Thursday, February 6, 2014

Eight Miles on Ice, Snow and Exhausted Legs/Brain/Body

  Throughout the last 3 nights I have probably gotten a total of 10 hours of sleep, Dorian has been having stomach pains and nightmares and so I've been up with him. Yesterday morning I was supposed to run my 8 miles on fresh frozen snow with ice on top, but from midnight to 5 AM Dorian was off and on and the cats were screaming at some strange cat on our porch. I decided not to go out and run, made it an ab/upper body workout day instead. 
  Early this morning I thought for sure I wasn't going to get to run again, from just after midnight to some time before 4 AM Dorian was tossing and turning, crying out and getting angry with something. I changed my alarm from 4:10 AM to 5:05 AM and decided that Rocky and I wouldn't run the trails but the roads by the house. When my alarm did go off, I didn't want to get up... I was seriously contemplating saying no today and just getting what sleep I could.
  I got up, took my time getting out the door around 5:40 AM after eating a Cinnamon Raisin English Muffin with some Jif Natural Creamy "Touch of Honey" Peanut Butter and some much needed coffee. It was 16 degrees with a feels like 5 degrees, winds at 8 mph NNW so I had my stupid face mask that just went around my neck, cheeks and nose along with my hat and headband for my head. My driveway was ice, so it was quite a feat to make it all the way to the road without falling on my butt.
   My legs were sore, Bicycle Crunches seem to really leave my quads sore the next day - especially 5 sets of 300 reps (1,500 total). It was slow going for a while, trying to decide on what route to take for an 8 miler in a hurry...
  Once we figured it out, Rocky and I were going at an easy/slow pace and having to do some quick thinking to make up for the lack of distance with the route I chose. (If I am not making sense, it is because I am brain-dead and I seriously need some sleep).
   We managed to get our 8 miles in, finishing in 1:27:10 with an average pace of 10:53 min/mile, elevation gain of 122 feet with a loss of 121 feet. There were a lot of slippery, icy spots on the roads that kept me from getting up to any good pace after my legs eased up me. I survived though, and that is all that matters.
Laps/splits were:
Mile 1 - 11:30
Mile 2 - 11:16
Mile 3 - 11:07
Mile 4 - 11:01
Mile 5 - 10:52
Mile 6 - 10:42
Mile 7 - 10:35
Mile 8 - 10:05

      Tomorrow's plan was 5 or 6 miles, but I am not honestly sure when I want to run those and I have a 5k race Saturday morning. The plan on Saturday is to take Rocky for a 7-8 miler before dawn, rest up a bit and then head to the race and just enjoy the 5k, then maybe finish up with 3-4 miles if I've got the energy to do so. I am seriously thinking of taking tomorrow off, and call this my cutback week.... or something like that.

No comments:

Post a Comment