Earlier in the week I took part in a Thanksgiving blog linkup where I talked about my tips and tricks for keeping healthy and motivated through the holiday season. You can read it for yourself here. I took my own advice and used the long Thanksgiving weekend to start off strong, after what felt like a few bad weeks with little physical activity.

I plan to complete the Runner’s World Holiday Run Streak Challenge (at least 1 mile each day from Thanksgiving through New Year’s) and started as a pacer for the 2:45 team at the Atlanta Half Marathon. I’ve done this race for 10 years and this was finally a warm race, after several years of cold (or freezing) temps. BRF and my Fun Size Wonder Twin, T, ran with us along with several other friends from the Atlanta Track Club training program, and  some new friends along the way. We crossed the line in 2:44:23 after a fun romp through the city.

Since we were in Chattanooga with the in-laws for the holiday, I spent days 2 and 3 at some fun and free group runs with Run Chattanooga. My sister-in-law has decided to run her first half marathon, Chattanooga Half, in March and I really enjoyed pushing her past her typical 5k run. I think she liked it. She’s still talking to me at least.

Today is day 4 of the challenge and I took the opportunity to bring BRFs T and S on one of their first trail runs at Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield. I may have convinced them to run the Cloudland Canyon Half Marathon in January so it was a good reason to get on the trails. Also, it was a nice change to the constant concrete jungle. I’ll turn them into trail runners soon enough. 🙂

The long weekend is almost over and it’ll be back to work, finals, daily commute, etc. All the things that make keeping healthy and active difficult. Every Sunday I also get an email with the weekly training plan from Hot Chocolate 15k. While I don’t really follow their plan, I really like the email as motivation to plan my week. If I don’t really have a good plan for a day, I’ll use the Hot Chocolate plan to fill it in. I’m also motivated to beat my time from last year’s race so having a fallback schedule to get me there feels like a good backup if my typical training starts to fall off track. The whole experience for Hot Chocolate, from registration to finish, really is fun and motivating. I highly recommend it. If you want to register for the Atlanta race, use code ‘BRATLHC’ to get a free visor!

BRF S does kickboxing at a gym on my way to school so I  plan to join her once or twice a week starting tomorrow. Yoga is Tuesday and Thursday morning, and of course, I plan to get a run in every day. With so many races coming up in the New Year, I think my motivation to keep moving so that I have enjoyable race experiences will certainly help to push past the dark, cold, hectic finals and holiday season. Stay tuned.