Christmas, Christmas Time is Here

  I mean, sure, it's like, 60 degrees out, there's barely any lights around the neighborhood, and our tree is a little bit of a reject, but still, it's Christmastime.  That means it's almost Christmas vacation, which means it's almost time for the 20 miler.  Because what better use of vacation time than to run 20 miles.  There's not much else happening in the running world right now, but I do need to order more Tailwind stat.  Unrelated to anything happening here, I'm watching last weeks Saturday Night Live and I really have to say, Ryan Gosling is not a great live actor.  He's funny enough, but he can't keep it together very well.  But, more than I could do, so way to go you.  Plus, I suppose if you look like Ryan Gosling, you don't necessarily need to be good at what you're doing, you just have to look it.
Back to running now, I took a week off because I thought I had a broken toe.  Upon further review, it may have just been super bruised, but I don't really know.  It hurt for a while and was all purple but now it's just kind of red and doesn't hurt anymore.  So, back to running like nothing happened on that front.  I ran 5 today at an 8:04 pace and no water.  I clearly made a judgement error on that one, but it worked out fine.  I'd also like to take a moment to note how hard it is to keep a sentence flowing with Weekend Update on in the background.
Let's see, so aside from running, I've been sort of feeling a little bored of my workouts.  Here's the thing.  I'm Facebook friends with a lot of people that go to the boxing club and I constantly see updates about how hard the workout was.  Yet, I don't really feel like the workouts are that hard whenever I'm there.  Maybe it's because the workouts have to be beginner ready and I'm really past that stage.  Or maybe it's because I've spent so much time running that the short, hour long classes, just aren't enough.  Whatever the reason is, I figured that I needed to get some answers/results.  Doing what any good athlete would do, I went to the trainers and asked what I should be doing differently to get better results.  Smart move, really.  This was my answer: Climb the rope 3 times, run a fast mile before class, and add push-ups to the mountain climbers.  So, like any good athlete, I did that.  The rope climb was definitely the hardest, but I made it up.  Turns out that wasn't enough though.  Instead of doing a first round, I got bombarded by trainers and was told to do push-ups for 3 minutes instead of doing the actual round.  That was a lot of fun.  Until I couldn't do push-ups anymore and then still had to do them during the mountain climber active rest later in the class.  Today, after I ran 5 miles I was going to do uphill/sprint repeats on the treadmill.  Unfortunately, both treadmills were being utilized during the time I had, so I was instructed to do the row machine for 5 minutes instead.  Way harder than I thought it was.  Seriously, have you ever used a rowing machine and tried to keep it in the 2:00/500m range for 5 minutes? I have no idea what that means, but it was super hard.  I actually never got it down to 2:00, but I managed to hold it steady at 2:30, so I figured that was close enough.  Then I did a mile of uphills and was basically dead, so I wrapped it up and left.  But, I have to say, after all that, it was definitely worth it.  I actually feel like I did something again.  My legs are little tight, my arms are sore, and I have a giant blister on my left palm. A perfect ending.
In case you're wondering, I haven't run any new races lately, and probably won't run any before Louisiana, so you'll just have to put up with my mess of poorly flowing paragraphs and not very informative running information until then.  I'm sure I'll have a great update after Louisiana but sadly, probably not 26 selfies this time.  Don't be too disappointed, I just really want to get in under that 4:00 mark, and I don't think the selfies helped.  While you're waiting patiently for new running information though, enjoy some pictures from Winter Wonderland, the school's winter open house that held last night. It was a big hit.  And of course, I'm still taking donations for Morty.  As always, click here to donate

I was recruited to draw a Christmas theme at the Saugus Title.  For those of you reading this from out of state, or even out of the North Shore, there used to be a mini-golf course right down the street on Rt 1 that had a giant orange dinosaur visible to people driving by.  The orange dinosaur is well known around these parts, so if you're from here, it's kind of funny. If you're not, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense.  Don't worry, my January board will be better, if I'm still allowed to do it!

Got myself the Harry Potter coloring book and I love it.  Plus I made that little canvas, just because

Last weekend while I was babysitting I had to come up with a creative way to move the Elf on the Shelf.  Since the little girl I was watching wrote a letter to Santa, I made the elf a mail-box out of an empty Kleenex box. Of course I had to decorate the box to make it more Christmas friendly.

Boxing selfie with the other Ali and Brian.  

Santaaaaaa!

I feel like through this picture, you can really tell how well squats work. 

Our little Christmas tree.  The Nexus really does take good pictures for a phone.