It's That Time Of Year Again...

For that time honored tradition in our neck of the woods-the celebration that commemorates a chicken that survived his own decapitation and went on to live for a few years without a head. Just normal stuff for a Saturday, complete with your typical cotton candy, Bump -n- Jump, lawnmower races, and 5K. Yeah-we're hicks (not that there's anything wrong with that. ;) ).

I'm a very easily entertained runner, and was very excited to discover that we get RUNNING SOCKS with our schwag bag this year for the Mike the Headless Chicken 5K. I need another tee shirt like I need a hole in my head. On the other hand, it's not just a clever slogan at the top of my blog. The sock monster routinely eats things-usually things that belong to me-during those 2-3 loads of laundry a day for a family of six. Give me running socks, and I've hit paydirt.

I have very modest (non-existent?) goals for this race. I've done a total of a whopping one very craptacular speed workout on Monday of this week. Beyond that, I'm just coming off the Pfitz recovery schedule and have been running recovery and general aerobic runs exclusively, with a few strideouts at the end of a couple of runs over the past two weeks. This doesn't exactly lend itself to an overachieving 5K time, but we'll see. I'll just show up, run the dang thing and make sure I beat the chicken. If I beat last year's time there, bonus. It was one of my 0 for 3 attempts at sub 23:00 last year so that'll be my stretch goal for the day, even though I set a PR of 21:XX two months ago. That PR was set during taper madness. I was walking around like the Great Cornholio from Beavis and Butthead, all nervous energy from being well-rested and running less after lots of good speed work and mileage. I'll have fun, do my best and move on from there.

In personal news, my middle daughter turned SEVEN yesterday! Time really does fly. This kid's been, um, "challenging" over the years but that also makes it very fun and gratifying when we see that she's becoming a bit more mature, and kind of channeling that energy she used to use regularly for mayhem and debauchery into more creative, productive pursuits. It was her idea last weekend for Mother's Day to do breakfast in bed, so she helped her Dad make omelets and cut up strawberries. YUM. I love to eat, but I really love breakfast food. So, that was awesome, and thoughtful on her part. We wound up having a very nice dinner last night for her birthday at our ol' faithful local Mexican place where we do all family birthdays, and with some friends who have been coming along for these birthday dinners from the beginning. Good times with good friends. Not a bad way to end a week at all.