I never did like shopping all that much, so Black Friday always seemed bizarre to ke.

As for Thanksgiving Day..

Lots of conversation around gray hair yesterday.

Holly started yesterday’s daily and posted the trials and tribulations of navigating her stairs.

Stumpy has a 16 pound bird to feed two people.

Marj prepped food at DD’s house.

Dave ran 4.28 and finished the fall challenge ahead of schedule.

Karen ran with a group for 6.4; I’m glad the family drama held off.

Dnaff planned on spectating some local alumni football . Yum, pie!

Leslie cooked Brussel sprouts and pork chops after a 4 miler.

Tet- turkey Spam????

Denise volunteered at the start of a race, then walked with a friend.

SurlyBill was trying to avoid extended family gathering time.

Falcon ran 12 miles total including 15K with a group. Those potatoes sound amazing!

Murray posted a 5K. I like the quote, "I've got to run today" changed to "I get to run today".

Henry ran two; looking forward to seeing your book.

Shadow and Alexander popped in to post a Thanksgiving greeting.

Quick had some light cooking duty so he could get in 3.5 miles.

Wildchild ran 7.

Jay had a busy day of cooking, zooming, and visiting, but also made time for 6.3 miles.

Mike ran 8 chilly miles, but in a great feat of hospitality, had as many as 32 folks in the house at once.

BTY- good that GN got to see his Dad.

Mrs Bio and I had a great day of cooking, eating, and playing with grandchildren. It was also my birthday and my ice cream cake had six candles which I tried to blow out not knowing they were trick candles that relit. I laughed so hard I couldn’t get my breath back…Mrs Bio and I get our house back to ourselves later today and as much as I’ve loved the visitors, I’m ready.

Mornin' Masters.

Happy belated birthday, Bioguy and thanks for the start 'n recap. Sounds like you and Mrs. B had a good day yesterday, and will have a good one today as well. Black Friday definitely is bizarre, and we also choose not to play that game. The only 'shopping' that DW and I will be doing today will be for breakfast in just a few minutes.

Our gluten-free, bread-free stuffing yesterday was pretty tasty, but in reality it is a vegetable side dish with some Thanksgiving-focused spices. We have left-overs, and will enjoy them.

I didn't sleep all that well last night, and got up a few minutes earlier than usual this morning. So I fed the cat and headed out for my workout. I cobbled together a new route as I went along, and finished with just a scootch over 8 RW miles. I started in a very light drizzle that stopped within a mile or so, and finished well before the day-long rain got started.

Have a greta Friday.

Jay

Jlynne, please remind me where here is.  14 is ugly cold for November.  We're at 40 with rain and it's tolerable, I don't think I like teens in November.

I'd made myself a commitment back in September/October, when started working out with weights again, that once I was completely done with cycling for the season and strength training became a 4x/week part of my regimen again, that I would work towards doing three sets of most exercises instead of two sets.  One of the problems (with my ego) is that when I do only one or two sets it allows me to use more weight than I probably should for fitness and injury prevention.  So today I began the three set scheme and I hope I stick with it for a while.   Chins (just one set, and can't do anything to reduce the resistance there), pulldowns, rows, dumbbell curls.  I tried to pick weights where I would get three sets of 10 reps each, and managed to do that on rows.  On pulldowns I overestimated my strength and only got 8/7/5, which was a bust, and on curls with dumbbells I got 8/8/8, but I did that on purpose, b/c if I do 10 reps on one or two sets of biceps isolation exercises I won't get any reps on the third set.  Decades ago I participated in a neuromuscular study to determine rep ranges for different body parts, and it turned out my biceps should be trained in a 4 to 8 repetition range.  I don't know the biochemistry/biophysics/biomechanics behind that.

DW is working today, I've got the day off, and DS#2 is working from (our) home for half a day, then I'm driving him to an eye doctor for his first eye exam in I don't know how long.  He's been wearing old scratched up glasses for years now.  Glad he's finally making a commitment to take care of his eyes!

House is finally quiet again. I went to start a new book on my kindle and discovered I accidentally downloaded the Spanish version.

WOW KSA; almost 6 miles a day for a year and a half! jealous...

House is finally quiet again. I went to start a new book on my kindle and discovered I accidentally downloaded the Spanish version.

No time like the present to learn a useful new language!

 I do use my running as somewhat of a drug to keep me a little sane......

Apparently it's not working... 

I had a real time-capsule moment a couple weeks ago and an interesting conversation with my DS yesterday. I had been trying to get rid of a lot of old "stuff" recently and finally took 3 large boxes off the shelves in a storage closet that contained everything from my DS's old HO train setup. I decided I had to dispose it one way or the other and opened one of the boxes to find that I had carefully packed it up almost exactly 24 years ago! As soon as I had unwrapped a couple of the locomotives, it brought back a lot of memories, and I decided to keep just a few pieces. So I put a couple of lengths of track from the box onto one of the display shelves in my workshop and put a few locomotives and cars on them.

When my DS came over yesterday, I told him what I'd done and asked if he'd like to pick out a few things for himself to remember the fun we had back then. He jumped at the chance, so we went down to the shop where I had everything laid out on a table. What really surprised me is that 24 years later, he remembered all sorts of things I had forgotten from when he was about 6-10 years old! He pointed out which trains we had painted ourselves, which was the first one we did, and even which one we turned into a "dummy" and why. I've always had a suspicion that he has close to a photographic memory, and this was one more incident that really made me wonder. Anyway, he took a few pieces and a length of track and later sent me a photo from where he set it up in his apartment.

Here are the shelves in my workshop. In addition to the trains, you can see the "Gravity Go" cars that we built when we were in the YMCA Indian Guides, a retirement gift from the robotics company I worked at, and even some of the rare "hardware" that I took home back when they gave out actual trophies at races.

Oh yeah -- rode 17.25 miles on "Brittany's Sunshine Coast" on Stage 2 of my Tour de France with 622 ft of climbing. It should have been 19 miles, but the program crashed on me just before the last leg of the route -- always a danger with this type of software.

Doug, it's only been in the last few years, but I've acquired this desire to turn one half of our downstairs finished room into a train room.  I don't know if it's the trains that I really want to go after but the idea of the miniatures and the time to work on something alone, maybe some day with grandchildren, sounds very inviting.   It's a deadens room so closing it off to other traffic wouldn't be a problem.  I just don't know if I'll ever actually do or just occasionally think how nice it would be.

KSA, that streak is something else!

2,650 yards in the pool this afternoon - 1700 yards of pull-only warmup swimming with a pull buoy, and then 600 yards of freestyle, 300 yards of backstroke, and 50 more freestyle yards at the end.    I had planned to do 3 * 300 yards of freestyle, no backstroke, but after the 2nd rep I'd had enough.  I was shooting for just under 5:00/300 or about 1:39/100 yards, but was coming in just over 5:00 at 5:04 and 5:08 instead.   That was with just over 30 seconds rest between reps.   To make up for throwing in the towel early on the 300's, I swam 3*100 yards of backstroke aiming for no particular pace, just swimming at a tempo-like effort.  Each rep was around 1:45 or so, with 15 seconds rest between them.

Pacing is very difficult for me.  If I want to swim a 500 yard repeat at a 1:45 pace, my first 100 will almost always be 1:30 - 1:35, and then I slow down and fall into the 1:45 pace somewhere around 300 yards, but for the 2nd  and 3rd 100 yard segments, I'll actually be slower than the target pace.  The best I can compare it to is wanting to run an 8:00 mile for a few miles, when that's your "easy" pace, and starting out the first 1/4 mile at 1:50 (a 7:20 pace), then dropping to 2:05 for the next two 1/4 miles (8:20 pace) and then running a 2:00 1/4 mile to finish that first mile, then finally honing in on that pace the rest of the way.  When I was running at lunch time several years ago I could start my clock, look at it at 1 mile and be somewhere between 8:01 and 8:05; no matter when I looked at my watch over that first mile, I'd aways be almost exactly on pace.  Sometimes the magic works, I guess, and sometimes it doesn't.

Doug, that's really cool. I have a hard time parting with old stuff the kids did. I still have DS2's soccer trophies, and DS1 was a prolific artist in school so I've got a big box of his creations. Eventually, I'm sure I'll unload them. Maybe do like my mom did and give them each a box of stuff.

Holly, no problem with DH thinking he's doing it all. After all, you've done all or at least most of the work around your house for ages. Let him do it. And did I miss that Zak and his GF got engaged??

Happy birthday, Bioguy! Everyone had a feast in your honor!

I like the thought of getting to run, but sometimes it's a challenge to get myself out the door. You guys talking about cold temps has me just wishing for those temps here! We've been consistently below zero for quite awhile now, and the 10 day forecast doesn't look any better. Today it's -6 here at the house, and -10 in town, and we got another inch+ of snow last night. *sigh* it's just all more than I want to deal with sometimes. BUT, I've got that annoying pace bunny nipping on my heels (hey, at least I caught it!) and I'd really like to get my goal for the year (2,400 miles), which looked like a slam dunk till my back went out in September.

I did get in 5.1 hilly miles between getting things ready for dinner yesterday. We took the turkey over to MIL's to roast it and I prepped most of the sides here, to take over there and pop in the oven while the turkey rested. It all worked pretty well but the turkey did get a little overdone. Oh well. And a 13 pounder was way more than enough for our group of 9. I have to remember that folks in their late 80's and 90's really don't eat that much; we had way too much food.

Ok, gotta get my mind wrapped around layering up and getting out there in a bit. Temp here has dropped to -7° so I better get it done soon!