Weather - 14 degrees, sunny. Today I felt well enough to give a hard effort for hill repeats. The weather did not make things easy, as it was cold with about an inch of fresh snow on the ground. I ran 1.5 miles to the arboretum as a warm up, stretched a bit, then did 15 x 100 meter hill repeats. As I ran the repeats I closely monitored the state of my right achilles tendon, since it had flared a bit a few days ago, but it felt fine throughout. The past couple of days were spent recovering from Sundays blitzkrieg of 2 threshold runs and a tough stationary bike workout. Today my body felt recovered, and I was thus able to put in a solid effort on the hills - I ran up the hill at 5k pace, pushed strongly as I crested the top, then glided down the hill. Until today I would always be spent near the top, and would have to slow down to a walk-like pace to recover on the downhill, but today my lungs never gave out, and my hips/quads had a driving force to propel me up and over for each rep. I had planned to do 12 reps, but when I reached that amount I realized I still had a lot left in the tank, and so extended it to 15. A workout like todays helps my confidence, as I can feel my overall strength and running ability improving. Although spring officially starts the 3rd week of March, I am counting the final day of February as the end of winter training, which means only 9 more days until I achieve my first goal of the year - "to achieve a solid season of winter training" - As this is my 96th consecutive day of running in all kinds of nasty weather, I am almost there. #96 z.m. - #10 | 