Holiday running

I'm sure every community has at least one place like this where the property owners go all out in their quest for the ultimate Christmas. They even have a countdown calendar restarts on the day after the big day.

Christmas Eve was a scheduled day off but I adjusted my plan by running an easy 8 miles so I could take Christmas off. It was a bit of a struggle with tired legs the day after a long run as I took it very easy with an average pace of 8:30 and heartrate of 127. The temps were nice at +2C and even was passed (twice) by a young buck in shorts. We said hello and a few words but I waved him on ahead and wasn't even tempted to match his pace which looked to be close to 7:00 speed by the way he pulled away. Way too fast for an easy day as I just maintained my easy jogging pace.
Today's run was back to the master plan with a 12 mile medium-long run which was done as a 6 mile out and back on the highway. This was run at a 'normal' pace, starting slow and attempting to pick it up, or at least hold my 'form' by keeping my head and arms up. I was slightly distracted by my new 'toy' which is a little high quality camera that is both waterproof and shockproof and fits in my fanny pack. I'm now fully equipped to handle any and all Kodak moments and poor Andrew will just have to bear with me on this. "Oh, just a sec, gotta stop here and take a shot of this!". All I have to show with today's run was a water view of St. Croix Island in the bright sunlight on a perfect calm day. Finished off the run with a set of 10 pitiful pickups (aka strides), 12.0 miles in 1:39, 8:13 pace, avg hr 136.

Bear with me but I didn't feel as tired as I look! It was an ok run but not much to write home about. Perhaps I'll have better photo opportunities on my recovery run tomorrow. Have a nice day!