Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!!

Yeah, I know. It's been quite a while since we have posted. We have been a little busy with the holidays and not much in the mood for posting I guess. Ah well. Even though I haven't been posting it doesn't mean that we haven't been running. Thankfully we have still been doing a lot of that. My last post I talked about a run on the 20th of December where I was able to get out barefoot. Well I was able to do the same again on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve this year landed on a Saturday, which is my long run day. Since Robbie didn't want to add in a long run on Christmas as well as all the other stuff we had to do (Opening presents, going to Church, driving her sister to the airport, and then going to my parents house for Christmas) she had her long run on Christmas Eve too. Thankfully we were able to squeeze both in without too much trouble.

My long run was set for 12 miles and it was great. I started running in my water shoes. It wasn't too cold and thankfully the pathways were pretty clear. Oh wait, that reminded me of Robbie's run earlier in the day. She warned me that some of the less maintained pathways were really icy. She proved that by finding a nice downhill section while she was going pretty fast, being unable to find somewhere with traction and slipping on the ice trying to slow down. Down she went and she slammed her elbow and her head into the ground. Ouch. She phoned me at that point. I was all set to drive out and get where when she decided that she was okay and that she wanted to finish out her run. She's a Rockstar.

The pathway that took out my wife.

Anyways after Robbie's warning I stuck to the well maintained pathways running along Deerfoot Trail. Got 6 miles down and then started to head back. At that point I decided that it was warm enough to barefoot it for a while. And so I did. Wonderful. I do love the sensations of it although I did get many stares at the weird guy running with no shoes on. So that was my Christmas Eve run. My runner's knee was bugging me off and on, which sucked, but it was okay.

The pathway I ran on. Nice and clear.

Water shoes?

Off they go for 2 miles! Woot!

One annual tradition that our Church does is to have a family Communion on Christmas Eve. It may not be the most convenient thing, but it is definitely one of the most special things that we as a family do. In what is such a busy time, with rushing here and there and the pressures and everything else that happens at Christmas, it's nice to have some time to just stop, relax, breath and meet with God as a family. The Church is always done up very nicely with candles everywhere (which freaks my mom out) and it's always a much needed time.

Then we had Christmas. The kids got spoiled like always, although Robbie and I did a lot better at not giving them too much. The kids didn't get too many presents but you know what? They didn't even seem to notice. So happy about that. For Christmas Robbie got me some CEP compression sleeves, which I love and have been so thankful to have. I got her a pretty purple running jacket from MEC.

After Christmas I had a couple shorter runs. 4 miles in my water shoes and 5.3 miles in my Neos. Not much to say about those runs except that my knee was bugging me. The second run was supposed to be 6 miles, but I had to cut it short because my knee was bugging me too much. It was at this point that I decided that after the half-marathon that Saturday that I was going to take a week off (at least) to try and get my knee to feel better. I hate feeling limited strictly by my knee and I need to get better. No sense in being stupid about this.

Next was the Martin Parnell race in Cochrane. This was an annual race to help fund-raise for Right to Play. It started at 9 for the marathon distance. Robbie and I both decided to do the half-marathon distance. It was a super casual race, well not really a race, more like a run. The course was just a 2.5 km out and back along a pathway (that was also an off-leash dog run. Almost stepped on a couple of little dogs. Fun times. Thankfully there were no aggressive dogs out). So we went back and forth about 11 times until my Garmin said we had run at least 13.1 miles. I decided to run in my Neos and Robbie chose her water shoes. Here is my Runkeeper link for the run so you can see how exciting the course was. ;)

Martin Parnell run in Cochrane.

This was a fun run. No pressure, just get out and run. The wind was pretty strong going one way. So I froze my bits off going one way and warmed them up going back. The difference between running the one direction and the other was quite startling. We managed though. :) The aid station had water, hot chocolate, coffee, shortbread cookies and fruit leathers. Not the typical aid station but you could stop whenever you felt like it for however long you felt like it. Martin Parnell was there as well as ultrarunner Ellie Greenwood. Kinda cool running with people you see on the cover of running magazines.

Robbie rocking it.

Even better though was meeting up with the other barefoot runners we know. We ran with Toe-Girl Tina for a while and near the end ran into Paul and family and Barefoot Neil and family. It was a great time and we were glad to get out there.

Paul. He ran ~8k barefoot (after wearing his Kevlar socks for the first little bit)

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas holiday. Tomorrow I'm back to work, but the upside is that since it it now January I can go to Riva's Eco Store and buy my Neo Trails. Woot!!! So looking forward to that.