Yesterday, J and I were having a nice, leisurely morning, making a plan for the day over coffee, and I said that I wanted to drive around and look at Christmas lights. That reminded me that I’ve heard of running clubs doing Christmas light runs, and I wondered if anyone local would be interested in running around and looking at lights sometime. I posted a Facebook status and got a couple of interested replies, so I figured we’d pick a date and a general route, just running around at whatever pace for whatever distance, based on whoever showed up.

A couple of hours later, J ran some errands downtown, where he bumped into some friends of ours from the radio station. He mentioned my run idea, and they said that if we did it the same night as one of their other events, they’d provide hot chocolate when we finished. They even suggested a name (“Beat the Holiday Bulge”) and suggested that we also plan a one-mile loop for kids.

When J told me all of this, I said, “Wow, this is turning into an event!” A little while later, my friend Jaylin texted me and asked if there was anything she could do to help. And this conversation was had:

And thus, the Beat the Holiday Bulge Festive Fun Run was born. J and I did our lights-looking drive last night. I created a Facebook event, Jaylin shared it, and as of right now, we’ve got at least 21 people signed up to run. If they each donate $5, that’s $105 for the local food bank. Not bad for a randomly planned event!

If you’re local (or feel like taking a random Thursday night road trip to the plains), come join us December 18 at 5:30 in Fort Morgan’s City Park. It’ll be a good time!

In addition to planning this fun run, I did some exercising this week. Here’s how it went:

Monday:

4 miles easy and 20 minutes of strength training. I went to the gym, since I needed a couple of machines for my strength routine, and they were having their holiday open house. They had a DJ, so that made working out a little more fun than usual. And they were snapping pictures, so I stole this one from their Facebook page.

Tuesday:

5.5 miles of “hill” repeats. They were hard.

Wednesday:

4 miles easy and basement strength training. I took a super artistic photo for Instagram when I was done.

Thursday: 

6.2 miles — 45 minutes with a few short, hard hill sprints at the end.

Friday: 

I cross trained two weeks in a row! Crazy talk. I did some intervals on the spin bike and then lifted for 25ish minutes. And I was inspired by a sticky note on the paper towel dispenser in the gym bathroom.

Saturday:

5.5 easy miles as I planned a tentative route for the newly-planned lights run.

Sunday:

12.5 miles. It was flippin’ gorgeous out today. I wore shorts and was wishing I’d worn short sleeves, too!

Total: 37.7 miles

This coming week should be  little higher mileage, which is good — marathon training starts the week after Christmas, so I need to keep building my base!

And that’s all. Have a great week, friends!

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