The Gift of Running

I had a great Christmas, got to see a lot of family and spend some time with them. The best gift of all was the gift Annette received from her son Brett. He gave her the gift of running. He is 23 and has secretly been running a little and told his mom about it on Christmas day. To top it all off, we all went for a 2 mile walk/run after dinner. A mother, son, sister, aunt and husband all running together. Pretty cool! Well, we really didn't run much. It was more like a 1 minute run, 3 minute walk thing. But, the main point is that Brett got off the couch and is going to start running and he is going to the running clinic too. He has been a smoker so this should put an end to that hopefully. He was pretty excited to run with us all. It's really special when running creates a positive change in someone.

I also felt like I got a gift because I ran a little too and my leg didn't hurt. I didn't do much, but i was anxious to see how it felt compared to the last time I ran which was over a week ago. I may run a mile this weekend but I'm not going to do much till after I go back to the doctor. So, I did get to log 2 miles which is good. I really wanted to run more but I knew I shouldn't. It felt good though!

Also Christmas morning while Annette ran with a few of the Cruisers I did 45 minutes on the bike trainer. I used my new Garmin 305 and set up a screen so I could do heart rate training. I did time in zone 1, zone 2, zone 3 and zone 4. Never made it to zone 5. Zone 4 would pretty much be my lactate pace so I did a lot of my intervals in this zone. This really makes the workout go quick too as you never get bored. I really like my trainer. It's perfect for those cold rainy days. The bad thing is I am wearing my back tire out!

I did get some running gear for Christmas. Annette got me a Brooks Nightlife pullover and another nice pullover for biking when its cold. I got a couple pair of running shorts and t-shirts from some of the others too. So overall I had an awesome Christmas and I got to do two of my favorite things, run and bike. Best of all was the gift of running that Brett gave his mom.