Totals: 40 miles, mostly road. 3 hours swimming. A nice recovery week after the hard snowy miles in the woods.
Sunday AM: 6 miles treadmill. Mr. P was doing geeky work stuff all day, so I had only had a small window of exercise availability in the early morning… when it was 13 degrees (“Feels like -6”). I just couldn’t bring myself to go outside — the polar wind was brutal. I drove to the gym and gladly pounded out 6 non-stop 9-minute miles in climate-controlled comfort. After hearing that an acquaintance-of-an-acquaintance got frostbite on her nose doing 15 miles along the Charles River that same morning, I feel it was a wise decision.
Monday AM: 8 miles road, Bread and Butter loop. I would normally be taking a recovery day, but this was the one morning all week that was not forecast to be in the single-digits. 25 degrees with no wind… balmy! The sidewalks in the Watertown portion of the run were impeccably clear — bravo, citizens of Watertown! You are an example to my fellow residents of Belmont, who apparently could not be bothered to shovel 2 inches of snow off of the sidewalk to avoid creating public ice rinks that force pedestrians onto the roads. (I get snippy when I’m cold.)
Tuesday AM: 60 minutes swimming.
Wednesday AM: 50 minutes spinning, 10 minutes rowing.
Wednesday PM: 3 miles road. Work turned me into a ball of stress, and my (intentional) block of running recovery had my legs feeling wooden. Since everyone else in the world took a 90 minute lunch, I left a bit early to do a small shakeout run in body-numbing cold and wind.
Thursday AM: 60 minutes swimming.
Friday AM: 60 minutes swimming. A lot of time in the pool, but oddly I’ve found the more I swim, the quicker time passes. If I only go once a week, the hour just crawls by…
Friday PM: 10 miles road, Pancake loop. I have my Bread and Butter loop, but I also have my Pancake loop… because it’s flat. There are various permutations to the Pancake loop depending on how far I want to go, but today I cut across Alewife to the Minuteman bike path. It was reverse split run simply because the three-day recovery made my legs twinge at a 10 min/mile pace until about mile 4, when I bumped it up to 9 min/mile and then a couple 8:30 min/miles. On the way back I did do a short hill. It was about 35 degrees and windy. There’s saying snow next week so I’m enjoying it while I can.
Saturday AM: 13 miles road, Bread and Butter loop plus flat miles near Fresh Pond. I only had a limited window to run this morning, so I decided to do a hilly road run. Temps were a nice 35 degrees, with a definite warmth in the air.
I want to post a picture, but since I’m not about to take selfies of myself running on the road, here’s the lovely egg/spinach/fatty bacon breakfast that I treated myself to post-run:
Half-marathon Refuel
Saturday PM: 2 mile walk, Fresh Pond. It wasn’t really that warm, but warm enough (45 degrees) to take a family walk around the Fresh Pond Reservoir. We brought Little Boy’s bicycle. He actually walked most of it because cycling made him cold, but he got back on the bike at the end. At the end, I called my father to wish him a Happy Birthday. My Dad is a class act.
Mr. P helping Little Boy up the slippery slope
