Objective: easy/moderate 29F, light snow flurries turning into steady snowfall. About 1cm of snow on everything except the pavement at first; snow sticking everywhere by end of run. Streets very icy, sidewalks tolerable. 20 min. strength work A pretty good run. The snow is always nice from the viewpoint of aesthetics. That is, a run in the dark is no longer a run in the dark. Being able to see more of my surroundings adds a lot of the quality of my running experience. Slipped a little at times, but I did pretty well considering I had no Yaktrax on.
I have some questions for my fellow fastrun bloggers. The first is about naps. I recorded yesterday afternoon's nap (yeah, I got a nap!) on today's post because it occurred to me that it only affects today's run. I used to add naps to the previous day's post, ie on the day of the nap. But this way, the nap plus the night sleep will add up to a total number of hours that have their impact on the next run. Does that make sense? Which way do you all do it? Never nap? Well, which way would you do it if you did? My second question is about cadence. I may have mentioned this before, since I've been wondering about it for a while. There is a school of thought that recommends a cadence of 170-180 (about 3 foot falls per second), no matter what your overall pace is. So an "easy" pace would still clip along at that cadence, but the steps would be very small and not very powerful. I have yet to be able to achieve this. No matter how small I make my steps, moving my legs/feet that fast always gets my heart rate up. And in the first couple of miles of run, when I'm warming up, it's just plain uncomfortable. What are your thoughts about this philosphy and what is your cadence:pace relationship?
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