Weekly total: 30 miles trail, 11 miles treadmill, 2 hrs swimming, assorted other stuff.
Sunday AM: 11.5 miles trail, 800 ft elevation gain, 3 hrs. Right now, I need hard miles. Road and treadmills have a place in training, but it’s the hard miles — the miles trudging through 3 inches of snow on rocky technical hilly trails in the woods — that will get me physically and mentally ready for Miwok. So I drove to Middlesex Fells, threw some Yaktrax on my Gore-tex trail runners, and drudged through the woods for the next 3 hours. Hard miles (my pace ranged from 12 minutes to 18 minutes per mile) but I had a blast. I freaking love being in the woods in the winter. Physically I could have gone for another hour, but I was due at home to take Little Boy to a birthday party. Days like today = life, awesome.
Middlesex Fells, Snowy January Sunday
I'm SUCH a dork
Monday AM: 7.25 miles trail, 650 feet elevation gain, 2 hours. More hard miles in Middlesex Fells. I only had two hours to run and it was hard-going on the Skyline Trail; yesterday’s hikers left icy patches on the rocks and I, being overly-cautious lest I end up fracturing bones/splitting skins on piles of pointy rocks, slowed considerably on these sections.
Winter's Stark Splendor
Monday PM: 30 minutes stepmill, 40 minutes spinning. We signed Little Boy up for a “school’s out” camp at my gym so I could run some boring errands and he could have fun. Around 2pm, my errands were done and I was missing my Little Boy! I decided to go to the gym and get a head-start on this semester’s reading while working my Vo2 on the stepmill and getting some stationary bike recovery. After I finished and showered, I picked up Little Boy in the Kid’s Zone. He was not happy to see me. He was running around like a little maniac with all the other little maniacs, and he wanted to stay there forever. We will both sleep good tonight!
Tuesday AM: 60 minutes swimming. First time in the pool for more than two weeks — I needed to give my sinuses a break after the calamitous illness that ravaged them.
Wednesday AM: 6 miles treadmill, mild speed intervals, light weights. The big snowstorm that was predicted to slam Boston turned out to be about two inches… but man, it’s cold outside. At least the roadways to the gym are clear.
Thursday AM: 5 miles treadmill, some speed bursts, 15 minutes spinning. It was 5 degrees (“feels like -12”) this morning. This is the kind of weather when the treadmill becomes an oasis.
Friday AM: 60 minutes swimming. The New Year’s Resolution crowd is slowing drifting out of the pool. But there is one woman I see routinely who does alternating laps of freestyle and butterfly. Bad ass butterfly. Last winter I tried to start doing butterfly, figuring it would be easy with my new flippers. I wound up pulling a muscle in my neck/shoulder and was unable to turn my head for a few days. So I am so impressed by this lady (who’s probably in her late twenties and has a pudgy swimmer’s build), flying across the pool doing one of the most arduous cardio exercises known to humanity. Me, I crawl across the pool and throw in an occasional backstroke.
Saturday AM: 12 miles trail, 850 ft elevation gain, 3 hours. More hard miles at Middlesex Fells. It’s remained cold enough that the snow is still somewhat powdery, making the packed cover on the trails easy to run on. I started out running in 17 degrees but warmed up quickly on the Skyline Trail and by the time I finished it was a whooping 35 degrees and felt like springtime.
Panorama of Reservoir & Trail
