From the house down to LPT out and back. Around noon. Sunny, 36F, not windless.

Lots of surface variety, dry asphalt, hard snow/slush, mud, ice.

14.25/2:06:49/8:54

Lunch run. Jensen park/syracuse. Forgot to pack socks. Sunny, 39F, light headwind in all directions. Ran last mile in 7:36 (I have to make note of my paces and times so that in September I can look back and see massive improvement).

7 mi/59:42/8:32

Easy late lunch run today from Jensen park. Sunny, 40F, usual wind.

Run at lunch. Sunny, 40F, wind in all the wrong places (I don't like wind).

3.5 mile warmup, 2 x 2 miles with .5 easy in between. 2 mile cooldown. I wanted to keep the two mile pace under 8:00 per mile. Blew it for the first mile, but made up for it with the other three. Here's the splits for the workout:  1) 8:07  2) 7:43     1/2 mile easy  3) 7:52   4) 7:49

This felt really good. I've noticed that when I run faster, I feel better during the run...does that make any sense?

10 mi/1:24:06/8:25 avg.

Late afternoon 8.5 mile trudge along the LPT. Mostly cloudy, 52F, headwind in both directions (seriously!). Felt pretty beat up today, took it real slow.

Do any of you drink "Ensure"? I use it as a recovery drink. It's loaded with protein and carbs and vitamins and such. For some reason I associate Ensure with the elderly, and so felt a little sheepish the first couple of times I bought it, like I was buying adult diapers or something (which I know I'll be doing someday if I'm lucky enough to live that long). Anyway, the stuff tastes great.

Sunset 6 on the LPT. Post rain, 40F, clean air!

It had rained all day and I assumed I'd be running on the treadmill tonight, but the rain stopped just as I was driving home from work. Easy run but when I turned around at mile three to come back, I had turned just ahead of a runner who was coming my direction and I used his presence to push a fast 4th mile out @ 7:43...fast for me anyway. 

6 mi/51:31/8:35

Rest day. EZ 4 on the LPT. Mostly sunny, 46F, light wind.

No treadmill for over a week...starting to feel human again. :-)

Nice late morning run. Partly cloudy with temps in the upper 30's, light wind. Nothing special today. Didn't feel particularly great, had designs on going further but puttered out at 13.65 miles. I think it could be because I started late in the day and only ate a bagel and a bannana this morning.

This coming week should be a challenge keeping the mileage up. My wife and I have a floral shop and Valentines is this Saturday. This week should be long and crazy (hopefully!). Plus alot of moisture in the weather forecast this week portends some quality treadmill time if nothing else. We'll see.

13.65 mi/2:01:42/8:55

AM TM  Need I say more?

6 mi./52:50/8:48

PM  From the house to LPT out and back. Mostly cloudy, 37F, good wind heading out, tailwind coming back. Some unavoidable slush.

7.2 mi./1:02:43/8:43

I'm front loading the week in anticipation of work getting busier as the week progresses.

PM on the TM

Taking slow and easy to the extreme...for self preservation.

Lunchtime run from Jensen park/Syracuse. Snowing, 31F, wind from the South.

After 2.5 mi. warmup I did 8 x 2 mins. @ 7:00-7:30 pace. Then cooldown.

Ugh. Usually if I don't feel good, my legs will still perk up after a couple of intervals, but not today. Still really glad to be able to get this run in, and glad it was outdoors as my forecast for the rest of the week calls for mostly treadmill with a 50% chance of goose egg.

Five for fighting, on the treadmill tonight.

42:50/8:34

Easy 4 on the awesome treadmill.

33:32/8:23

Good long day working. Only three or four hours of sleep last night. No run today. Time for spaghetti!

Didn't get out until 2:00. Ran on the roads around the neighborhood. Mostly sunny, 38F and some light wind. Test drove the new shoes, they felt great, better than I did.

After about 2.5 miles I had to stop at my house for a bathroom break, unusual for me. Also I realized that I very rarely stop during a run. Even for workouts or whatever. I think that mentally it's hard for me to stop and then start running again.

Nice run this afternoon after a short day at work. Moslty cloudy, 45F, little or no wind. It was pretty warm out today. I've felt pretty sluggish the last two days, so after 4 sluggish miles today I tried to run miles 5 and 6 faster to see if that helped, and it did.

Mini tempo splits: 7:42 and 7:47.

7.5 mi/1:03:20/8:27

Treadmill this afternoon. After 2.5 miles I did 6 x 3 mins. @ 7:30 pace with 2 mins. easy in between, then cooldown to 7 miles. I walked for 4 mins. then ran another mile @ 8:36.

7 mi./59:16/8:28

I managed a mid-morning escape, and ran in the sun, though it was pretty cold. Started about 9:30 am at jensen park/3000west/syracuse. Started really slow and after 4 miles tried to run a little faster for the next four.

Miles 1-4 avg 8:55 pace.

Miles 5-8 avg 8:11 pace. Mile 9 @ 8:36

total: 9 mi./1:17:09/8:34

Easy 8 on the LPT. Late afternoon run under sunny skies and 40 degree temps.

Legs were heavy and non-compliant throughout the run.

10 miles for lunch. Sunshine, mid forties, light wind out of the North. Mostly a steady state run but ran the last mile a little faster @ 7:52. Legs returned to the team today.

10 mi./1:26:47/8:41

From the house to LPT out and back. Overcast sky, 40F, light wind. Got started around 12:30 pm. Never really got going today. Ran mile 8 in 7:32 to try to change it up a bit, but even with that my pace for the rest of the miles remained flat.

This next week may be an easier week as I want to start training in earnest beginning in March with an eye to the Ogden HALF marathon on May 16th. During the those 11 weeks I'll probably do minimal speedwork and mostly focus on building my mileage base to 60-70 MPW, hopefully running several 60+ weeks consecutively, with minimal taper, essentially training through the half marathon. If anyone has any suggestions/wisdom/advice they'd like to share regarding this rough plan, please do so as I've never really trained for a race before, and would greatly appreciate any insight(s) you have.

Recovery run. Late lunch time on the LPT under mostly cloudy skies and warm 47 degrees with little wind. Felt good to run in short sleeves, first time in a couple of months. Took about 4 miles to feel warmed up. Starting at mile 7 I did 6 striders at .1 with .1 easy (40-45 seconds). Something must be wrong with my garmin because it shows my fastest pace in mile 7 as 5:09. If I was moving that fast it must have been for maybe .0001 second! I did feel good today though.

8.25 mi/1:11:46/8:41

Easy 8 for lunch. Mostly sunny, 55F, some wind. Jensen park/syracuse trail.

Aaahhh warmth!

Easy six on the Syracuse trail. Mostly cloudy, some wind, 50F.

Glad it's an easy week because my legs have felt trashed, heavy, crampy the last couple of runs.

6 mi./51:50/8:38

I have a date with the treadmill tonight, 7:00 PM. I can hardly wait! What should I wear?

Well, the date went pretty well. We've been dating off and on all winter so we're comfortable enough with each other by now. Still I like to take it slow. She really gets my heart beating, and it seems like the longer we're together, the more sweaty I get. I have a feeling that no matter how long we're together, I'll only go so far with her. My mind does tend to wander when I'm with her...okay, I'm done. It wasn't that great a metaphor anyway.

6 mi/50:57/8:30

Since it's an easy week for me I'm trying a little experiment. I'm not going to run today, I'll run 4-6 miles very easy tommorrow and then a long run on Sunday. I usually take Saturday off, but I've been wondering if it's better to run just a little the day before a race/long run/hard effort. So, we'll see if this works for me.

On another note, Snoqualmie has a discussion about cadence counts on her blog yesterday. I've never really thought much about how many steps I take each minute, but the discussion got me thinking so last night on the treadmill I counted my steps for a minute. I did this three seperate times at different paces, and each time my count was below 160! What the heck. I've been reading how the average should be between 160-180...so, is this something I should work on? Are my strides too long? Will my average pace per mile come down if I work on increasing my cadence? So many things to wonder.

It's been three months since my last run on the fire break road (dec. 1st, '08). It was so nice to be up there again, dodging rocks, jumping puddles, climbing and descending. Since my last run there, I have increased my speed through running consistently all winter, and without even trying I pr'd this course substantially today! I may not be a particularly gifted runner, but I consider my ability to run a gift.

February ends, in my mind winter is over and I feel like I've met my goal of running consistently over the winter. I'm looking forward to ramping up the effort a bit this Spring as I prepare for the Ogden Half marathon, and then the real fun begins as I spend the summer getting ready for the TOU marathon in September. I've never been this fit before, especially at this time of year, and I look forward to venturing into new territory with higher mileage and more intense workouts over the next several months!