Back to the Cold…
After spending almost 2 weeks in warm Tallahassee, I’m back in the freezing conditions of northern Virginia. Unforunately, that means no more shirts off running for a while.
On the drive back, it was kind of disheartening to see the temperature drop as we headed north. We split up the trip with a stop at South of the Border, where everything revolves around some mexican guy named Pedro. It was a very uhh interesting experience to say the least.
The next day we made the rest of the trip with a long stop in Raleigh, NC to get in some running. We ended up running on a very scenic, but very hilly, trail in Umstead park. As long as you don’t mind some serious hills, it’s a great place to run.
Upon finally returning to the freezing north, I finally got a taste of what a real winter is. On our sunday long run, we ran next to a canal that was completely frozen over. We spent a mile or two debating whether you could get out and walk on it, when we came to a group of people playing ice hockey and skating on it. For someone who has grown up in Texas, that was a pretty crazy sight. Following the run, we walked out on the ice, so I have now walked on water.
The next day, my introduction to a real winter continued as it snowed during our morning run. And the introduction to cold weather running continued today as I did my first real workout in pretty dang cold weather. We ended up working out pretty early and it was about 19-20 degrees out with some wind that made the wind chill to be around 8-10 degrees.
Despite wearing more clothes than I ever have for a hard workout, it went well. I had a 3mi tempo, a couple minutes rest, and then 2 miles at tempo. It was supposed to be progressive in nature and it ended up that way. Splits were 5:07, 5:01, 4:56. For the next 2miles I was 4:54, 4:45. Then I had 4x150m. It took a while to get the legs going, but once I did it felt pretty good, except for the parts into the wind. The one thing that really sucked is that by the end my hands were frozen. I definately need to get some better gloves. After cooling down, we hit the weights.
That’s about it for now. I’m slowly, reluctantly, getting used to the cold weather.
Yuck. Running the cold sucks. Great workout though!