Thanksgiving 2011 Happenings

So I bought this precooked 10 pound turkey a week before Thanksgiving and I had to thaw it in the fridge for a few days. Last year I blogged about roasting my first turkey using a countertop roaster I just bought < http://aboutlifeandrunning.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-turkey-roasting-experiment.html>. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of brining, buttering, seasoning, cooking, and washing this year so I took the easy way out. Well it turned out the turkey I cooked last year tasted better than the store bought one probably because of the brining. I’ve been eating turkey for the last few days now and will be doing so for a few more days.

When I arrived at the family Thanksgiving party last Thursday afternoon, the first person I saw was my cousin and her 2 year old daughter. I brought a gift for my niece because we were also celebrating her birthday. My cousin brought to my attention the shirt my niece was wearing. It said “big sis”. I didn’t get it right away until I noticed my cousin’s slightly rounded belly. Perfect! My birthday present happened to be a doll which laughed, cried, and said mama. My niece can practice on it while waiting for her new brother or sister. I’m happily looking forward to having a new niece or nephew come May of next year.

The hostess, another cousin, is a cooking show fan and she frequently applies what she learns, and dinner was wonderfully tasty as usual. That’s why I always go to her parties when I’m not working. While the Thanksgiving and birthday celebration was going on, singing broke out in the form of karaoke. I even managed to record a video of my uncle singing a duet with his brother in law. You can always tell it’s a Filipino party because inevitably, karaoke breaks out. You can watch the video here: http://youtu.be/hGojd3TIBS4 . Just prepare your ears for semi sweet sounds of the duo.
A lot more pictures than usual were taken due to the proliferation of digital cameras from young and old folks alike. A celebrity was even present – the girlfriend of my nephew was a finalist in this year’s edition of So You Think You Can Dance TV show. She just came back from their post competition tour of the country.

The best part of dinner aside from the company? Dessert, of course. I couldn’t get enough of the pumpkin cobbler and pecan pie bites. So scrumptious that I just had to take some home. Thanks cuz, for a wonderful Thanksgiving Day party. As you can imagine, it wasn’t only the turkey that was stuffed.

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Pre and Post 2010 Thanksgiving Dinner Workouts

Click me and see me trot

While a lot of people started their Thanksgiving Day doing 5 or 10K Turkey Trots in different venues, I, being a wimpy turkey trying to avoid the colder than usual temperature, opted out and did my own trot on the treadmill instead. Not that I wasn’t about to go out and run on the streets, but the late newspaper delivery (9:00 a.m.!!!) sealed my decision to make a run to nowhere, at the same time saving time and reading the newspaper. An hour plus an extra five minutes for the extra spoonful that I may eat during Thanksgiving dinner (unfortunately I lost control and ate more spoonfuls than I needed). What I noticed was that when I increased the pace towards the end of the run, I bounced lesser and was actually able to read the paper better. If only I could run that smoothly all the time.

After visiting a couple of stores on Black Friday (I’ll touch on that in another post), my day after Thanksgiving workout consisted of Spinning. No, I didn’t go to a gym and sign up for a class. However, I downloaded a free Spinning video and tried that workout for the first time. With the warm up and cool down, it was supposed to last an hour but the actual pedaling itself lasted only 50 minutes, but a tough 50 minutes it was. I added another 10 minutes to round it up to an hour. There was a lot of hill climbing and jumps in between seated pedaling using variable tension adjustments. It was a darn good workout leaving my calves slightly sore afterwards. It helped burn up a bit of my cousin’s good cooking from dinner the previous night.

It’s cold enough running outside at 9:00 A.M. so why would I want to wake up at 5:00 to run at 7:00? After all, I wimped out and ran on the treadmill on Thanksgiving morning. Well, after procrastinating the last few weeks whether to join the AREC winter group, I finally did on Saturday morning, without even knowing how far they were planning on running.  It was so darn cold that my face felt numb and to add to the discomfort, I forgot to bring my gloves, but I showed up and introduced myself to Gisele who organized it. She gave me a printout of the directions. The shorter run was supposed to be 7 miles and the longer, 13 miles. I haven’t run 7 miles much less 13 miles in months. My longest run was 6.75 miles earlier in the week and that was a run/walk. We started out and I found myself running alone because I couldn’t find someone with the same pace. After climbing the hill at the 4 mile mark, I saw Rosie and Tina, whom I ran 16 miles with last year, and joined them. We ran together for about 3 miles and I want to thank them for letting me pace with them because I didn’t want to run alone. That’s the reason why I woke up early to run there in the first place, so I can run with others. It turned out the shorter run was actually 8 miles instead of 7, which was not a problem for me on this particular day because running with Rosie and Tina helped a lot. My solo runs in recent months have taken a lot of effort to finish, even the ones which I run for 4 minutes and walk for 1 minute. Having company on Saturday morning plus not trying to push the pace made for a more comfortable run even with the extra mile or so. My ankles weren’t even hurting as much afterwards. If that’s the case, I may even return next week! Just remind me to bring my gloves and maybe even a ski mask.

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