Per Aspera Ad Astra

10 miles at 6:50-ish pace on a treadmill at my parents' gym.  Nice gym, but the workout room had no fans and no airflow, so it was kind of miserable.  I don't think I've ever sweat that much on an easy run.

Ran at about 2 PM.  Straight temp was 1, windchill was -15 (this would be -20 if running against it the wind at a pace of 8 miles per hour!), and this was only 1 degree off the highest temp of the day.  Cold!  I bundled up with 2 pairs of pants, a pair of shorts, ski socks, trail shoes for all the snow, a thermal layer, 2 jackets, a neckwarmer, a beanie, a balaclava, and a Masque.  The Masque was the crucial element that warmed the air I was breathing and kept me from feeling awful in such cold weather.  Lapped Katherine Abbott Park before going on the OHA Nature Trail and popping out the backside onto Hilton.  Ran to Jocelyn, and ran that classic neighborhood loop to Keats before heading back home with one more mini-lap of Katherine Abbott.  It has snowed a lot over the last few days and was still snowing during today's run, so I felt like I was running trails for a good chunk of the way, even while on roads.  The Jocelyn/Keats neighborhood is all dirts roads, so it doesn't get plowed anyway, making it actual snow trails in the winter.  This is not always the best running surface, but it can be pretty fun when I'm in the mood for it (such as today).  Average pace was quite slow, over 8:00/mile.

9 mile tempo in 49:49 on a brand-new, state-of-the-art treadmill at the Woodbury location of Lifetime Fitness, which had much better airflow and much nicer equipment than the White Bear location.  Started with a 5:47, settled down into 5:33 pace, and kept it there (occasionally dipping to 5:27-5:30) through mile 8 before hitting the last mile in 5:21.  Average pace of 5:32, which is ridiculous.  Of course, I don't get to count treadmill pace as legitimate since I'm not at altitude, so, by my calculations, it would've been about 5:46 on a regular road without the benefit of lack of wind resistance, roughly what I held for 8 miles in my last tempo.  Once again, it felt like roughly half marathon effort, so it would be exciting to see what I could hit for 13.1 if fully tapered and rested.  I'd put money on a 1:14 right now.

Merry Christmas.  Going to run later, but in the mean time, my dad bought my mom a Galaxy Print Balaclava by Turtle Fur that uses the exact same print as my favorite shorts.  I will be going into Joe's Sporting Goods tomorrow first thing to buy one for myself. Hah!

Afternoon: Early Christmas dinner with the family and my great Aunt, who's in town from Chicago; fun time for all.  Ate a lot of turkey and tons of dessert.

PM: went to the gym with the family, did 10 pretty uninspired miles at 7:10 average pace on a treadmill.  My legs were a little bit sore from yesterday's workout, so it felt pretty uninspired. 9 miles at an average of slightly over 7:15, last mile at 6:00, which would be more like 6:15 without the benefit of lack of wind resistance.

4th day in a row in the gym (3rd day at Woodbury, which I still greatly prefer over the WBL location).  Need to get back outside tomorrow!  Hah.  I was out late tonight and didn't get to the gym until a little after 10, at which point I did an 11 mile completely unstructured fartlek on a treadmill in 70:45 (6:26 average pace).  I felt like I was going to be bored running on a treadmill for the 4th day in a row (I'm definitely going to go outside tomorrow), so I jumped the pace all around.  Fartleks are extremely uncommon for me and I wasn't quite sure how to log it, but I think the totals of what I've split into easy/marathon/threshold is pretty accurate.  The slowest I ran at any point was about 7:25 pace, while the fastest was 4:45.  I got sub 5:40 at least briefly at some point in every mile after the first and made at least 1 minute of most of the miles faster than 6:00 pace.  I didn't really do this for any particular training purpose except to break up the run and make it less boring, but I do think it might be helpful for me to do occasional runs like this in the future, not to mention that it was kind of fun, so maybe I'll do another at some point.

Busy day with family... finally about to get to the gym to run.  This weeklong pass at Lifetime Fitness will have been well worth it!  I got a whole bunch of new running gear today, which is always great.

Clockwise from upper left: Kinvara 4, Brooks running jacket, 2 x Run N Fun socks, Big Bang print Balaclava (Turtle Fur calls it Big Bang instead of Galaxy, but it still perfectly matches my shorts), Run N Fun running beanie, and running gloves built for a touch screen phone.  Fritz would love these. :)

Also of note, I've decided that I need to clean up my diet if I'm going to race as well as possible in 2014, so I'm going to work with Allie on fixing up the way that I eat and I'm excited to see what that does for me!

Run: 10 miles on treadmill.  Pretty boring.  Forced myself to go easy (exactly 75:00).  I was totally going to run outside today, but was doing things with my family all day and didn't get out the door until 9:30.  Got to Lifetime Woodbury at 9:45 and slogged away for 75 minutes.  New Kinvara 4s felt good.  

You know you're bored of running on a treadmill when there's almost no day to day fluctuation in mileage.  This week has been 10, 11, 9, 10, 11, 10 so far, with only one day outside (the one in a windchill of -17).  I'm going to run something longer outside tomorrow to break up the monotony.

Really nice weather outside, mid-30s.  Did a bit over 13 miles, quite rolling, at 7:28 average pace.  Probably should've gone even easier, as legs were moderately tired.  Running on a treadmill day after day really seems to tire out my legs.  I'll go really easy tomorrow, which is going to suck (windchills projected as reaching the -40s in the twin cities!)

For tomorrow's run, it's about time that I set a new PR for coldest temp ever run in.  Windchill of -48 just sounds fun, doesn't it? :)