Creeping up with a little speed

My mileage is creeping back up... very slowly! I'm actually concerned that I'm under training right now.

At any rate, we had awesome weather last night for the first time this year, and put it to good use. 6x 800 with 90 seconds recovery @ 2:39, 2:38, 2:36, 2:34, 2:34, 2:31, 2:32... averaging 77.5's.

Not bad for the first interval workout in 4 months. I actually felt pretty fresh at the end of it too.

I'm finally bouncing around in the 60's with some mis-matched 7 day periods... I still don't feel "in shape" yet, and running faster still seems to require effort (with the exception of last night). Shins/calves feel good though. I'm constantly like 1 week away from feeling "more normal".

Crunch time is coming. I need more tempo, speed, and quality.

Heading off to San Antonio for a long weekend with Sarah. I should be able to get some nice warm weather, plus hill runs in down there.

Snow Bound in Chicago

I watched The Shining the other day. Very fitting.

Any meaningful running in this city has come to a halt.

Since the DBO, we've been covered in at least 6+ inches of steady snow at any given time. It's sucked. The path or lakefront have been cleared on an occasion, but since last week's mini-blizzard we've been buried. It's impossibly (and very tiresome) to get any sort of decent mileage in this crap.

Last night I hit a tipping point... I was hoping to get a tempo run in, but it snowed a solid 3 inches in the hours leading up to the run. Instead, Larry and I skated our way through 10 miles on a fun mix of fresh powder, packed powder, granular, and ice... Needless to say, it wasn't fun but at least it was a workout......???

I threw in the towel today and did a tempo run on the treadmill. 1 mile warm up, 5 at just under 6min pace, 1 mile at 5:30 pace, 1 mile cool down. All in all I felt decent with the tempo. It was the first time I hit any sort of pace in a few weeks. Given the conditions, I'll take what I can get.

On the flip side, all this snow has probably done some good for me: Running on it is almost like cross training + running together. Seriously, the entire body gets an awesome workout when running on a highly unstable surface. Especially when you stretch it out to an hour+. When running on ice or packed powder, you immediately clear up your stride and unintentionally run as efficiently as possible... you have no other way... of course until you mis-step and pull something. I'm not saying I like the snow, but it does have it's advantages.

Oh, and it's fucking 10 degrees here today and gonna stay like that for the next several days.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.