Christmas Eve is here! It

Christmas Eve is here! It was a beautiful day with a Carolina blue sky. I was up very early (6 a.m.) to ride with Mom to take Katie and Joel to the airport and see them off to Seattle. I went back to bed around 8 and slept for another three hours. Ah, the beauty of vacation.

After a few errands with Mom, I headed out for my run. I decided to up the distance even more since I probably won't run tomorrow (or if I do, only 3 miles). I did 3 miles Thursday, 5 yesterday, and did 7 today along this very picturesque route. There were quite a few sizable hills and I was a bit sluggish, so I took a few walking breaks during the last bit of the bigger hills. Because of that, imagine my surprise to come home, measure the route officially on Gmaps Pedometer, and see that I did 7 miles in 1:13:34 -- 10:31/mile!

Charlotte really seems to bring out the best in my running. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the fact that for each of the past three years when I come home for Christmas, I've been in the final phase of training for a big January event (Half, Full, Half). But still. The weather here is usually my ideal running weather -- sunny, clear and around 50 degrees during the day -- and it's fun to run at home. I'm extremely happy to be back to the point where I can sustain a 10:30 pace over a good distance.