Cold and Windy

Plan for today was 15 miles with 12 @ marathon pace. Had thoughts about doing at the gym but with the sidewalks free of snow, I wanted to toughen myself up by doing it outside. -10 C but lots of wind whipping around so I wasn't entirely sure if it was in or out.

Decided that I would do a quick three mile warmup returning home and then if i didn't want to do it, i would go to the gym. Dressed up quite warmly. One interesting thing to note was I used some chapstick for the first time this season. I like the plain kind with no flavour to it. I know that it typically comes in a black tube. I picked one up at a convenience store a couple of weeks ago and just shoved it into my jacket pocket. I only opened it today and noticed that the contents were pink! The label had these ruby red lips on the them which I guess means that they're for women. I'm pretty comfortable with my masculinity, so I put it on anyways since it was all I had. I did check to see how it looked in the mirror though. You could hardly tell. I guess this is how it starts. Next thing you know, I'll be wearing women's underwear!! Maybe not...

The three mile warmup went okay and so i thought it would be okay to do the MP portion outside. Rather than try to aim for a specific pace, I ran this using HR as a guide. Goal was to keep the HR less than 170 and let the paces fall where they be.

Lap Time	HR Max	HR Avg
07:10.3	203	169
07:25.6	172	167
07:28.1	172	169
07:27.9	172	167
07:26.1	173	168
07:28.9	171	168
07:26.4	170	167
07:43.2	170	165
07:37.4	172	166
07:19.3	172	168
07:36.6	170	168
07:29.4	172	168

These are garmin splits which I don't quite trust. Garmin says I did 15.3 miles total, but the two routes I used were exactly 3 and 12 miles so I only did 15 miles total. I also got to try my fancy water bottle with the kicker valve which worked out great. No clogged nozzles with frozen gatorade which I had problems with last winter. It was getting a bit tough to get liquid through the nozzle towards the end of the run, but I could still drink from it. When I got home, there were ice crystals forming in the bottle so I think the kicker valve did it's job.