Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

The holidays are over, our stuff is moved into the new house, and school is about to start again. That means it's time for me to get back to a regular schedule, and that means it's time for me to start preparing for the Squaw 50. I've got a plan loosely prepared, but I won't commit it to writing just yet as I haven't completely thought it through yet. For now, all that matters is consistency. Consistency and hills.

Today was just a simple run on the flats. Seven miles on a treadmill in 50 minutes. My legs are no longer feeling destroyed, so I hope to run up Grove Creek tomorrow morning, weather permitting. 

AM: I went to the gym with Catherine before she went to work. Four miles on the treadmill in 30 minutes while watching Dreamgirls. I like the AF gym's system of running the same movie all day in the Cardio Cinema, but not when the movie isn't a great one for the treadmill, which has been the case for the last couple of days. not bad movies, just not good treadmill movies.

PM: I took a break from the unpacking and headed to Grove Creek for a run up the canyon. Down low the trail was great, and where there was snow it was well packed. But the further up I went, the fewer footprints there were and the sketchier the footing became. It was never treacherous, however.

After a while, I was following a lone pair of footprints (Brooks Cascadias), and the person who had made them passed me on his way back down at about 1.6 miles. It turns out he had turned around almost immediately before that, and soon I was breaking fresh trail.

Here things got tricky, because the trail had been traveled by others, but since the last time it had been covered by a couple of inches of snow. The result was that the ground was uneven, but I couldn't see the unevenness--I could only feel it as my feet broke through the snow.

I reached the bench at exactly two miles and decided to sit and enjoy the view. After a while I decided to follow through with my original plan and try to reach Indian Spring. I left my jacket and my beanie on the bench and headed up the trail, but it seems as through few people have traveled past the bench this winter. Soon, I was running on about a foot of soft snow covered by an inch or less of icy crust. That meant that with every step the snow would support me for a fraction of a second before I would break through.

This was annoying, and it slowed me down, but it caused a bigger, unexpected problem. Because tall-size tights aren't, and because I was wearing low-cut socks (a poor winter choice when your tights are too short), I had several inches of exposed skin on my lower leg. As I would break through the crusty snow on the surface, it would scrape my legs, and it wasn't long before it broke the skin and my ankles were bleeding. So, I decided to turn around a little more than a quarter mile past the bench. (Also, I saw some large paw prints that may or may not have belonged to something man-eating. Yikes).

The run back down was fun but uneventful. The end.

It's soggy out there today. Fortunately, I was planning to run on the treadmill, so the weather did nothing to interfere with my plans. After a one-mile warmup, I alternated between half miles at 6:00 and half miles at 8:00. I've learned that any sort of interval is better than a steady pace on the treadmill, at least for making the time go by.

51:11

AM: Quick, easy run at the gym with Catherine before she went to work. 3.6 miles

30:00

PM: We were in Salt Lake for one of Catherine's prenatal visits, so I planned to run the BST afterward, for old time sake. But the weather made that impossible, at least for me--I'm just not that tough. And the appointment went longer than either of us expected, so I didn't have enough time, either. (You can read about the visit at puffyrunner.blogspot.com.) Instead, I went to the gym in Sugarhouse for some treadmill miles. It's a bit of a meathead gym. After a quick warmup, I ran for 30 minutes on the 15 percent grade. most of it was at 4.5 mph, but I sped up to 5 mph for the last five minutes. After finishing on the flat, I wound up with 4.4 miles

45:44

AM: Just an early morning treadmill run at the gym. Early as in 11:00 AM. Ouch. Anyways, I knew we were running the Beat the New Year 5K later, but I still wanted a few extra miles for the day. I did a short warmup, then my little half-mile-on-half-mile-off workout until I hit 5.5 miles.

37:50

PM: Beat the New Year 5K. First of all, it was freaking cold. Second of all, the roads were snow-packed. These factors combined to mostly kill my and Catherine's motivation, and if we hadn't pre-registered we might not have gone (Catherine's note: we definitely would not have gone). But we went, if for the T-shirt more than anything, and I think we're glad we did. At least now we can say we've done it.

For a while I've thought it would be cool to tick off the sub-17 goal minutes before the year ended. But then I got injured, and then I stopped doing anything that remotely resembles 5K training, so I knew it would take a miracle for that to happen. And when we heard about the snowy roads, I knew sub-17 was absolutely impossible for me at the time. So I decided to just run with Catherine, but she would have none of that, so when they said go I found myself charging off the front with the lead group.

Almost immediately we were running down a slippery hill on the east side of Sugarhouse Park (I wore trail shoes--great idea), and I found myself in a group of eight or nine. But as we started up the hill on the other side I started coming off the back and even if I had the ability to push harder, I didn't have the motivation. Halfway through our first lap, I found myself as first straggler, running alone behind a group of five. I settled into my groove, and halfway through the second lap I caught and passed one of the lead group who had had a moderate blowup. As far as I can tell, he's the only runner I caught.

I crossed the line in about 18:41, according to my watch (they were only taking time for the winners), which I believe was good for fifth, then I wiped the snot and drool of my face and turned around to jog the course backward until I found Catherine. I met up with her at the start of the out-and-back, and we ran in together. Understandably, Catherine was not in race mode, and we enjoyed a pleasant conversation together as we ran. She beat the new year, too, with a minute to spare.

My family always celebrates the new year with donuts, which apparently is some sort of Scandinavian tradition, so after the race we went to Krispy Kreme for donuts and hot chocolate. The dining room was closed, but the drive-through was open, so my first "meal" of the year was a hot chocolate (not too bad) and a custard donut (pretty freaking good).

I planned to run during the day, probably an out-and-back from our house up Grove Creek to the bench, but we were  busy with other things and by the time I got ready to go it was late enough that I was afraid of running out of daylight while on the trail. So, Catherine and I set about unpacking more boxes, planning to run at the gym that night. But it turned out the "best gym ever" closed at 7:00, so I wound up bundling up and hitting the road a little after 7:00. I got off the road as soon as possible and ran an out-and-back on a bike path near our house (packed snow) followed by a loop around the temple for 9.1 slow and steady miles. Once I got going the run was actually quite enjoyable, although my elbows were painfully frozen by the time I was done. It's strange--I've frozen just about everything at least once of the past few years (part of training through the winter, I suppose), but this is the first time I've frozen my elbows.