Most of the Decorating Done

Being off work since Thanksgiving has given me an opportunity to get the Christmas decorations up in the house.  My living room is pretty much decked out in Christmas with several Nativity Sets around the room, the nutcracker guarding the fireplace and the Christmas Tree up and decorated.  The only thing left to do is putting up the outside Christmas lights.  Hopefully I'll get those done tomorrow, otherwise they'll have to wait until I return from Las Vegas.

Tomorrow, in addition to trying to get the outside lights up, I'll be getting stuff around and packed to head to Vegas for the weekend.  The Las Vegas Half Marathon is this Sunday.  I'm looking forward to running up and down the Las Vegas strip on Sunday evening.  Their are bands that are scheduled to be playing each mile along the course, and running past all the lights of the strips should make for a fun event.

For now I'm watching one show and recording several others.  While I type this I'm watching A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV.  Recording the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center and Survivor.  Later the Saturday Night Live Christmas special will also be recorded. 

The last couple of days I've done some baking, making a batch of Rocks on Monday, and a batch of Pecan/Chocolate Chip Rocks yesterday.  They've been put in cookie tins on the table and distributed sometime after I get back from Las Vegas.

All of the running I've been doing as helped to keep me somewhat in check as far as eating all the Christmas treats goes.  I've been training throughout this season for the Las Vegas Half Marathon, once I run that, then I'll jump in to training for the Myrtle Beach Half Marathon, which I'll run in February.  After that I jump right in to training for the Lexington Half Marathon in March.  During that time I've also got to arrange a party for my sister and her husband, as they will be celebrating their 25th Anniversary in March.

After running the Lexington Half Marathon in March I'll jump in to training for the Cap City Half Marathon in May.  After that I'll have a little bit of a break from training, but not too long, as I will start training in June for the Philadelphia Half Marathon in September and the Columbus Half Marathon in October.  During that short time between Cap City and training for Philly I'll try to keep busy running a couple 5K events. 

The remainder of this year and 2013 all are shaping up to be busy in my running world and my work world.  But, all that being said, my favorite scene from a Charlie Brown Christmas just came on to remind me not only of what Christmas is about, but what the focus should be all year around...

Christmas Season Begins

Before getting in to Christmas stuff I have to mention a couple of other things.  First of all I have to say that I was very happy to watch Ohio State beat Michigan today.  It was played the way the OSU-Michigan rivalry is supposed to be played.  A close game with a lot of emotion.  To see this group of Buckeyes go undefeated for the season made it even better.

Next I have to say that I'm really looking forward to the Las Vegas Half Marathon on December 2.  My training, which didn't seem to be going really well after running the Columbus Half Marathon in October, has really taken off the past couple of weeks.  I've continued to get faster.  The only thing I worry about right now is starting off too fast and not remembering to pace myself early so that I can keep running (hopefully for ALL of the 13.1 miles).  I'll fly in to Las Vegas on Friday morning and head over to the expo to pick up my running packet and check out what vendors they have there.  I'm hoping to be able to pick up some tickets to the opening night of the Shania Twain show at Caesars Palace for Saturday night.  I'm also a little nervous about the fact that the half marathon is an evening run.  I usually run better first thing in the morning after having a light breakfast, so I'll have to be careful about what I do during the day on Sunday and what I eat.  I'll have all day Monday to recover from the run, and will fly back to Columbus on Tuesday the 4th.

Yesterday I began doing some decorating around the house.  All eight of my Nativity sets are set up throughout the living room.  The corner curio cabinet now displays the Rudolph figurines, the three foot nutcracker now guards the fireplace, pictures have been switched out to reflect the holidays and I'm working to figure out where the tree, which I'll probably buy in the next couple of days, will be placed.

That got me thinking about my own first Christmas tree.  I enlisted in the Army in 1984 and left for Basic Training the Monday following Thanksgiving.  The majority of my Christmas season that year was spent listening to drill sgts yell...alot.  The following year I was stationed at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLI) in Monterey, CA.

DLI is the school where the four branches of the military send people who need to learn to speak a foreign language as part of whatever job they are doing for the military.  Most people there are going in to military intelligence, but there are also some with other jobs, like working at an embassy where they needed to know how to speak the language.  I was a military policeman, and at that time, the Army was looking for MP's who spoke German to work with the customs units in Germany. 

The classes were a combination of people with different ranks, different jobs, and different branches of the military.  There were also civilians dependants in the classes.  They were allowed to take the classes that their spouses were learning, or of the language for the country where their spouses would be stationed following the school.  So, in my class there were two of us who were Army MP's fresh out of MP school (myself and Norm Babcock), an Army Chief Warrant Officer who was a helicopter pilot instructor (CW2 Roman), an Air Force Sgt. who was going in to Air Force Military Intelligence (Sgt. Priquette), an Army soldier who was going in to Military Intelligence (Maril Burnsed) and two civilians.  One of the civilians was the wife of a Marine Corp. Major who was going to be an embassy liaison officer and the other was the wife of a soldier who was going in to Military Intelligence.

In the fall of 1985 I spent a lot of Sundays with Norm Babcock and his family watching football.  His wife would make great spaghetti and meatballs.  I spent my Thanksgiving in 1985 with the Babcock's in California and again with them in 1986 when we were both stationed over in Germany.

Christmas season of 1985 was much different than 1984.  I was still in the Army, but being stationed at a school in California was much different than being in Basic Training in Alabama.  In 1985 the class got together and had a Christmas Party/Dinner at our German instructor's house.  We kind of "volunteered" him to host the dinner.  That was the first of many Christmasses when I made Robert Redford (a desert that I now make pretty much every year at Christmas time).  Obviously, living in the barraks, I didn't have the ability to cook anything, but Maril allowed me to come to her off post apartment and cook there.

We had a nice class dinner that year shortly before training shut down and everyone went home for Christmas leave.  It was a nice break from class, which was six hours a day, five days a week for thirty-two weeks of nothing but learning to speak German. 

The barraks I stayed in at DLI had two man rooms, so I shared my room with one other guy.  We weren't allowed to do a lot of decorating, but I did manage to get a small two foot tree to put up in the room.

 

The teddy bear was a present I bought for Erica (Norm's daughter) who was born just a couple of months before this Christmas.  The larger of the two presents was a clock for Norm and his wife.  I can not remember what the other present under the tree was or who it was for.  But this was my first tree.  I think it got left in California when I left a couple of months later, along with all the decorations on the tree.

 

Even though I wasn't home for most of the Christmas season, I enjoyed myself this year.  The people I was stationed with, and the time we spent together, kept the Christmas season fun and enjoyable.  Christmas of 1986 was spent in Germany and during Christmas of 1987 I had moved back home after finishing my enlistment, so it would be 1988 before I got my next Christmas tree.  Those stories will have to wait until another entry.  For now I'm sitting here blogging and watching "The Santa Clause".  I'll probably look to get my next tree tomorrow or Monday.



 

Surprised Myself

Yesterday I headed to downtown Columbus early for a 5K run.  I've cut back on the number of 5K events that I run compared to what I ran a few years ago, but this one sounded kind of fun.  The Hot Chocolate 5K also started earlier than most at 7:30am.

When I got downtown traffic was a little busy, especially for that early on a Sunday morning, but it appeared that everyone who registered for the run (several thousand) were all trying to park in the same parking garage.  The Hot Chocolate 5K is new to Columbus, and appeared to want to be a large event.  They did manage to register quite a few runners, but I was surprised by the lack of anything more from the event in the way of vendors etc.  But I enjoyed the run, and running a good 5K downtown is usually enjoyable.

As I started I could tell that my pace was a bit faster than I normally run, but I didn't realize just how much faster.  Typically, a "fast" pace for me is faster than a 10 minute mile (usually anywhere from 9:45-9:55/mile).  But when I got the first update from runkeeper on my phone, I was averaging an 8:40 per mile pace.  Rather than trying to slow down I decided to try and maintain my pace and see how far I could make it.  I quit worrying so much about the pace and listened more to my body, slowing down a little if I needed to, but still trying to push myself "just enough" throughout the race.

I ended up finishing the race at 27:55.  For me and very good time, with an average pace of under 9:00 per mile.  I felt really good about that time.  Just a little over a week earlier I had been concerned with how I felt my training was progressing as I prepared for the Las Vegas Half Marathon.  My times were slow, and on my long run I was not able to go the entire 10 miles without having to take walk breaks and without my legs feeling like someone had pounded them with a hammer.  But this week's training has gone well.  Just one day before running this 5K I did an 8 mile long run.  I finished that run averaging just under 10:00 per mile which, for me, is a great time for a run that distance.

I know I said that the Las Vegas Half Marathon was a run that I was going to do just for fun.  No goals other than to run the race and have a good time.  But I know that, if my training continues to go well throughout the taper period, I will be looking to see if I can run a PR (personal record).  The other thing I have to keep in mind is that the Vegas run is done at night.  My training runs tend to be much better when I run in the morning.  But then again, I did that 8 mile run in the evening after being up since midnight the night before and it went well, so who knows...

Another thing that surprised me this week was the scale.  I have been using myfitnesspal on the computer and through an application on my phone to log my food an exercise in order to lose weight.  I had been pretty successful with that, but as I get closer to my goal weight it has been harder to lose the last few weeks.  I had a nice jump back on the scale this week though, losing 3.5 pounds this past week to allow me (as my brother puts it) to move the bottom weight on the scale.  I'm now just nine pounds from my initial goal, once I get to that weight I will evaluate where I'm at, how I'm feeling, how my running is coming, and determine then if I want to maintain my weight there, or work to lose some more.  

This Time Last Year

Yesterday I went back through some of blog entries from this time frame last year.  I read my blog entries from the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons, most of which talked about Christmas memories from past years.

Reading those entries started me thinking about the Thanksgiving Holiday season.  Although I enjoyed Thanksgiving as a kid, we really didn't have a lot of family traditions surrounding this holiday.  We would try to watch the Thanksgiving Day parade on television, and turkey was (almost) always the meal for the day.  Sometimes we would have Thanksgiving dinner at home with just the immediate family, sometimes grandparents would come over and join us and sometimes we'd head down to visit other grandparents and spend the holiday at their place for dinner.

There was one year when someone thought that, instead of turkey, we would have cornish game hens for Thanksgiving Dinner.  No offense dad, but "tastes like chicken".

I remember making a turkey with an apple, mini-marshmallows and some toothpicks.

I remember always waiting for Santa to pull up in front of Macy's to signify the official start to the Christmas season.

I remember the year Santa's pants fell down in front of Macy's, signifying a very interesting start to the Christmas season.

Getting Thanksgiving Day off work hasn't really been a huge priority for me until the past few years.  Shortly after buying the house I live in now I even hosted Thanksgiving Dinner with my parents and my brother's family.  Don't ask me how I was able to fit all those people in my very small house for dinner, but somehow I did.  Those years were even spent working and then doing the dinner after work.  Of course, it also involved buying the dinner at Carfagna's so that all that really needed to be done was to heat the food in the oven.

Although the Christmas commercials have been on television and radio for a while, most radio stations won't start playing Christmas music until Thanksgiving or the day after.  One station in Columbus always starts a little early and I occassionally tune in to listen to the Christmas music on my way to work.  This morning, when I got in my car, one song came on that really took me back.  I would have to say that it is the song I like most.  It reminds me of listening to Christmas music on the radio on Christmas morning as we drove down to the grandparents'.  I'm really not sure why this one sticks with me more than others...it just does.

Running and Stuff

Well, I should have followed my neighbors' lead yesterday.  Three of my neighbors took advantage of the nice weekend and put up their Christmas lights.  I thought it might be a good idea to do that myself, and thought I'd wait until today.  Of course I woke up this morning to rain and falling temperatures.

I was scheduled to run 50 minutes today, so I headed out to Worthington to the end of the Olentangy Trail to run.  It spit rain most of the run, until the last mile when the rain started coming down much heavier.  I got back to my car completely soaked and headed home.

When I got home I jumped in the shower to clean up and warm up, then ate some lunch.  I grabbed my phone to log the food on myfitnesspal, but the touch screen on my phone was not responding.  Fortunately, I pay for the insurance on the phone.  So, a quick trip to the Sprint store and the phone was fixed pretty quickly.

Now I get to continue to focus on my running.  I've already started making plans for next years runs.  I will be running the Hot Chocolate 5K in downtown Columbus this Sunday and am hoping to do a Thanksgiving Day run somewhere in the Columbus area next week. 

I've got the Las Vegas Half Marathon coming up in December and the Myrtle Beach Half Marathon scheduled in February.  In March I'll be headed down to Lexington, KY to run the Lexington Half Marathon and then will head to Philadelphia in September for the Philadelphia Half Marathon (Both part of the Rock and Roll Series of Marathons).  In between those two I'll be running the Cap City Half Marathon in May here in Columbus.  In September I plan to head back to New York for the Tunnel to Towers Run and plan to run the Columbus Half Marathon again in October. 

I started 2012 with the goal of running two half marathons, and am now preparing for my fourth.  I've got plans to run at least five half marathons next year, and with next months run in Las Vegas and next year's run in Lexington will check off two more states in my quest to run a race in all of the 48 continental United States. 

If I can find a 5K run or something to do in West Virginia next year I will have covered Ohio and all its bordering states, as well as New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada.  Maybe I'll try to focus on the New England states in 2014.

Of course, if Mayan prediction comes true, none of this means a thing after December 21st.

 

I Want to Keep Having Fun

Well, yesterday I decided that I'm not ready to run a full marathon.  I do believe that I could run one and finish it, but it would not be fun.  After training for some half marathons, and preparing for another, I decided that, for right now, I will stick to half marathons.  So, I transferred my registration for the Myrtle Beach Marathon in February to the half marathon event.  I'll still be going to Myrtle Beach and running early in the morning on February 16, but it will be 13.1 miles instead of 26.2.

I decided this while out running the other day.  Believe it or not, I have enjoyed preparing for the half marathons that I've run.  It has been enough running to keep me challenged without being so much that I end up burning out on it.  I also still have that goal I need to meet of running an entire half marathon without stopping to walk.  I came very close to hitting that goal a couple of weeks ago, but I'm not quite there yet.  Until I can accomplish that goal, and do it a couple of times...until the half marathon becomes more routine than challenge, I will stick to making that my long run.

I do believe that running another full marathon is in the cards for me.  Eventually I plan on being at the point where running a half marathon will be more fun than challenge and I will want to challenge myself at the next level again.  But for now, I'm going to have fun challenging myself at this level.   This will also give me the opportunity to run more races.  Running a full marathon in February would have meant that I would not be able to recover in time to run some of the other half marathons that I am looking forward to running next year.  By switching to the half marathon I will be able to run a few more of the longer races and keep challenging myself to try and improve my times.

For now, I'm still looking at Las Vegas as being a fun run to do.  Not setting any specific goals for that race, at least not yet.  I will be setting goals for Myrtle Beach though.  Even though it's still early, I'm setting a preliminary goal of beating my last half marathon time of 2:16:29.

As I get closer to February 16, I'll decide what other goals I want to set for that race.

Trick or Treat

Yesterday was beggar's night in my neighborhood (and many other neighborhoods).  This is my 12th beggar's night since I moved in to my house, and every year I give out full sized candy bars.  I know it would be easier (and cheaper) to give out the small fun sized candy bars, however, I live in a pretty small neighborhood and there are not that many trick or treaters.  Also, I remember when I was a kid there was one lady who would give a full size candy bar to the kids that she knew.  That was always a special feeling to know that I was one of the "special ones" to get a full size candy bar.

The weather in this area last night was not good.  It was cold and rainy, which kept a lot people home last night.  But I had to smile at the reactions I got from kids who did brave the weather.  As they walked up to my door they would look inside and see the large bowl of candy bars I had setting by the door.  The faces would light up and they would start telling their brothers/sisters/friends, "He's got REAL CANDY BARS".  In the past I've even had some of the older kids come back around a 2nd or 3rd time.  I know they thought I didn't notice that they'd been there before, but like I said, there's not a ton of kids that come around, so repeat beggars are pretty easy to remember.

I do think there ought to be a rule though.  If you're old enough to grow facial hair, you're too old to go trick or treating.  If you're old enough to grow facial hair, get a job and buy your own candy.  I wasn't short on candy by means, so I did give the older kids candy also.  However, I did decide that, starting next year, I am going to start buying a bag of the small candy.  Better yet, I may bring in my jar of pennies.  If a kid shows up at my door who is just too old to be out trick or treating, they get the pennies.  The candy bars are meant for the kids to remember having a good time trick or treating.