Denouement

Adorable picture. I am always amazed when I read what you do in training and then think about how you go on to work and mom life...WOW!!

Ouch! Bracing. Very impressive.

"I felt like I was in college again, seeing what my body would do for me and pushing it to puke point."

Haha very nice. I remember track workouts for xc and know this 'puke point' all too well. Nice splits! Way to go!

Hi, Michelle!

Do you not have access to an indoor track? How about a treadmill?

I did my first indoor track of the season just yesterday(16 x 400). It was 38F and windy outside. Inside, it was a treat running in shorts and singlet!

I do think the cold temps and extra clothing slow you some but if you're warmed up enough(20-30 minutes), you shouldn't be at risk just for running faster.

How cold does it get?

Cold weather makes running VO2 max pace hard, and I would say perhaps even ineffective for training purposes, but mild marathon pace tempos work very well. But a marathoner needs very little VO2 Max work, and that can wait for warmer weather.

When there is a lot of snow on the ground, and it is time to do something fast, a fartlek like 2 minutes fast, 2 minutes easy until you feel you've done enough is a very good workout.

Katie- sorry for the slow response. The weather will get quite cold in the winter. Last year I think was unusually cold, with 3-4 weeks of straight 0-10F. It was that stretch that got me thinking about treadmills for this year. I just bought an industrial used one from a gym just before St. George. I am saving it for really cold times. It only goes as fast as 6 min miles, so only mile repeats or perhaps 1200's would be appropriate intervals, but it will be great for tempos in the freezing temps. You just can't run with friends when you are running on the treadmill and I have lately developed a quite nice group of buddies to train with. I have an indoor track 30 min away, but its the same one from college and I have some negative emotions about indoor tracks. They are so stuffy, and the people on this track don't understand about keeping the first couple of lanes open for speed. I would be dodging people and saying "Track!" so much I probably couldn't sustain a rhythm.

Sasha-so are you saying I can get away with no V02 max work from now until May? Or just cut it out when the temps go below 20, or only do fartlek?

I've done almost no V02 Max work between DesNews and St. George, and most of it was allowing the pace to drift into VO2 Max zone while trying to catch some imaginary wild guy during a tempo run. This got me into the best marathon/half-marathon shape of my life. Granted, I would not have done as well had I raced a 5 K or 10 K, but I was hitting the times en route in my tempo runs that I would have considered very good (although not PR) for a race on the same terrain. Besides, those short races do not pay well even if you are really good, so I do not care that much about those, except for the limiting effect - you cannot race a marathon faster than you race a 5 K. However, I think you can push your 5 K performance really really far if you focus on pushing your threshold. 5 K becomes a weird race when you do, or maybe a marathon becomes the weird one - you find yourself sprinting in a marathon, and strolling along in a 5 K. So once you reach that, some VO2 Max work might be helpful, but I would do strides first and try to get as much out of them as possible. What I do not like about VO2 Max work is that being anaerobic, it puts too much stress on the body, more than optimal. For a 5 K - 10 K runner it is the necessary evil because after their threshold is maxed out the key to growth is to learn to go beyond threshold as far as possible and hold it for as long as possible (anaerobic capability development), but that ability for a marathoner is probably useless at best and can even be counter-productive.