8.71 Miles Easy - Christmas Eve

Mile 1	7:31
Mile 2	7:22
Mile 3	7:15
Mile 4	7:23
Mile 5	7:05
Mile 6	7:05
Mile 7	6:40
Mile 8	6:49
Mile 9	6:52
Total Average Pace:	7:08

The alarm clock went off blaring real loud. I shut it off and debate whether or not to get my run in before work. I look outside and it is pouring down rain. I check the temperature and it says 32 degrees. Not the way you want to start your morning. So I go back to sleep and figure that I'll run after work. I had no intention of running after 5 o'clock in the evening. You see my company tends to let us off @ 2pm on Christmas Eve. So I figured that if that happened then I could squeeze my run in afterwards while the sun was still out.

Well my job ended up letting us off at 1pm. So I jet over to Memorial Park. It ended being a little overcast but the temperature rose to the 50's, so it wasn't that bad. The first mile was inconsequential and I ended up finishing that one at 7:31 pace. But the second mile proved to be pretty comical. As I was beginning to warm up my pace sped up to about 7 minute pace. Somewhere in there at about the 1.5 mark a big gust of wind came and it must have been around 40 mph. For about a few minutes it literally felt like I was on a treadmill because I basically was jogging in place. It felt like I was running upstream in a wind tunnel. I had a little fun with it and started to springing in the air a little bit and I felt like I was weightless a couple of times. The gusts of wind basically added another 25 seconds each mile. Still there were no worries because I was happy to get this run in.

After I finished 2 loops of the park I took a pit stop and on my way out I spotted Vaughn Gibbs running by. I took off to try and catch him since I figured that would make the time go by a little quicker. I sped up and eventually caught him about a half mile in to the loop. I've raced with Vaughn a few times in the past and had a lot of respect for his running ability. But I never really had a chance to get to know him even though we have mutual acquaintances. This time we had a chance to chit chat a little bit and I learned he was from the islands. This kind of hit home because my wife is from the islands as well. It looks like he will be running the Houston Marathon this year and I like his chances of doing really well. A few years ago he ran a respectable 2:32. But next year he hopes to improve on that time. Well anyway, we had a good little conversation and it served its purpose and made the run go by faster.