Anyone else sporting the Buddha Belly this morning? do you usually eat pretty well throughout the holidays, or not worry about it and do a big reset January 1?

Post your workout, blather, and such...

After two (planned) weeks of relaxed eating finishing with three days of all you can eat crap, I'm ready to climb back on the wagon. I have to loosen my watch two holes. And when my face swells this much, the black bags under my eyes look horrid, more like I belong back on Halloween.  Blech. It was worth it though.  My usual 6 days on, one day off works well through the holidays for the most part. We don't do parties, so that's easy.  But January 1 I do tend to tighten up even more than usual.

Instead of my usual Sunday off day, I went to the gym to try to get the body moving toward it's usual state. 45 min easy-moderate bike followed by 15 min of core.  I'm excited to start P90X tomorrow - probably with a few modifications.

I survived the eating fest holiday pretty well.  Same weight this morning as last Sunday. 

Did a 1600 meter swim this morning.  I've been pretty consistent with swimming this year and am 1/2 mile away from a annual distance PR. 

Covering the 9:30am spin class tomorrow for an instructor who needs to go to a funeral and on Tuesday for an instructor who is subbing an aqua class for someone.

It never fails, after a 3 hour session cleaning up leaves, last night's heavy rain once again blanketed the yard with more of them   I need to start taking before & after pictures to confirm it was actually clean for a few hours.

I haven't been weighing myself lately - my weight fluctuates so much day to day these days (more so than has been the case in the past few years) that it's frustrating and I don't feel like it tells me much about where I'm actually at.

The three of us - DH, DD, and me - went xc skiing yesterday.  The conditions were not great - the temperatures have been bouncing around the freezing mark and so the trails had become icy and rutted.  However, DD skied off with her training group and DH and I went off for our own ski excursion.  Wasn't long before I bailed out - I was struggling to get up the hills because of the ice and scared going down the hills, again because of the ice.  So we went off to a flat practice grid and just practiced technique drills back and forth for a while, which was very useful. 

I wound up coming back to the lodge because my left hand was really cold and wasn't warming up (DH kept skiing).  A few other people were in the lodge too, a few of them commenting on how cold it felt even though the temperature on the thermometer wasn't all that low.  All of a sudden DD came in, without the rest of her training group.  She said she had had to come back because her hands were so cold.  Then, all of a sudden, she got really faint and dizzy and I had to help her lie down on a bench.  I think that she had a blood sugar crash as a result of having gotten so cold.  I got her a chocolate bar from the vending machine and eventually she was able to sit up.  By that time DH was back so we sent DD off to the car to get the heat going and DH and I packed up all the gear and we drove back into town.

DD had her Grade 12 grad photos yesterday afternoon and she was allowed to bring "props" - she decided to bring our older dog, and asked me to come along to help with dog-wrangling.  It was a pretty funny scene in the school gym as many of the kids had brought dogs - including one SUPER-CUTE four-month-old border collie puppy - and one had brought in a cat, so there were lots of very excited animals and owners trying to keep order .  I helped out with DD's photos that included the dog and then, when they moved on to the serious/formal/dog-free shots, moved off to a quieter space. 

I too am back on the wagon!

6 miles this a.m. before the winds picked up. Thankful that is over.

Thanksgiving was great, although a lot of driving. We are all tired but vegging today so that is nice. My mother in law now wants to change Christmas to the 23rd. We're celebrating with mine on the 22nd and wanted to stay there a few days and then be here on the 24th.  To make it worse, my inlaws don't allow my dog to be there unless she's in her crate (or jail cell as my husband termed it)... going to cause more drama but we feel like we drove our asses off over Tgiving so we didn't have to go back. I secretly hope we don't. ... and then I start to feel guilty. Damn, catholic guilt.

I eat the same all year round......another advantage of not hanging out too much with people

13km with Molly.....a misty cool morning, perfect for running.  A river swim (for Molly) at the end and she sleeps FINALLY at my feet

Swollen knee. Was working in the garden last week and obviously did something wrong. Getting better, wearing a brace.

Please, Buddha looks like Twiggy compared to me! I ran Philadelphia last Sunday, so I was destined to eat a lot this week, but throw Thanksgiving in there and yikes! But I'm feeling a lot better after 15 miles this morning. Was starving when I got home though, made scrambled eggs and a (real North Jersey) bagel- yes Rob, a whole one- Really need to get my greens in today. I'm probably the only person in the world who can gain 10lbs in a week while running or spinning every day. But honestly, why is food so good?!

It was a nice run though, broke in a new pair of Altra Torins (remember Small Business Saturday?).

I had a very Thanksgiving day race so I'm rethinking the training. In a nutshell: I need to do more consistent training and stop signing up for every race I see. I haven't done any spadework in ages. I either run long or race on the weekends. and run short uninspired runs during the week. The lack of daylight hasn't helped. I also need to stop eating so much.  I am eating healthier. I just need to know when to stop! 

I did run today (about 5) before the snowstorm hit. 

December I will do well to hold steady, but I plan to pick a race and get on a training plan with a few buffer weeks thrown in come January.

I usually eat pretty reasonably during the holidays. We did a 2 p.m. meal at my parents' on Thursday. So I had a small breakfast before we left at 7:00 a.m. for the drive, a small snack when we got there at 11:00, a reasonable-sized meal at 2:00, and then a small amount of leftovers in the evening.

3 miles this afternoon. I tweaked my back shoveling snow a week ago, and haven't run much in the time since then. Back is mostly better. More leaves to rake now that the snow has melted.

Random: I'm putting in an offer on a house! It's local, about a mile and a half from where I currently live. The main reason for the move is a fresh start with my fiancee when she gets approved to move here - neutral territory instead of her moving into my house. The place is currently a 2-family, but we're planning on renovations to turn it into a 1-family. I'll hold onto my existing house and live here while the renovations are going on, then sell my existing house. Financially it will be a stretch while the renovations are ongoing, but then should be quite favorable once I've sold my existing house. I will have essentially "traded up" to a nicer house at a lower cost. Most important, I'll still be about a mile from the Boston Marathon course. The only difference is that I'll be closest to Mile 20 at the new location, compared with Mile 18.5 at the current location.

Met friends from Tahoe that were visiting family in Minnesota. We met in La Crosse and hiked 5ish miles in the bluffs of Hixon Forest - which is beautiful and closed to hunting.

Never have worried about the scale, or what I eat. I'm a lite eater who likes to nibble on variety, but had some good meals with my family...

Wife made me take down the Xmas stuff this morning, spent time in the rafters, and setting up stuff, while watching some football (my 2 years of fantasy football championships came to an end), so had a BBQ for the my parent in laws, then put in a 5 miler on the trail at sunset   It was a good day to finish of the holiday vacation time...