The Next Step

Today I planned on doing an easy 8 miler. The weather was pretty nice when I started (40 degrees with some wind). As I started the run I felt pretty good. No effects from the long run on Sat. I am amazed at how my recovery is improving. After a couple of miles I found myself having to hold back from running faster. I am trying to make sure that I either run easy or hard. No in between paces. After about 4.5 miles the wind really picked up and it started to rain. There is nothing I worse than running in cold, windy, rainy conditions. As my clothing got wetter I got cold so I started picking up the pace to get back to the house. I didn't want to run fast today because I was planning a tempo run tomorrow but I just wanted to get out of the rain. I still felt good but was glad to get inside. I will see how I feel tomorrow before I decide if I will continue with the tempo.

62:50

It was raining pretty hard this morning when I got up so with memories of yesterday's run in my head I got on the treadmill. I planned on doing a tempo run today. I wanted to do a couple of mile warmup then use the 3rd mile to build up to tempo pace and try to run 4 miles at around 6:40 pace.

I felt pretty good as I warmed up so after 2 miles I started picking up the pace. The first couple of miles of tempo felt pretty easy but then I started to feel the effort. I was able to hold the pace the rest of the way and felt like I could have went faster if I wanted too. This is a good feeling. I was happy with the run and plan to build these into my program as I start to get closer to the racing season. Here are my splits for the tempo miles....

1st - 7:16

2nd - 6:48

3rd - 6:42

4th - 6:42

5th - 6:42

One thing about a treadmill it is easy to hold your pace!

59:05

It is starting to seem like this is a weather blog instead of a running blog. I know the weather can be a critical part of running but I am looking forward to the average days when there is no weather news to report. Last night we had a strong storm blow through Indiana with winds over 60 mph. Behind the winds was a big cold front so this morning we had 30 mph wind and around 10 degrees. Not a great day to hit the streets. Instead it was down to the basement and onto the treadmill. Just an easy day on tap for today so nothing much to report. I felt good the whole way and so far this week I have been unsuccessful in uping my mileage. It is hard for me to stay on the treadmill much longer than 8 miles but I will have to over come that if the weather stays bad. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

65:15

Got a little break in the weather today so I headed outside. It wasn't a great day (19 and windy) but probably the best I will get for the rest of the week so I wanted to take advantage of it. I started out into the wind so it was a little cool but I just ran easy. It felt good to be back on the road. After turning around and having the wind to my back it seemed like it warmed up 10 degrees. I did 8 x 100 m strides at the end of the run and it felt good to get the legs moving. I haven't done this as much as I would like. It is hard to do on the treadmill and it is hard to do on slick roads but was glad to get in the strides today. We have a big storm moving in tonight so I will probably be back on the treadmill tomorrow.

62:57

On the treadmill today. Nothing exciting just the normal 8 miler. I did want to look back on last month. I ended up with 232 miles for the month which is the highest mileage month for me ever. Before that Dec was my highest mileage month at 216. I am heading in the right direction. I know from here it will get tougher because of time constraints but I want to push on. Hopefully, I can raise the bar higher in Feb but I lose 2 days so we will see how it goes.

64:41

Today was long run day and I decided to take it up a mile. It was nice out (37, windy) and felt good to be off of the treadmill. I have been lucky so far this winter. I only had to do one long run on the treadmill so far. For some reason it seems like it always warms up on the weekends. I started off easy and felt pretty good throughout the run. I did have a little pain in my leg about half way through but it went away after a couple of miles. Not sure what that was about. I tried to push the pace a little the last few miles just to finish strong.

2:02:05