I always have the grandest of intentions over long holidays: work on my book on the plane; make several gourmet meals for my family; do some intense workouts with my home running group; and cure cancer. Okay, maybe not the last one, but a girl can exaggerate, can’t she?

This holiday, I did NONE of those things. In fact, I DIDN’T do a lot of things.

1. I did not write a single word. Not. One. Single. Word. No blog posts, no thank you notes, no e-mails. Not even a list for the grocery store. When I got back to California, I had to teach myself how to type again.

2. I did not cook any meals, much less any gourmet meals. I didn’t even feed my poor family a bowl of cereal. While everyone sat around my kitchen table looking forlornly at the blank surface, I pondered how many Egg McMuffins it would take to feed 10 ravenous people.

3. I never ran with my old group. They start at 5:30 a.m. Which is 4:30 a.m. for me. Which means I would have had to get up at 3:30 a.m. after staying up until 11:00 p.m. with my family. No. No. No.

4. I didn’t do any intense workouts of any kind. Unless you count the 3 hour game of “DJ BroJam” we played around my kitchen island. My brother would play a song on his iPhone, and whoever guessed it first got a point. I came in second (and I didn’t remove anyone’s spleen or do too many victory dances. Okay, one really obnoxious one, but my brother in-law deserved it). That was a much intensity as I could handle.

5. I didn’t do a single crunch, plank, or squat. The only workout my core got was from laughing. Nothing works your abs like a good demonstration of Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical” video, complete with identical puffy headband. And no, there is no video evidence of that performance.

6. I didn’t read a single blog. Confession: I forgot my computer. I was late for the train, and walked out of my place without my computer bag, thus contributing to my failure to write anything, read blogs, or send e-mails. I’m just not savvy enough to do all of that on my phone. Hell, I can barely send text messages. Someone asked me to “IM” them, and I thought they were talking about swimming. Sigh.

7. I didn’t get on Twitter once. See excuse above. Besides, I didn’t need any more guilt about all the fabulous food I WASN’T cooking for my family.

8. I didn’t clean anything. This was a the best present ever! My sister is a fabulous cleaner, so our deal has always been, I cook, she cleans. Well, she was unaware that I wasn’t going to be doing any cooking this weekend, so she cleaned and cleaned (there were 10 people staying in my house) while I stood around and made noises about “picking up Chinese” for lunch. I owe her. Big time.

9. I didn’t do any long runs. In fact, I never ran more than 10 miles at a time, and those were all done at a CCL (couldn’t care less) pace. Maybe it was all the MSG I was ingesting from all the takeout food we were eating, but I had ZERO motivation. Well, that’s not entirely true. I was motivated to win DJ BroJam. And I came in SECOND! Have I already mentioned that?

10. I didn’t stab Hubz with a fork for snoring. Normally, when Hubz starts to snore, I whack him one and tell him to turn over. But since we had 10 people in the house, it would have been impossible for them to ignore his shriek of pain. So I had to gently nudge him. And wear earplugs.

For those of you who managed to lose 10 pounds, do 4 long runs, cook the best Thanksgiving dinner EVER, all while making your friends and family feel loved, let me know ahead of time so that I don’t read your blog. I’m very busy writing apology notes to my family members now that I have my computer. I can only take so much failure per holiday.

Happy Running!

Tagged as: motivation, Running, Thanksgiving