Merry Merry Christmas

Ahh….Christmas morning. We’re down to one child in the house this year. Every other year my boys spend Christmas with my ex-husband…which is every bit as bad as it sounds. As a single gal….I used to buy a 6 pack of beer and spend the day at my parents drinking myself into a cherry stupor….missing my boys…but since I met Skip….and especially since lil T came along…it’s not as horrible….more quiet…less mess. ..crazy little girl to make me smile. We don’t buy our children boatloads of things..never have never will. This partly stems from the fact that we’re broke…but also stems from the fact that in our eyes…Christmas is more then the presents…better to give then receive and all that. Skip and I don’t buy gifts for each other….of if we do it’s something very small and thoughtful. Instead we take the money we’d spend on each other and buy for children that get brought up through the church..or Skips work has a program as well….that’s what we did this year. We had a 14 year old boy and a 9 year old boy this year…awesome. Much better then getting something else that we really didn’t need to stuff into this already full house. And if I have one thing that I’ve done with my children that sticks….I hope it’s that.

So yesterday I knocked out 10 pretty decent miles at below marathon goal pace. I know this doesn’t seem to be the normal approach…but I do ALL my longruns with the target at getting them below my goal marathon pace time. Especially the last few miles. I want to know exactly what that pace feels like..and I want to be able to maintain it for the entire time baring any catastrophe. But then I’m a psycho that way. That’s how we’re training with Dragon Boat as well…..why should race day ever be a surprise? I mean any more then it’s going to be anyways. I also intend to do at least one full marathon distance training run during this cycle…hopefully two if I can work it.


On the barefoot front….the gravel marching is going swimmingly. One thing I didn’t anticipate was that this first batch of gravel that I’ve been marching in is turning to dust! If I can get another week out of it I’ll be surprised. So I guess it’s a good thing that it came in a 50lb bag because I’m sure I’ll use all that and probably more. After I finished the 10 miles I had on tap yesterday..I took of my shoes and socks and finished barefoot to my house. I had no foot pain and felt great!! It was only like .35 mile but that’s ok..it was 27 degrees….HA!


So I was wondering what other peoples thoughts were on race pace training? Do you do it? What about full race distance?


Anyways…I hope everyone is having a wonderful, peaceful Christmas. We’re heading over to my moms so she can feed us and the boys will be home tomorrow afternoon….I can’t WAIT!