Winter - It's Still Here!

Well, of course it's still here, it's February.  At least we only have a few inches of snow here in NE OH, after all, I could be living in Boston and be dealing with over 7 ft in some places.  I'm sure that I would have gone completely crazy by now as that would most definitely drive me to run too much indoors and too much indoors cannot be for the sane.  This week though, I will most likely be faced with running most of my mileage indoors as it isn't supposed to get out of single digits temps for a few days.  Possibly tomorrow night it might be in the low twenties and if so, I'll try to make it to the workout since this is a bit of a step back week as it comes to speed.  We are supposed to pick up the long run mileage this weekend - hoping to hit 16-17 miles but if it is like last weekend, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  For whatever reason running on the snow this year is just not palatable.  I ran long runs outside the last two winters, but this year, I just can't seem to get in the groove.  Hopefully this past Saturday I was just tired after having run a solid workout on Thursday night, strength work on Friday morning and then four hrs at the museum as part of Science After Dark.  Whatever the reason, I was just flat and running in and on snow was just futile.  Here's to a passing trend....

The road and APT in the Metropark on Saturday.

I curse myself often for all the times I jumped on my treadmill or ran indoors when I lived in Atlanta and thought that 25F was cold - lol.

The rest of the week really wasn't bad as I was able to get in a solid tempo run on Thursday indoors with Dianne and Anne which followed a solid, fast speed session on Thursday and an nice easy run with hills on Wednesday. 

Here is the weekly recap:

Mon – Day off, Core class

Tues – 7 miles total with 5 x 1K done with the group.  No snow this week so the road was dry, but it was colder. We averaged between 7:12 and 7:25 per mile pace. Weights.

Wed – Morning core class, 6.5 miles easy.  Ran what I call the Yacht Club Hill course as I go up and down a couple of hills 2x to get them in.  Ran outside as it was actually warm (28F).

Thurs – 7 mile Tempo Run with 5 miles at tempo pace.  We went from 7:50 down to 7:35 for the 5 miles. Ran this inside as it was 3F out.

Fri – Weights

Sat – 14.1 miles on snow covered bike path.  Felt real futile.

Sun – 7 easy miles on the indoor track – just wanted to run for an hour and feel better about it.  Didn’t real pay attention to pace and averaged just over 9 mpm.

As a bonus this weekend, I did have the pleasure of watching the Millrose Games and saw some really fine performances especially with the Wanamaker Mile and the solid win by Matthew Centrowitz and then the record breaking performance by Bernard Lagat.  At 40, he set the world record for the mile and finished 4th overall.  Very inspiring!  I'm such a track junkie and it was great to watch a great meet.  Someday, I need to actually get off my butt and head to NYC to actually see the meet in person.  And if I can't make that one, I can certainly make one of the Boston meets.  Heck, I can even run in one of the Open Masters events which is something that I have not done since the 1980s.  Not even sure I'd mind being last!

For now, I'm still hoping to get that mojo back as it is 9 weeks until the Boston Marathon.  That is if 7 ft of snow has melted by then..........

And to leave you all with some inspiration, check out this story: 

 http://espn.go.com/espnw/athletes-life/article/12305523/meet-boston-marathon-bombing-survivor-lost-leg-became-runner