Same Time, Same Channel

Very slow easy run + 10 x 10 sec. hill sprints. Average pace: 10:18. Shred level 2.

5:00 am, 26°F, 81% humidity, wind 7 W.

I don't know whether it was the cold or residual tiredness from Saturday's run, but I was really slow today. Splits were 10:39, 10:24, 10:22, 9:35, 9:43, 10:06. I was faster in the 4th mile because I was in a hurry to get to the rec center for a pit stop. It looks like I slowed back down after the pit stop, but wasn't quite as slow as I had been before. My paces were tolerable on the hill sprints, if not the fastest I've ever done: 7:12, 7:05, 6:42, 7:04, 6:49, 7:17, 6:53, 6:45, 7:05, 7:06.

It's back to the cold and dark for me now for the foreseeable future. And we seem to have skipped over Fall and straight into Winter around here.

Specific-Endurance Intervals - 2 miles easy, 3K @ half-marathon pace, 2K @ 10K pace, 1K @ 5K pace w/3-min. active recoveries, 1 mile easy. Average pace: 8:53.

47° F 40% humidity, wind 6 S.

It's a freakishly warm morning in between cold days. A storm is supposed to come in tonight.

I ran on the middle school track this morning, which I haven't done in a couple of weeks. The dirt trail leading up to the track was a little muddy and was somewhat difficult to navigate in the dark. My nice shoes are muddy now.

I love running 8:00 pace on the track because it's so easy to hit the pace because each half lap takes 1 minute. That was my pace for the 3K this morning, and I hit it exactly. I ran the 2K at 7:33 pace, and the 1K at 7:12 pace. Those were both a little faster than I intended.

I saw the same person with the dog that I've seen on the track before. I think it's a woman, but I'm not sure. She let the dog run off leash this time, but it stayed out of my way. I was pretty close to the end of my workout by the time they showed up anyway.

I don't know what possessed me to try to sew a Halloween costume for my daughter this year. I spent a bunch of money on the fabric and pattern, but it is just not going well and I don't have time to finish it. I was supposed to get it done last week while I was on vacation, but I procrastinated because I was afraid of it. I was afraid of it (and rightly so) because the fabric I bought is all slippery and hard to work with. I made the bodice on Sunday, and then I worked on the skirts for a few hours last night (it's a fairy costume), but I was really crabby and I finally got frustrated and gave up. I suppose it's worth the cost of a store-bought costume on top of what I've already spent to avoid further aggravation with this thing.

Painfully slow run. Average pace 9:54. Shred level 2.

5:00 am, 28°F, 94% humidity, wind 5 WNW, steadily falling light snow, 1-2" of snow on the ground.

My husband and I both got up at 4:30 this morning and I asked him to check the school district website to see if there was a delayed start or a snow day. He never said anything about it, so I assumed that he checked and that there was no closure. I looked out the window and the snow didn't look to deep and I considered taking the Yaktrax off my shoes (I had put them on last night). So I got dressed and headed out the door.

It was unpleasant when I was going either North or West because the wind made it feel like the snow hitting my face was little pins pricking me in the face. The Yaktrax probably turned out to be a good thing because the snow was deeper than I thought (and got deeper over the course of the run), but they were kind of annoying because they kept developing big clumps of snow under my heels. I would get a new clump about every 10 steps or so. Most of the time I could knock them off by stamping my foot down, but I few times I had to stop and pull the snow off with my hand. I guess that contributed to my slow pace a little bit.

When I was almost finished with my run I got a text message from my son asking me if it was a snow day. I called him back and told him that I didn't know and that he should check the district website. When I got home, he reported that it was indeed a snow day. I haven't been able to get ahold of my husband to find out if he checked the website earlier this morning, so I don't know whether they called the snow day while I was out running, or if my husband didn't check. In any case, if I had known it was a snow day, I might have gone back to bed and run a little later. Oh well. At least it's done now.

I'm a little worried about tomorrow's tempo run. The snow will be even deeper tomorrow. I wonder if it would be a bad idea for me to go do it on the treadmill, since I haven't run on a treadmill for nearly a year. The other problem is that I have to drive to get to the treadmill, which is no fun in the snow and takes extra time. The time won't be a problem if the schools have another snow day tomorrow, which I think is likely.

In other news, I've got a stiff neck. It was hurting yesterday, and then was really stiff when I got up this morning. The running loosened it up a bit, but it still hurts. I think it was caused by the sewing I did on Monday night, leaning over the table and the sewing machine while I was stressed out and tense.

This is the view out my back window just after noon today. Check out the height of the pile of snow on the chair.

I haven't run yet. I plan to hit the treadmill at some point today. My husband and my kids both have a snow day from school, so I was going to drive in to my office, run on the treadmill, then stay there and work. But after looking outside this morning, I think I'll work from home in the morning and maybe try to venture out a little later to go run on the treadmill. Here's a picture from 6 am this morning of the same view that I took yesterday at noon:

**Update**

It's too snowy for me to go to my office to work, but not to snowy for me to go to my office to run on the treadmill. I would have been fine if I had just gone to my office like I planned, but I agreed to go pick up my daughter's friend on the way and bring her back to my house. The street I live on has been plowed and I got out of my neighborhood fine, but the street the friend lives on had not been plowed and I got stuck. The friend's dad and two big brothers had to come dig me out. Going to my office was fine because the main roads have all been blowed. They are snow covered, but passable. Some are better than others. The parking lot at my office was fine because my company pays lots of money to get it plowed. We've got people working in the office all the time (and I do mean all the time) and the office is crucial to the processing of Visa card transactions.

So I finally made it and ran on the treadmill. My workout was supposed to be 2 miles easy, then 2 x 4 miles @ 1/2 marathon pace w/5 min. active recovery, and then 1 mile easy, but I was worried that I was asking for trouble if I did more than 10 miles on a treadmill when I'm not used to treadmill running. So instead I did 2 miles easy (9:32 pace), then 4 miles at 8:00 pace, then 2 miles at 9:32 pace again. I'm thinking that maybe I should run on the treadmill once/week all winter so that I'm in shape for it when I need it.

One hour on the treadmill at 9:31 pace.

My neck was stiffer this morning that it has been all week. I was trying to think what made it worse and at first I thought maybe it was the snow shoveling I did yesterday. But shoveled as much or more snow on Wednesday and that didn't bother me. Then I came to work and ran on the treadmill and I think I figured out. There's a tv suspended from the ceiling in front of the treadmills, but it's not very far in front of the treadmills and I realized that if I watch the tv while running on the treadmill, I have to tip my head back to see the tv. I bet yesterday's treadmill run is what made my neck worse. I've run on those treadmills before and it's never bothered me, but my neck was already sore this week and I think that just aggravated it. I was watching an episode of Medium when I realized this, but I kept watching the show through the rest of my run.  But I did try to just listen and not look at the tv all the time and made a special effort to hold my head up straight and look straight ahead during commercials.

For reasons I can't quite fathom, my kids have another snow day today. Last night the school district website said that they would have either a late start or a closure and that they would post their decision by 5 am. I was on the roads at midnight last night and I didn't think they were that bad. I really thought they would go for the late start. My husband's school district did not have a closure today and most of the larger districts around the area are not closed today. The only thing I can figure is that our school district is quite large geographically, and the headquarters are in Castle Rock, which is at a higher elevation than where I live, and maybe things were worse there. Theoretically they have the ability to close schools in one area of the district and not in another, but I've never seen them do it.

So you might be asking yourself, what was I doing out on the roads at midnight last night? I went downtown with my friend Michelle, whom I run with most Saturdays. We went to Wicked and we got home about midnight. I really enjoyed the show. I guess the good thing about today's school closure is that I was able to sleep in after my late night.

It's going to take a long time to get rid of all this snow, and I didn't feel like the roads were in a condition for me to run outside today. I'm wondering if they plow the Highline Canal Trail at all and whether I'm going to be able to run outside tomorrow. I might swing by the trail today and check it out.

Progression Run - 14 miles w/ last 30 min. moderate. Average pace: 9:49.

I checked on the Highline Canal Trail yesterday afternoon and it was snow covered, so we decided to run around the neighborhoods today instead of running on the trail. Michelle and Michelle came to my house and we headed out from there just before 7:30 in the morning, which is shortly after the sun rose. We decided to stick to neighborhood streets because most of them were relatively clear and don't have a lot of traffic. Sidewalks were unreliable because they were shoveled in some places and not in others. Despite running mostly in the middle of the road where it was clear, we did hit lots of slick stretches where we had to stop and walk. As a result, our splits were pretty slow. I came really really close to falling a couple of times, but did not fall. Michelle and Michelle ran a little over 8 miles with me at which point we were back at my house because that's where their car was. After they left, I went out for some more on my own. I stuck with our neighborhood roads approach, but had a little less trouble than we had had when we were together because by then the sun was up more and things were melting. There was a stretch of pathway in the greenbelt that we had avoided when we were together because it was icy, but I was able to run through that stretch near the end of my alone run because by then the ice had melted and it was just wet. There was one part when I was on my own where I got to a park and I thought the path in the park would have been plowed and it wasn't, and so I had to trudge through the snow there.

Thanks to the improvement in the roads during the course of my run, I was able to hit closer to the pace I wanted to on the progression part. Splits for the easy part were 10:09, 10:12, 10:45, 10:52, 10:14, 10:39, 10:15, 10:54, 10:34, 9:52, and 0.3 miles at 9:50 pace. Then I turned of auto lap so that I could time the 30-min. progression with the lap timer, so I just have an average pace for the next 30 minutes. I ran 3.7 miles during the 30 minutes for an average pace of 8:06.

It's quite warm now and should be warm again tomorrow. A lot, though not all, of this snow should be melted by the next time I run, which will be on Monday morning.

Happy Halloween everyone.