our choices show what we truly are

Easy relaxing run, during the last 2k some 100m/200m strides with the same distance to recover. I am feeling great. One more week and then with the DST the summer training will start (I am one of the few people on the blog looking forward to having more light during the evening for my runs).

Mini tempo run. Warm up for 4.5k then I started having as a goal to maintain 3:55/k for 5k.

These were my splits 3:50, 3:52, 3:55, 3:56, 4:01 for 19:34. The first 3k were under control the last two were much harder. My tempo time is more realistically around 4:00/k, I went a little bit faster on this one trading distance (less distance) for time. I did a slow cool down for 1k and then went home for a nice dinner. I won't complain much about the weather (5°C) because in most of the US or even in northern Italy there is snow on the ground, but I am really tired of running in the dark at night with coldish weather.

Easy run, 7 miles just to keep my legs moving.

Four easy miles around the industrial area.

Repeats night. I want to start doing two fast workout per week again without killing myself in the process. Each week I will try to increase the length or the intensity of each workout, up to a certain point, to keep an healthy training stimulus.

My plan for tonight was to do a 5X800 w/ 400m jog. This will be my last fast workout of the winter season, next week with the DST and more natural light during the evening I will move to the lake area that has some flat sections and I can add more variety to my VO2max routine. I did pretty well in spite of the wind with the following splits: 2:56, 2:52, 2:55, 2:49, 2:57. The time up and down is due to the loop I did all winter long I hope to be more consistent once I will do them on a flat terrain.  

I got home earlier than usual so I went running at 6pm around the lake. I wanted to see how long I could run before it would be dark. Considering that there was a thick cloud cover I was safe to run until 7:10 after then it was really dark. From tuesday with the DST this will be my new schedule, starting at 7:00 pm I will have for the first week a good hour and then everyday it will be longer and longer. Tonight I was really relieved to be done with the same loop over and over in the industrial area, I started at slow pace and then I went progressively faster, I finished 12k in exactly 1:00. My plan was a recovery run easy and slow, but I got carried away and finished really strong.

I woke up at 7am with a thick fog/cloud cover, heavy rain and wind (anything else?), I quickly realized I don't have any big race until september so why going out just to enjoy some misery? 45 minutes later all of a sudden I found myself on the road around the lake 1k from my car completely wet head to toe and cold, with barely 100m view all around (the fog was just crazy). I got 11k from my car and I was completely frozen, the wind and the rain extracted all the heat from my body. I turned around and finished 13.1 miles in 2:00:34, talking about a speed workout. I was also stopped twice by two different cars looking for directions, just because I was the only human being around. The second car felt obliged to ask me if I needed something: a ride, some water or food, I declined with a smile and after an happy easter we went our ways.

I took a hot bath to bring back my core temperature and to stop shivering, I am just proud of what I did, even though I don't know how I convinced myself to do this.