Mike's Marathon Blog

Today, I’m booked solid. I woke up with a black pug on my face at 6 am. I got her situated and started stretching for my Saturday run. Saturdays are my long run days. I had people coming to my house at 10, so I unfortunately needed to leave the house at 8 in order to get my run in. Today was definitely the coldest weather I have run in so far this year. It was around 37 degrees when I left. I ran 7 miles and felt great. Today was also the first time in a month that I ran without an ace bandage around my ankle. I think it’s safe to say that injury is behind me, thankfully.

When I was younger, my family and my aunt, uncle and cousins had an annual tradition of getting our Christmas tree together. We would always go to a place where you can cut down your own tree.  The tradition eventually died when the kids were at college and harder for everyone to meet at one particular tree lot on one particular Saturday in December. We saw each other last week on Thanksgiving and decided that this was the year to restart the tradition.

Everyone met at my house at 10 am. We went out to breakfast and started the trek to Milton, MA. My cousin’s husband works at a nursery in Milton, so we decided to drive there to see him and also get our trees. It’s funny how things have changed since the last time we were all together getting our trees. Before we would get 2 trees: 1 for our family and 1 for their family. Now we needed 1 for my parents, 1 for my aunt and uncle and 1 for each of the 5 kids. Two of the 5 kids are married, so now there are 2 additional people in the family. Crazy.

The biggest difference is my cousin, who is carrying around the future new addition to the family. He/she will be joining us some time this month (most likely). I haven’t seen her since the summer, when she was barely visible. Now, not so much. She looked amazing and I was so happy for her. I’ve never been up close and personal with a pregger in my life, now 2 in the past few weeks! I even touched my first preg belly! It took me a couple of tries, but I did it.

We spent the afternoon decorating the tree. When I say ‘we’ I mean Jacky. I did the only man-job and put the lights on. Now I am off to Boston for my first holiday party of the year. Hopefully it will be an early night. Last Sunday was a wasted workout since I got to sleep at 3 am that morning. Driving to Boston in a snow storm wouldn’t typically be on the top of my priority list tonight, but at least I’ll be surrounded by a bunch of drunk nurses. I can’t complain about that.

Ran 7 miles, ate a huge breakfast, got my Christmas tree, touched my 1st preg belly and partied with drunk nurses – what a crazy day!