Marathon Training - For Real!

Today was an actual training day, with a specified pace and some strides at the end. I was to be pacer as it will be my job at the marathon. (I am pacing a couple of the women in the group to a Boston qualifying time.) Also, I am the geek with the Garmin so I can keep track of the pace. Uh, not quite. Ran into some technical difficulties, possibly due to operating temps and too much touchy touch on the bezel and who knows. So we took what info we could from my watch, some info from a couple other watches, some old info from my training log, put it in a meat grinder, pressed puree, extruded it into an ice cube tray, covered it with Saran Wrap, stuck toothpicks in it, separated our paper from our glass and plastic, said our prayers, recited the Pledge of Allegiance - what was I talking about? Oh, yeah - we ran pretty close to the pace we were shooting for, so I did my job for the day. Then I ran two miles home from the lake and knocked that out in a little over 14 minutes so I felt good about my run. It is so nice to have large stretches of dry pavement (with some big blotches of rock hard ice to keep it interesting) and to run with the sun coming up at the end. Hurry up spring!

Now that is tough

Even though two days ago I couldn't get myself to run in the cold morning, today I did it.  Or I should say "we" because MS and JH (aka "Dirty Skirt) and I ran on the coldest day of the year at the coldest time of the day because, "Hey, Fuck You Mother Nature and your arctic winds!"

When I left the house the temp said -19 degrees with a -38 degree wind chill.  When I got home the temp had dropped (yes, dropped) to -23 with a -40 wind chill.  Good times.

We layered up a lot and it actually wasn't too bad.  Even going so far as to Vaseline the very little exposed skin and eyelashes.  (Except for Dirty Skirt, she used Chap Stick.)  We didn't go far but, we did run and that is what counts.  

Unfortunately, I found out that the 405's operating temperature range does not extend down to -20.  It thaws out right quick though.

So I guess we are all tougher than we look.