Holiday Pitfalls & The Boxing Day 10 Miler

The holidays are always too busy, but not usually with training.  All the Christmas parties, family visits and traveling, it's very difficult to keep up with training and not gain a ton of unwanted weight.

I was very conscious of some of the pitfalls in my life during the holidays, so I took control to minimize any possible 'damage' to my training.  I hosted Christmas eve and made sure that there would be low calorie health foods mixed in with some of the high calorie favourites.  Choices were kept to a minimum (the more different flavours to choose from, the more we tend to eat) and desserts were small.  If someone wanted more, they could very easily get seconds.

One of the biggest issues is fitting in workouts.  Both my bike class and swimming went on hiatus during the week of Christmas until Jan 4th.  Instead of doing nothing, I picked up a few drop in classes at my local Pilates centre, swam on my own and continued my running schedule.  It was good timing because I was increasing my run distance and my legs needed a break from all that hard cycling we've been doing.

All of my run training was designed to lead up to the Boxing Day 10 miler.  I signed up for this race for two important reasons: 1. They always give the best running gear which is different each year 2. Because of when it happens, it keeps me on track during the holidays.  It's really difficult to do this run filled with turkey, all the fixings and multiple desserts.  In the past I've never had a good boxing day run, partially because I didn't restrict holiday eating leading up to race day.  This year I was determined to make smarter choices and it all paid off.

Unlike other Boxing Day runs, this year's was completely devoid of snow and 4-5 degrees Celsius.  Perfect conditions, if it wasn't for that wind. 20+ km winds, with gusts, coming off Lake Ontario, made the back of the 'out and back' much harder than it needed to be.  After all, there were plenty of hills to do that.  The majority of the route going out was either flattish or downhill, so coming back was where you paid the price of running too hard, eating too much or just being too unprepared. 

For me the day wasn't about time, it was getting in distance and building a solid running base.  That being said, I did have a goal time based on my current running pace.  I hoped to be done in 2 hrs, but during the run, while struggling up the hills and through the nasty wind, I rethought my goal and would have been happy to finish under 2:10 or 2:15.  My finish time was 1:55:46, and almost did a even split (just missed it by 2:14ish).  I'm pretty happy with the results, especially since the second half was significantly tougher than the first half.

Next up is the Resolution Run (5 km) on New Years Eve.  After that, training will return to 'normal' in the new year.  And I think that will be the official transition from IMpretrainingtraining to IMtraining.