faster with age

     Another 7 miles with a light snow falling. 8:08 ave pace.

          Snow and cold again. I went for another 7 miles at 8:29 pace. I saw 5 rooster pheasants on my run today. 3 of them jumped within easy range and the season just ended last week. Of course I don't usually carry a shotgun on my runs anyway.

     Ran 4 miles in the morning then did a bike ride in the evening. It was my first ride of the year on snow and some of it wasn't packed. It was only a couple of inches deep but that's enough to really slow you down. I went 15 miles and it took 15 to 20 minutes longer than normal because of the snow. I ended up later than planned and it got pretty dark by the time I finished. The temp was down to 10 deg by then.

      Played basket ball for an hour and a half later.

     It was  -12 deg this morning when I left the house for my run. I went 7 miles at an easy 8:32 AP. I had an impressive ice goatee and enough ice on my eyelashes that they kept sticking together. The sun had warmed things to a balmy -5 by the time I was finished. 

     Something  I find interesting. When running a high preformance snow mobile you have to change the jetting to get best preformance at high and low altitude to keep your air/fuel mixture from being too lean or rich because of the more dense oxygen  at low altitude and thinner air up high. The same adjustments have to be made to compensate for high and low temperatures. If your machine is jetted to run well in sub zero temps it will be too rich and bogging down on those warm 50 to 60 deg afternoons in the spring because the cold air is more dense than the warm air. Why dosen't it feel like running at low altitude when running in very cold temps? In fact I think it feels harder. I have read things that say once you get below 40 deg you get slower the colder it gets. Hmmm.

     I ran 10 miles this afternoon with a lot of snow coming down. Not much wind so it was very peaceful. When I first left the snow was a couple of inches deep and felt very soft and nice to run on but did slow my pace quite a bit. I did a short 3 miles out and back to the house and stopped for what was going to be a few minutes. I ended up eating lunch and not getting back out to finish the run for well over an hour. When I got back out the snow was about 4 inches deep and much slower to run in. I was able to run in car tracks a lot of the way but even that snow was quite loose and my pace was over a minute slower than it felt. I went 7 more miles at an ave 9:20 pace that didn't feel that easy.