Christmas Week cont'd

Thursday:
Extended family came to celebrate Christmas a day early!  Spent the morning and early afternoon hanging with them, then worked on the rock wall with my dad until dark.  As it was getting dark, rain swept in, and I opted against trying to get my tempo run in.  I was glad to have worked on the wall during the dry hours of daylight, though, since the rain would preclude any further efforts on the wall.  To summarize- No run.
Friday:
Ate a late Christmas lunch (yum), and headed out for my "tempo" run just as it was getting dark.  I ended up running half of the run in daylight; the other half in the dark in the country on shoulder-less roads.  My lunch was not sitting well (I had probably eaten too much to run so soon), so I was pretty uncomfortable through the first several miles.
Target: 2 mile WU, 8 miles at 6:45 pace, 2 mile CD
Achieved: 2 mile WU, 7.9 miles @ 7:17 pace, 1.6 mile CD
I was pretty disappointed in how fatigued and slow I felt, and in how poorly the run went.  It seems that all of my extra-curricular activities of the week have been catching up with me.

Saturday: off  (no rock-heaving, no basketball, no mountain climbing, no running).   I hooked up my brother's new music composition software to his keyboard, and set up a wireless network in my dad's house (since everyone uses laptops that are far better than the one computer in the house hooked up to the internet).

Sunday: long run
I had a wonderful, glorious 22 mile run.  I waited until the sun came up; temperature at start was 28 degF.  I had to be careful on a couple of sections early on not to slip on icy patches on the road.  It was a sunny, beautiful day, and I ran a nice, extremely hilly route through some quiet neighborhoods (as compared to my Friday run, where I was constantly leaping off the road to avoid being flattened).  I felt great.  I pushed the pace, even though it was a very hilly route, and was pretty happy with my effort, even though it ended up well short of marathon pace.  This was possibly my longest ever solo run, but it was such a beautiful day and I felt so good that I hardly even noticed.
Target: 22 miles @ 7:31-8:20
Achieved: 22 miles @ 7:46

My run Sunday was just what I needed; I'd been getting pretty discouraged about the poor quality of my workouts earlier in the week.  I hope the hilliness of my workouts this week will somewhat compensate for the lack of speedwork.  I definitely feel like I got a good workout of my hip flexors and glutes (which had been sore on my last "marathon pace" long-ish run), so maybe it was a well-needed change-up for my body.