Turning over a new leaf...if there were any!

The snow falling by the streetlamp.

Joy here...So we're back from our family Christmas holidays spent elsewhere with too much family binging...food, booze, and really not a whole heck of a lot of activity, unless you count sitting on the couch for hours on end, surrounded by family as activity.  We drove back on Dec. 27th, basically spent all of Dec. 28th trying to recover from the 4 days of holiday extravaganza, and finally on Dec. 29th made it out the door for a run as we tried hard to turn over a new leaf and stop filling our bodies with chocolate and booze.  Of course, that metaphor is a little flat at this time of year, because there isn't a leaf to be found on any tree in the frozen city.  But you know what I mean.  It's a figurative leaf anyway, right?

The days are now slowly, but surely, getting longer.  On the shortest day of the year (Dec. 21) the sun set at 4:22pm.  Today the sun will set at 4:28pm.  Woo hoo!  That's like a whole extra 6 minutes of daylight.  As you can tell, at this time of the year, I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel of proverbial reasons to be optimistic.  Again, I blame it on SAD and wash my hands of any responsibility for my moods! ;)

Ottawa snow falling.

In any case, I did get my butt out the door for a run yesterday, and I confirmed to myself that no matter what, a run always makes me feel better once I'm out there.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I can come up with a million and one excuses NOT to run, but if I can overrule my own psyche and get myself out the door, usually about 20 minutes into the run, I start to realize that I'm feeling better.  Yesterday's run was no different.  Once I was out there, and my feet were doing what they know how to do, even if it's been over a week since I made them do it, I began to feel just fine.  So I reminded myself that last year at this time, I was unable to run for 30 minutes, and I literally burst out of my pants, and now I can count on myself to run for at least an hour, for around 10kms.  And so while that still means that I've got a long way to go to be ready for my upcoming 30km race, it also means I've come a long way from last year.  So while I was out there, I gave myself a little pat on the back and told myself to focus on the positives...what I have achieved...and not on the negatives...how much more I still have to do.

So here are my turning over a new leaf running stats from yesterday:
Ran for a total of 1:05:26 for a distance of 10.64kms with an average pace of 6:09min/km.

Over and out,
Joy