Dealing With the Worst

So we didn't get 16 inches of snow as promised yesterday. What we did get was 3 inches that didn't stick to the roads but was very wet nonetheless. Additionally, it was REALLY cold w/ 30mph winds driving the wind chill down close to zero if not below.

Saturday's brick wound up being a shortened run w/ the full run coming today. I finished my ride on the trainer yesterday and was outside for all of 2 minutes waiting for my Garmin to figure out where I was and was thinking, "there's no way in hell I'm going to run 13 miles in this..." So, I did 6 and called it a day.

This morning, I did my full 13.5-mile run and the weather mostly cooperated alternating between sunny and not sunny until the last 3-5 miles. I must have taken off my gloves and headband and put them back on at least 5 times before just leaving my gloves on. I wound up doing a huge 13.5 mile loop from my house that had me take McCaslin to Marshall Rd by Costco and Marshall Rd all the way to the South end of the BoBo link trail. I then took the trail back to South Boulder Rd. and followed SBR back into Louisville.

If anyone's ridden out SBR, they're fully aware of the hill that starts kind of half way between Cherryvale and 75th but just keeps going up until McCaslin. It's not what I would consider to be an "oh my god" hard hill, but it sucks nonetheless. Add that the entire shoulder was completely covered in sand and I was running into a headwind my ~7:30 min/mi Z3 pace dropped to over 10 by the time I reached the top. It dropped back down once I crested at McCaslin but by then I only had a half mile left so it wasn't long enough to get my average lap pace back down.

I also haven't broken in my home copy of my new running shoes so I had to do this run in my old ones and my feet are reasonably sore. I'm curious as to whether or not they would have been had I had my new shoes and had them broken in. As I have a 10-mile run tomorrow, we'll see if my work copy of my running shoes make a difference.

Preparing For The Worst

It's supposed to snow tonight, big time. Supposedly a foot of snow....yay...after last week's two debacles I can honestly say I'm not really looking forward to it. What I am concerned about is my long brick: 65-mile bike, 13-mile run.

I'm not worried about the trainer ride, after my LOTR marathon last week, trainer rides are a piece of cake, regardless of the workouts. It's the 13 miles I'm concerned with. You see, my tolerance for treadmill running is at an historic low. I hate the damn thing. It's incredibly boring, the speed is constant, and the damn thing is so loud that I can't hear the TV so movie watching is crap. And even if it were enjoyable, the prospect of running 13 miles on a treadmill makes me cringe. Running 13 miles outside is like watching a REALLY good movie, it goes by fairly quickly and is relatively pain free. Running on a treadmill for 13 miles I would have to guess is like watching History of Violence or Last Action Hero, basically, a really, really, REALLY bad movie where each scene just drags on and every time you look at your watch thinking surely 10 minutes have passed, it turns out it's only been 3.

If we get a foot of snow tomorrow, there's no way I can run outside. Snowshoe, sure, but not run. I suppose I could go to the gym and do the elliptical machine - it's at least faster than a treadmill, but I'm still looking at probably 90 minutes (I can go 8-9 mph on an elliptical, not really realistic for real world times, but better than blowing it off all together, no?)

Stay tuned, we'll see what happens.

New Shoes!

I have two pairs of running shoes. One for work and one for home. The reason I have two pairs is because several years ago I left a pair on the bus. The really shitty thing about doing this, aside from the fact that no one ever turned them in to lost and found, is that they were only a week old. Additionally shitty was that I also had my pull buoy (with my name on it) from swimming in the same bag. I never saw either again.

So, I bought two pairs of shoes, one for work and one for home so I would have to worry about being responsible and actually remembering to take all my crap off the bus with me when debarking. While a little more expensive an option than some would choose to take, it's worked well for me ever since.

My most recent pair has definitely seen better days. They're a bit over a year old and each have about 400 miles on them including a bunch of triathlons and running races. They were purchased as part of a Cyber Monday, free shipping, deep discount, online shopping extravaganza. As any triathlete will tell you, the surest way to decrease the lifespan of any piece of equipment is to race with it - especially in triathlon. Things get wet from swimming, wet and salty from profuse sweating (hey, some of us perspire), and wet and sticky from sports drink spills. Anyway, these shoes were probably long overdue for changing.

Before anyone considers criticizing my length of shoe usage, consider this: cheap running shoes are essentially the same as expensive running shoes except that they don't last as long. As someone put it to me, the expensive running shoes last about twice as long as the cheap ones, so you don't really save any money. Whether or not that's true, I do know that if I wear running shoes too long, I get shin splints. And, I haven't gotten shin splints since I was a kid. 'Nuff said.

I dug around online looking for the same model as my current shoes, the ASICS Gel-Nimbus IX, only to discover that they had been replaced (of course) by the next model, X. Oh, I found plenty of IX models online, but they were in sizes of <> 11. So, I had to "settle" for the X model.

They came yesterday and man, are they sweet. I put my new orthotics in them and went for a run today. All I can say is "wow." It's awesome. Sometimes you don't realize just how bad something is until you replace it with something good.

I just need an extra set of running orthotics so I don't have to keep pulling them out of my work pair to bring home.