Monday; Jan. 31: After Sunday's awesome run, today the legs were quite tired and produced a sluggish, but steady run. Traysen and I took off right at barely daylight for an easy 7 miler. A good weight lifting session preceded our outing. Speaking of weight lifting: it has always been a desire to have an actual six pack on the abs. Not sure if I will ever get there since my diet isn't right for leaning out to that extent and since I only do abs about 2-4 times a week, usually being a simple crunch session or a P90X. It seems as though the more lean I become, my ribs only show more! Nevertheless, I will keep trying and if I just keep a solid core and keep a bit of definition, then I am happy.
Tuesday; Feb. 1: Off to work today....a good thing also since it is about -15 degrees outside this morning! A bit of fresh snow would have made for a great run, although short due to the cold. My temp. limit for an outdoor run is about -10 degrees and then only a short run of 5-8 miles. This would be one of those days I would whine for a treadmill!
Wednesday; Feb 2: The word from home is that it is minus 20 degrees this morning!! Luckily, I am in Reno, NV, where it is a warm 18 degrees (above zero)! After quieting the hallway at 4am, my weary bones fell out of bed at 8am and out the door by 9am....these lazy mornings in a hotels are sometimes a nice perk to the job.
Running in Reno is always an adventure. From the Grand Sierra Casino, it is a quick trot down to the Truckee River trail and then miles of the "not sure what you will run into." On one particular outing here, I ran west on the trail...for a short stretch before I realized I had gone past the local mental institution and many of the residents were hanging out on the trial....My first thought was they hopefully would not find the need to admit ole Sarah, but my next thought was to get the heck out of there! Now, running east is only slightly better since there are sometimes folks along the trail who may not have the best intentions! Fortunately, with today's cold temps, I had the trail to myself. As for the run itself...it was an odd outing with 7.5 miles covered. The body was sluggish but yet I managed to get 6 nice intervals done: 3 x 4 minutes; 2 x 3 minutes, and 1 x 2 minutes, with a 2 minute recovery trot between efforts. . The cold air made the lungs work harder and I had to constantly work on monitoring the effort in order to complete the interval time planned. (yes, I boggled one of the 4 minute intervals and had to stop in the middle to slow the heart rate and recoup some oxygen)
Thursday; Feb. 3: Downtown Philly again....a warm gym workout was in order this morning since running outside here is virtually impossible without stopping every city block. The Holiday Inn has one of those closet gyms I have written about before. BUT...it beats not working out! Some free weights made for a decent shoulders/chest/abs effort and then it was to the ellipticalfor an easy 8 miler while watching Rachael Ray. A nondescript and easy day of getting the job done. I did, however, make the commitment to the Cheyenne 50k on April 23rd. The entry is in and the training is in full swing!
Friday; Feb. 4: Traysen and I had a great little outing of only 6 miles, but the temps were almost balmy at 25 degrees with crystal blue skies and a light layer of fresh snow on the dirt roads. So, for those that are noticing, that is two easy days in a row. Many training regimes follow a hard day, easy day pattern and this often works well for those folks who have a routine lifestyle of work, family, running, etc BUT my lifestyle is anything but routine. With work, several factors cause adjustments to any sort of "routine." My actual work schedule can have long days with 8 hours of flying or it can be an easy day with 3 hours of flying; however, other factors such as time zone changes, time of work day changes, and commutes to/from work force me to often have two or more easy days in a row, followed by two hard days in a row. On the one hand, this theory could be labeled as an "excuse" but I look at it as more of a way to make do with what I have to work with. An excuse would be, "I am not going to run/workout today, etc since work is getting in the way or because I was awake for 20 hours yesterday." It is better to do form of workout and do the best I can given the circumstances. As I have said for quite some time, "My dogs don't eat Alpo, so I gotta go work for steak!"
Saturday; Feb. 5th: This was another amazing day in Cheyenne Mtn State Park. A few running girlfriends and I met for a 7am start and off we went onto the twisting, climbing trails. With a few short sections of new snow we were able to see plenty of rabbit and mountain lion tracks on the Zook, Boulder, and Blackmer trails and at one point we spotted about 5-7 turkeys! At about 8 miles, Lynne was feeling her oats and offered to go with me on the remote Talon/South Talon trails. This turned out to be a great climb into fresh snow with no tracks of any sort...just the tracks from the animals known as Lynne and Sarah! After Lynne finished up the 11+ miles, I unloaded some clothes and took off to the west again and ventured onto the Coyote Run, Boulder, and Raccoon Ridge trails. This route produced a nice solid climb for about 3 miles and then the easy cruiser back to the parking lot yielded about 17 miles total.
This long run was a good confidence builder and it was just too much fun being out with Lynne, Lori, and Dee.....we always have a fun outing and cut each other no slack!!!
Sunday; Feb. 6th: After a fitful night of sleep, today's run started out quite late and quite slow, but as the bones warmed up and the fresh powder of snow for motivation, it turned out to be a fairly nice 9 miler. Traysen and I had a great time making fresh tracks of our own and seeing all the fox, coyote, rabbit and deer tracks.
Fresh tracks from the house are always a treat.
Billy from the Family Circus is Traysen' hero!
Summary: A good week of running as planned. The training for the 50K in April is well underway and is going strong. With any luck and barring injury, it should be a good race.
One aspect I have been noticing lately is that my climbing ability is not that good. Oh, I can make it up most any hill at a slow steady slog, but I would like to be able to power up those hills and not lose so much speed....or huff n puff so much! Next week will be a different week with the focus being on that hill work and more intervals.
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