Early afternoon: 8 miles outside in a -21 degree windchill (with some colder gusts). I guess the prediction map from yesterday was factoring the max speed wind gusts. The wind was pretty high, coupled with the negative temp, but there were occasional much faster winds that cut to the bone. Still, when it didn't pick up that high, it was kind of fun out there. I did a loop of Katherine Abbott Park, popped out on the Southeast side, went up to OHA, did a loop there, popping out on the Northeast side, took Hilton to St Jude, lapped the perimeter of the high school, did a lap of the very crunchy and slow XC ski loop back there, popped back out by St Jude again, went up to Hickory, took that to Park Ave, and followed that along by the lake before cutting back across Wildwood Road and heading home. Old Mahtomedi is a super fun area to run, and I had forgotten how nice the MHS/MMS campuses are. Pace was extremely relaxed, like 8:25 or so.
PM: Treadmill (so rep times are about 13 seconds faster than they should be on a track, by Daniels, due to lack of air resistance). On a brand new $9000 treadmill yet again, which was fun. 1 mile warmup at 6:00, then 3 by mile with 4 minutes rest (ie, LOOOONG rest) at 4:58, 4:54, 4:53 (would be 5:11, 5:07, 5:06 in ideal conditions on a track) then 1 mile cooldown at very slow ~9:00 pace. Since can treadmill take up to about .05-.06 miles to get up to full speed, I started timing when the distance hit .07 miles on each rep and just considered the mile to be from .07 to 1.07 each time (what I typically do for speedwork on them). The long rest meant that I was pushing very hard on the reps. The focus was purely on running fast. This will be interesting to compare to if I do any similar short/fast/long rest workouts later in the winter... Since mile reps are so much less aerobic than most of what I do, there's not much difference in pace at sea level vs SLC. In fact, sea level to 5000' for someone like me would only be a 2 second difference, so I can run these sorts of long rest workouts, in which each rep is done pretty fresh, both at home and in Utah and be able to compare without having to consider conversions much, other than, of course, tacking on 13 seconds per rep for being on a treadmill. All of this aside, the important thing is that I pushed myself very hard 3 times for about 5 minutes, with a focus on running quite fast. :)
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