Denouement

Oh, dear.  Dare I confess?

About 8 reese's choc peanut butter hearts, three brownies (ok four), a slice of red velvet cake, a sugar cookie frosted, frosting as I made the frosting.  

Pancakes with syrup.  It was a most indulgent day.  Making up for lost time. 

On treadmill, 42 minutes.

Just to keep Luz watching, here's the lyrics from my favorite new downloaded song.  Kudos to my hubby Paul for finding this song.  I haven't found another Mew song I like nearly as much.  But I am listening to several right now.  Sifting through for another diamond.  Look up the song, it has an awesome tune:

Mew

Snow Brigade 

indoor warmup

Outside for run, including a 4 mile tempo. Just me and my mp3. Did miles 1 and 2 of the payson onion days 5k, then turned around, so I would have reliable splits.  I thought it'd be easier to find the mile markers in the dark, though.  I was always a second behind for marking splits.  I wanted to be 6:25 or faster.  6:23,6:23, 6:24, and I lost the last split dang it, hit the wrong button, I bet it was 6:23-6:27.  In the last mile, I listened to a Linkin Park song, which was great for keeping a fast rhythm and really fit that point in my tempo "PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY", that's not the title of the song, but those are the lyrics that fit.  I did the ball grab exercise, and will do core this evening.  

I am feeling the drag of tax season, but am thrilled to be able to train and to be able to do hard workouts. 

Slept in to try to avoid my son's cold.  

In afternoon ran 5 miles on tm in 40:23.

SI has been sore more consistently for the past four days, but today it was the most concerning yet.  Pain 2-3, not during run, but before and after. 

Walked .5 then stretched.  

Met MacK and Steve.  Plan was to do 8x hill repeats of heartbreak hill, but given how my SI has felt, and my rheumotologist's admonition to avoid hills, I decided to do the other option my coach gave me: 15-20 x 1 min on/off fartlek AND I decided to just do 15 of them, how conservative of me.  

Warmed up 2.4 miles, 19 minutes, then a potty break, then started the intervals.  It was snowing during the warm up and workout.  I'll give paces for the 1 min hard by gps (1-6:15, 2-5:57, 3- 6:23, 4-5:49, 5-5:47, 6-5:28, 7-6:04, 8-5:49, 9-5:53, 10-6:24, 11-5:45, 12-6:00, 13-5:35, 14-5:44, 15-5:27).  In the one minute rests I tried to get breathing in control but it never seemed to be quite enough rest.  Which is lame since they are equal farlek pieces.  Then we cooled down, but in the last mile of the cool down I found us at heartbreak hill, and decided to run up it like it was a hill repeat, so Steve joined me.  He was ahead, but I got 1:09, so not bad on tired legs.  My SI/ham were sore at times during run, but didn't feel them during hard parts and they feel fine afterward.  

Ball grab exercise at home.  Not sure if I will do core exercises or not, some of them put pressure on my SI.  I told myself I wouldn't modify my training if I can't handle the training I go on Embrel, but I don't want to spiral into where I was last year.  It's hard to know what to do. 

Ran 5 on the tm in about 40:40, felt pretty good, had a twinge or two in the SI.  

Drove to Bear River Lodge for family snowmobiling weekend.  Turns out there is no longer a restaurant at this "resort" which is 30 miles from the nearest town--surprise!  I did have some food and we had a kitchen, so we survived. 

High altitude - about 8,500.  Plan was 1:45 long run.  I knew my paces would be shot, and was afraid my only option would be a windy hilly highway.  Well, highway 150 was my only option, and my only option was to go downhill first, but the great news is that it was only snowy for one mile, the grade was only 1-2% (my eyeball estimate), there was a decent shoulder, and there weren't many cars.  So I ran 4 miles downhill (in the 7:30ish range), then 4 uphill (more like 9:00), 1:07 at this point, then got a drink and a bite of a banana from the cabin, then ran another 4.6, half downhill and half up.  It was so freezing, probably single digits, face frozen, hands frozen.  I hit 1:45 exactly and called it a day.

EXCEPT:  then my family was waiting for me, I got ready for snowmobiling as fast as I could.  When we started (around 9:30), it was about 17F, way too cold for my tykes.  We had a two seater and a three seater.  Paul started with the two little guys, and they would poke his back to tell him to slow down, or that they were cold every couple of minutes.  So Paul was stopping a lot.  We had about 13 miles to Mirror Lake, and we switched drivers, so now I had the two little kids.  I told them not to tap me to stop unless it was an emergency.  So they didn't tap me at all, we got there in about 20 minutes, I got above 50mph, but when we got there the two little guys were hysterical, apparently they had been crying the whole time, and I couldn't hear them, they were feeding off each other's misery, but they didn't tap me because I told them not to.  We spent almost an hour in a warming hut, massaging their cold extremities and their psyches.  They had alot more fun after that.  I am not the most sensitive mother :/  I got stuck in the snow with Benji twice when we were off in the powder.  Once we dug out on our own (with our mitted hands), once we were about to call for a dig out when my husband found me, and with his strength and good driving skills he was able to get us out, no problem.  It takes a lot of chutzpa to snowmobile.  I normally freeze when I am fearful, and that doesn't work well with snowmobiling because you have to keep your cool and keep up your speed.  It was  exhilerating, though.  Driving up a hill, not knowing what is at the top, but keeping up speed to make it up.  Crazy.  I think I like skiing better.

Evening.  I did an ab workout again.  My SI is still a bit sore, but pain level 1, nothing like Wednesday.  One shoulder hurts when I do one of the ab workouts, though.  Annoying.

Anyone see Johan Olsson's performance last night in 30km cross country skiing?  His early move was gutzy and I was so happy that he fought to hold onto a medal when he had so many hungry athletes upon him in that last stretch.