Running and Relaxing

or "My favorite way to spend the weekend"

We had tons of things to do this weekend and managed to get all of it in. On Friday we went with our favorite Chicago Running Bloggers Mike and Barb to a Bulls game. Which they won which is always nice to see. I lived in Chicago during the Jordan years and so I have to stop going, "This one time, at a Bulls game....Jordan won the game with a last minute shot". The new kids looked good and perhaps they are playoff bound this year. The half time show was Blue Man Group which was awe-some. I went to see the show many years ago but Jason has yet to see it live so we must put that on our list of things to do while in Chicago.

Saturday we went Christmas shopping which was nice to finally get out of the way as I had done none of it and now it's all done....almost as I still have 4 nieces that need more doting on. After Christmas shopping and a quick lunch at Goose Island and a quick nap we did a 5 mile recovery run. We were good little recoveryers and ended up with 10+ minute miles. Jason had some hip pain so we stopped several times to stretch and walk it out. After that we went down to Lincoln park zoo and met up with my old coworker to see the Zoo Lights. The zoo has all kind of Christmas lights u and ice scupting happening. It was very fun and as apparently we don't live in Chicago anymore as the temperature was really warm and it was an amazing night out.

Sunday brought our weekly long run of 13 miles on us. We were both a little worried about this one since our legs were a bit sore on Saturday. However, we had a GREAT run. Nice and easy miles coming in at an 8:49 min/mile average. This is good, but perhaps a little too low as our General Aerobic run was done at 8:48 min/mile. I think there should be a bit more seperation between these paces. We also started off too fast with miles under 9 minutes but we felt ok, so just kept the pace where it was. I think we had 3 miles over 9 and the rest were around 8:55 or so. The last mile we booked it to 'One' by Metallica and came in under 8. I just say that's practice for the upcoming (read : dreading) LT run tomorrow.

Later Sunday night (after a ridiculous Bears win....at least Sexy Rexy is back.....the rest...sheesh I don't know) we hung out with friends of the family Kay and Gary and Lisa and Evin for Christmas type festivities.

Last week we got in the 35 planned miles which is nice to see, this week we have 39 on the calendar. I also have 8 or 9 types of cookies to make....so we should be pretty busy. We are off to the Fort (that's Fort Wayne) on Saturday and are looking forward to seeing Jason's family. We finally get to meet the new baby Caeli (Jason's oldest brother's baby) and I can-not wait for that.

Happy Monday all.