It’s Sunday! How about starting today with a nice long run with Jillian Michaels on my shoulder? Jillian’s radio show may be over, but that doesn’t mean she can’t live on in my heart and my iPod too.

At 28 degrees, it was cold enough this morning to break out the pink fuzzy gloves. I think I got these gloves when I was in 6th grade. They matched the hot pink trim on my bright purple winter coat that year. Nearly 20 years later I’ve still got these gloves and I can only pray that jacket has been destroyed.

These are like wearing a mini blast furnace on each hand. Not only are they perfectly warm, they also happen to perfectly match my favorite self-knit pink hat. A hat I knit myself. Me. I knit that hat.

Have I ever mentioned that I knit that hat with my own hands? I did, it’s true.

Me, Jillian, the Pink Gloves and the Pink Hat set off for a Sunday long run adventure. Last year at this time, 5 or 6 miles was the furthest I went on any run. As soon as the cold weather set in my long runs packed it up and went south for the winter.

This year though, especially with a half marathon in mind for the spring, I want to keep my mileage up. It helps that long runs are much easier now than they use to be. I have to say thanks, at least in part, to my boyfriend Brendan Brazier for that.

I didn’t care about speed today. I just wanted to get out and spend some quality time on my feet. I hit the first mile at 9:00 exactly, and barely looked at my watch again until I got home.

Total time out this morning was 1:22:58 and mapmyrun reports that my total distance was 9.63.

Back for a breakfast of homemade cereal and bananas.

I’ve always been petrified of long runs in the winter. Today’s was not that bad. Of course it was sunny, there was no wind, the roads were dry and I only went 9 miles. Let’s chat about this again in mid-January and see what I have to say about then, hmm?