Hamster Wheel...

I had a 17 mile long run planned for today. We got a couple of inches of snow last night. I checked outside this morning and it seemed to be okay to run through, but the wind was blowing quite hard. I thought about driving downtown to do it since the main trail downtown gets priority snow clearance, but I just didn't feel like battling the wind which would be worse by the lake, so I headed off to the gym.

I've been casually listening to running podcasts these past few weeks. I've been sampling a bunch of them trying to get a feel for what i might like to listen to on a regular basis. There are just too many of them that are too long to be able to listen to them all. I downloaded about a gig's worth of stuff onto my mp3 player hoping to hear something interesting. Unfortunately i ended up only listening to one podcast since i forgot to reset the maximum volume setting on my mp3 player. It's set at 60% which means that it will only play up to a maximum volume of 60% which keeps it from blowing out my eardrums and is normally okay for listening to music, but isn't loud enough to hear someone talk. After about an hour, i ended up stopping it and plugging it into the treadmill earphone jacks to listen to what was being shown on the TV. There was a little segment on Trish Stratus the former WWE star. She's apparently turned to Yoga and has even started up here own studio up here. She's flexible....

As for the run itself, i did 10.5 miles at 6.5mi/hr (9:13 pace), 2.5 miles at 6.6mi/hr (9:05 pace) and then did the final 4 miles at 6.8mi/hr (8:50 pace). HR creeped up above 160 for the last couple of miles. Comparing this run to a 17 mile run I did on the treadmill last year, it is evident that I've slowed down quite a bit. Last year I could maintain 8min/mile at a HR of less than 160. Of course that was after a marathon training cycle so the comparison might not be fair.

So total for the week was 47 miles. This upcoming week is supposed to be a stepback week to 37 miles. I've been thinking of maybe just repeating this past week instead, but I might need the rest and recovery. Will see how I'm feeling the next couple of days first.

Enjoy your week all!