good.  I'm typing this novel on my iPhone and I'll get my run logged in the morning.  

I sincerely doubt I would have got this run in if I wasn't trying to keep a holiday running streak going.  For sure without that awesome lady at the gate working out some connections for us I wouldn't have been able to keep the streak going because I would have been stuck in the Dallas airport, although I did have my running stuff with me on my carry on, so who knows.  It was fun working it all out.

Kept it alive today with a long trail run with some good friends. Tomorrows run may be a bit of a challenge.

Wow!! Nice!!

check!