And then there were three...

I kept the pound loss that I saw earlier in the week. I now have three pounds to go to get to my fighting weight.

If I could get there by New Year's Day, that would be incredible. A new year, a totally new me (OK, not totally. I'm still going to be grouchy and stuff, but I'll look really healthy and fit while I'm being grouchy!)

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One thing I'm looking forward to about this Christmas break -- besides all the family stuff and everything that goes along with that -- is that I'll be able to run as long as I want.

I run 3-4 miles a day, depending on what's going on at my house. If it's a night when a kid has something going on after school and into the evening, I run three. If it's a night where there's not a lot going on (Tuesdays and the weekends), I'll run four.

Christmas holidays means no extracurricular activities for the kidlets, which means more running time for me. :-)

The plan is to up my daily mileage to 5 miles, and run 8-milers on the weekend. I also want to get out to the Hike and Bike Trail in Beaumont. I've heard it's a nice place to run, and well, my neighborhood gets old after a while.

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I may have mentioned that I am slightly...ahem, obsessive about my running. I am not a numbers kind of girl, but when it comes to running, I am all over them. I want to know my time, mileage and all that.

Time is easy enough -- I have a cheap watch with a stopwatch on it. I may look into something fancier after Christmas.

Mileage is where I enter the realm of the DSM.

One time around my neighborhood is a half-mile. I was told this and I have confirmed it many times. So, six times around is three miles. When I first started running longer distances, I relied on myself to keep track of how many times I had run around the neighborhood.

That didn't work. Once I run about two miles or so, I enter this weird dreamlike state -- the infamous runner's high -- where I am barely aware of my surroundings. All that matters is the run. So I'd lose track, and I'd have to think, "OK, when that red truck pulled out of that driveway, was that the third time around? Or the fifth?"

I tried everything -- pedometers are only good if you use the same measured steps every single time. Same thing for the Nike+ dealie.

So here is my highly accurate, extremely technical solution: Popsicle sticks.

Katie is very much into art, so we have a lot of random craft supplies -- paints, markers, glitter and popsicle (or "craft") sticks.

I decide how many miles I'm going to run, and get that number of sticks. The popsicle sticks start out in my left hand. After the first half-mile, I transfer one to my right hand, and as I complete a mile, I toss it into my driveway as I pass.

Yes, I'm completely sane. Why do you ask? ;-)