A Day of Thanks

Yesterday was a thoroughly enjoyable Thanksgiving. I managed to cook, go for a run and spend a delightful afternoon and evening with close friends.

I had planned to sleep in a bit and wake up at 9am, bake two pies, go for a run, shower, pack up and head over to my friends' home by 2pm. Well. I woke up at 9:30am.

I then had breakfast, drank coffee and lazed around watching football highlights until 10:30am. I finally started preparing the apple pie at 11am, so I'm a few hours behind at this point. Sigh. Peeling, coring and dicing apples is a huge pain in the neck, I quickly learned, but it was enjoyable to know I was making something by hand and I had fun during the process. I didn't get the pies in the oven until close to 1pm, so I knew my 2pm deadline wasn't going to happen. I then had a decision: Go for my planned run and accept the fact that I was going to be an hour late for Thanksgiving, or stay home and get dressed, pack up the food and make it to my friends' house on time. I decided to run and hope that my friends would forgive me.

Even though it made for a late dinner, I'm so glad I went running. It was a beautiful, crisp day, and my body felt great. I decided to chance it and run on my trail, even though it had been foggy and damp that morning. Luckily the trail was in much better shape than Monday, even with a couple of muddy patches. There was a young family walking along the trail when I arrived, and they really made my run.

I did seven laps around the pond, and the first five of them took me past this family in various states of adorableness. I really enjoyed each lap as I came upon the two children either throwing leaves in the air, drawing smiley faces in the dirt, or feeding the ducks. I was sad on my sixth lap to see that they had left to go home, likely to a similarly endearing home with Thanksgiving traditions. On what would have been my eighth lap I headed home to jog back in order to reduce the amount of time I'd be out since I was already late.

As I was running, and especially as I was encountering this family, I felt really happy. This was the first time in my life that I've made a conscious decision to be active on a holiday in order to combat the onslaught of upcoming calories. Ever since my 5K race I've been very aware of the fact that I'm no longer running to train for a race. I'm running because I want to take care of my body. I'm running because I love being outside and challenging myself. I'm running because I can't quite believe that I've stuck with it this long and I want to see where this journey will take me. I want to make a refreshing run part of all my holiday traditions going forward. I want to be that young family going out and doing something active with my children while we're all together for a holiday. I want my children to see their mother making healthy and active choices in her life so that they will do the same once they're adults.

For now I'll just have to take solace in being a role model for my cats. Oh well.