Finishing off February

I'm glad to see February come to a close. It's not that it was a bad month running-wise, but once it's behind us, the worst of the winter weather is generally behind us too. My last lap on the indoor track last year was run on Feb. 11th. The most recent run on it this year was Feb. 20th. I'm hoping that the coming of March means that I've run my last indoor run until next December.

This last week went fairly well. I wasn't sure how my legs would respond to a 90+ mile week after last week's 100 miles, but they did well. I tried to help them by splitting up some longer runs into two shorter ones and just focusing on getting rested for my tempo and long runs. It worked out alright, even though I had to deal with some snow and cold toward the end of the week.

Monday - 11 in the morning, 5 in the afternoon

Tuesday - 7 in the morning, 4 in the afteroon.

Wednesday - 11 total, including 2 easy, 4x6 minutest tempo, 4x5 minutes tempo, and 1.5 easy. I moved the workout up one day because of impending snow and cold on Thursday.

Thursday - 6 in the morning, 4 in the afternoon. The predicted snow and cold came, but since it wasn't windy I headed outside for both runs and was actually fairly comfortable despite the single digits.

Friday - 13 miles. Another cold day. 6 degrees when I ran.

Saturday - 9 miles with 8 strides. A little bit warmer, but not much.

Sunday - 22.4 miles including 2 easy, 2x12 minutes tempo, 10 miles easy, 15 minutes tempo, and a little over 3 miles easy. I kind of screwed up on the mileage on this one. I had planned on doing somewhere between 20 and 21, but I played the dangerous game of doing math in my head and adjusting my route in the middle of the run and ended up running too far out with no choice but to run all the way back. This wouldn't have been a big deal if the weather had been as predicted, which was low 40s. When I started the run at 10:00, it was still in the single digits. As I ran to the west, it felt like I had a slight breeze blowing toward me, so I was hoping the run back home would be with the wind at my back. But, when I made the turn I realized that I had been deceived; the wind was blowing from the east and I had a good 10 miles of running straight into a windchill that was pushing negative numbers. Not fun. My clothes literally froze around me. Finally, with a few miles left, the sun burnt through the clouds and it warmed up slightly. Not the funnest long run I've ever experienced, but I guess it was encouraging that it was the weather, and not the distance itself, that made it tough. Oh, the tempo parts were hard too, but I'd take those over the cold weather any day.

Total - 92.4 miles

Next week is a cutback (yay!!). Looking at my schedule, I realized that after next week's cutback, I have one more weak of near triple digit mileage and then it's all under 90 after that. Yikes. I don't know if I should be excited or scared....