Hooray for the holidays!
Hooray for running!
Hooray for friends!
Hooray for beer!
(As you can see, I’m in a really good mood tonight!)
Mal and I joined our friends Elizabeth and Nick for the Jingle Bell 5K in Davis Square this morning. They had a couple of extra race bibs that they weren’t using, so they offered them to us. Holiday road race? We’re IN!
Thanks to some great planning by Elizabeth and Nick, we stayed in their nice warm car until about 10 minutes before the race started. This meant that we didn’t need to stand outside in the 20 degree weather. Somehow, the temps in Boston went from nearly 60 degrees to 20 degrees in, um, about 48 hours. You know what they say about the weather in New England!
While we waited for the race to start, we saw a bunch of fun holiday costumes, including a four-man avalanche.
And Santa’s reindeers!
I have no idea how running in blow-up reindeer heads tied together would work, but it looked so cool! I wonder how the race went for them?
At 11:00 on the dot, the race started and off we went!
I went easy on the first mile since my body was cold and stiff and pretty stinkin’ sore from yesterday’s CrossFit class.
But, once I warmed up, I kept a pretty good pace. Check out these splits:
- Mile 1: 9:10
- Mile 2: 7:49
- Mile 3: 7:47
Not bad, right?! I finished in 25:59, so I didn’t break my Jingle Bell PR, but I’m still pretty happy with my time, especially since racing wasn’t my top priority today. I just wanted to have fun with Mal and hang out with Nick and Elizabeth.
After the race, the four of us headed to Sally O’Brien’s for lunch and beers.
While there, I drank two Harpoon IPAs, which might be my favorite post-race brew ever.
I also ate some chili as well as a few of Mal’s French fries and a couple of Elizabeth’s onion rings.
Group pic!
I’m so glad that I got to participate in this year’s Jingle Bell 5K. It’s an awesome race, and I swear the holiday costumes get better and better every year. (I dressed up as coal and/or Santa’s boot if you’re wondering.) The Jingle Bell definitely put me in the holiday spirit! Bring on Christmas!
P.S. If you haven’t entered my giveaway to win a $100 gift card to Eddie Bauer, there’s still time to enter. I’m picking a winner tomorrow morning!