Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Back on Track

Week 5: 1/10/11 - 1/16/11 (13 weeks remain)

Monday: Off day.

Tuesday: 9 miles with 4 1/2-mile lactate threshold run. Did the Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave loop, but rather than turning onto Brookline on the way back, continued down the Charles running trail until the Mass Ave bridge to tack on an extra 1/2 mile or so to the tempo. Went pretty well; not really much else to say.

Wednesday: AHHHHHH BLIZZARD! Cambridge got something like 15" of snow last night, so most of the roads/sidewalks were basically not runnable:

My dorm's courtyard



Other apartment buildings near my dorm




Boston Common





So instead of running, I did some cross training. And by cross training, I mean throwing snowballs and sledding ( :-D !)

Thursday: 14 miles, medium-long run. The roads had cleared up quite a bit since yesterday, so I went out for one of this week's medium-long runs. Unfortunately, many of the trails around Boston and Cambridge were still knee-deep in snow, which made running significantly more tiring (even if you weren't sinking knee-deep, the fact that it hadn't gotten above freezing since the snow initially fell meant that much of it was still powdery-ish, and therefore, when running, you only actually converted about 70% or so of the applied power to forward motion, the other 30% or so going to fling up a bunch of snow behind you). So today went pretty well (it was certainly very pretty outside), although perhaps a bit more tiring than I would have expected for only going 14 miles. My quads in particular were a bit sore by the time I got back, which is unusual for me.

Friday: Another 12 miles. Now we have ice instead of snow, which is fairly irritating (I can't run as fast as I would like, since that causes me to slip all over the ice and puts me in real danger of busting my frakkin' skull). Other than that, not much to report.

Saturday: 5 miles, recovery, on the treadmill.

Sunday: 18 miles, long run. Did the Fresh Pond + Boston Common & Commonwealth Ave double-loop again. The kids were out sledding on the hill in Kingsley Park, which was pretty cool. Still icy.

Total weekly mileage: 58 <--- Ah yes, that's better :-).

3 comments:

Megumi said...

aw, winter wonderland! though yes, agreed, ice is not so nice. neither is knee deep snow nor the ensuing 9 minute miles and sore quads.

i grew up in cambridge just off of huron village, about half a mile from fresh pond in one direction and half a mile from the charles river paths in the opposite direction. really great place, though since I didn't run at the time, it was all basically lost on me!

the parental units have since moved out to watertown, and the snow plows don't make their way out that far on the river path, so i've had to learn to tolerate tromping through knee deep snow on occasion, which is basically like doing miles and miles of high knees, and then high tailing it back once you get off the damn path before the snow that got crammed into your sneakers melts and causes an involuntary ice bath for your already frozen toes.

anyways, sounds like more bad weather is expected but keep up the good work!

Dave said...

Heh, "parental units". One of my best friends from high school uses that phrase as well, and I always found it highly amusing :-).

Dude (what is the feminine gender equivalent of "dude", anyway?) we can hang out in your "hood", as the kids say, next time you're around :-D ! When do you next expect to be back in town?

Dave said...

BTW Watertown is within running distance of here - I got lost (as per the usual) with G one day and ended up running there by accident - it was about 15 miles round-trip :-).