Thankful

I had a friend in college named Jim who would, on occasion (usually after a long night of drinking), declare happily to everyone within earshot: "This has been the best day!"  While it doesn't rank up there with landmark days like my college graduation or completing my first marathon, yesterday was definitely a good one.

On Wednesday night, in lieu of going out for the biggest bar night of the year, I put up my Christmas tree:

It's funny how things change. I haven't gone out for the night before Thanksgiving in years because I'm always up early ready to tackle the Thanksgiving Day Race 10K.  Last year, I was also busy the night before Turkey Day putting the feast together for my family:

This year, it was my brother Nick and sister-in-law Amy's turn to cook the bird, so I actually got to sleep in a little yesterday.  I met my friend Hansel at 8 and we headed downtown to run the race. 

We took shelter in Paul Brown stadium as we waited for the race to start.  Thankfully, the soaking rain subsided by the time we got to the start line.  I really didn't want to run in the pouring rain, so I was glad Mother Nature cut us a little slack.  As for the running of the race itself, I had forgotten how difficult trudging up hills can be.  The Cincy Half Marathon that I did in October, and the Vegas half marathon I'm doing next Sunday are both flat, so I haven't trained on any hills since my Pig training last winter.  I struggled a bit.

Also, I'm experimenting with some inserts right now to help the pain in the balls of my feet, and the ones I tried out yesterday were definitely not helpful, and actually hindered me a bit. (Sidenote: I'll be doing a review in the next week or so on the inserts that the great people at Dr. Todd's were nice enough to send me.)  I had to walk the last hill and had to take a couple of walking breaks during the last mile, but I still came in less than 5 minutes over my 10K personal best. So I was happy with my race overall, given the extenuating circumstances.

After the race, I was off to Nick and Amy's house for the turkey feast.  Despite much ribbing about having LaRosa's Pizza on speed dial, their first Thanskgiving dinner turned out great.  My chief complaint was that there were too many different kinds of potatoes and pies to just choose one.  I certainly ate well over my calorie expenditure from earlier that morning, but sie la vie.  It's only one day and one meal.

After dinner, as per tradition, I met my Wright's Point friends at Irene's Little Bar for drinks.  Irene's is a crappy little dive bar, but it used to be one of the only bars open in the Northern Kentucky area on Thanksgiving night.  While lots of places are open nowadays, you just don't mess with tradition:

Somewhere around midnight, the snow started to fall outside Irene's:

Health, good food, great friends, and a beautiful snowfall to end a wonderful day.  I am very thankful indeed!