Recovering in Beantown

Everything associated with the recovery process from last Sunday’s marathon was as expected—soreness, stiffness, and inability to do anything more than scoot down a flight of stairs. But the hunger caught me off guard. I was not expecting to feel hungry past Sunday…or Monday…or Tuesday. In fact, by Wednesday, I had come to terms with feeling hungry, and decided to make peace with it, as long as it lasted through Thanksgiving. And sure enough, Thanksgiving dinner must have supplied me with the last of my depleted calories, and I finally feel as if I’m back on a normal eating pattern.

Thanksgiving morning we did our annual Thanksgiving 5K, only this year we recruited our neighbor (Roger’s wife), Ted’s sister Jillian, her boyfriend Kevin, and Kevin’s sister and brother-in-law. My time was the worst 5K time ever for me, but it was okay. I was still sore, and my big toenail is living its last days. But tradition is tradition, so the 5K was on.

After the 5K, I noticed a table of run announcements from Pretzel City Sports. Two of the trail runs caught my eye—Chilly Cheeks in January and Ugly Mudder in February. The descriptions sounded great, and I am extremely curious. If you’ve completed one or the other, let me know if it is worth it…

Currently, I’m in Boston on business. I have my runs scheduled around conference sessions and booth duty, and look forward to getting back into a regular routine of training runs.

But I do have one question—how long can I use the marathon excuse to pull in free calories? Boston Crème Pie? Eh, it’s okay—I ran a marathon two weeks ago. Egg nog on Christmas Eve? It’s okay—I ran a marathon a month ago. Extra cake at Ted and my 50th Wedding Anniversary? It’s okay—we both ran a marathon 46 years ago…