Christmas Day running

I've been quite negligent in my nutrition over the last couple of weeks, using the holidays as an excuse to eat whatever I want and not make any attempt to track any of it. I am at least still writing down, and doing my workouts, which provides a little motivational boost. We spent Christmas at my Mom and Dad's house, out in the country. To combat the cabin fever and offset all the wonderful food we ate for Christmas dinner, we set out that afternoon at 4pm with a plan to run 5 miles. It was 49 degrees out so we layered up. I couldn't find my interval timer, so we had to kind of guestimate the 1:1 intervals and/or keep an eye on my watch to know when to run and when to walk. That always messes me up as we seem to go out too fast for too long when I don't have an interval set. I don't know if it was the sitting in the car for 6 hours the day before or just all the food, and sugar overload, but I was having a hard time keeping up. Or maybe Emory just keeps getting faster and faster, at a faster rate than I am getting faster... so it feels like I am getting slower.. anyway, suffice it to say, I wasn't 'feelin' it that day.We did finish the whole 5 miles, but I started to notice a tight pain in the back of my left leg. I'm calling it a hamstring problem, but not sure if it's a muscle or tendon that is inflamed. It doesn't hurt too bad when I am actually running, but when I switch to a walk and extend my leg straight, there is a pulling, tearing sensation in the back of the leg. So I am a bit concerned about that and need to work on resting and recovering so it doesn't get worse. We ran down some clay, gravel and asphalt back roads. We saw more dogs and cows than cars. The one thing we didn't count on was how fast it got dark. The sun had set by the time we made our way back to the house and it got dark fast. We had no issues, but it sure had my dad worried. He was imagining us out running on the highway getting picked off by cars. I guess we should have told him what route we were taking.. ;-)