As Doc Brown once said: "It's cold! Damn cold!"

Yep, Cold is the big thing at the moment.

I'm a cold guy.  Well...  I mean I'm more worried about the heat this summer and cold hasn't bothered me as much because more clothes tends to take care of the cold problem.

But...

Well, this current wave/winter where we seem to be averaging things like -6F at night and up to about 7F during the day and a wind chill about 20 degrees less than that...
Yeah, that's fine once or twice, but it seems to be happening for weeks now...  Maybe not quite, but there have been far too many of those days/nights.

So I'm currently doing my best to energize myself and "embrace the suck" as they say.  Cause even I am rather tired of this level of cold.  Running does not sound like that much fun.  But I will do my best to conquer my probably 7 miles this afternoon and I think I'll toss in 3 for tomorrow as I prepare for this transition from 10K to half marathon training where the training plans are going to start tapering down for 10K and just starting up for Half marathon.

Suck it up buttercup!


On the long run front, I did get my 10 miles in Sunday.  Still walked a decent bit, but kept it to just over 13 minute miles which I'm not too disappointed with all things considered.  It was around 6F and windy I believe.
I went for about 20 minutes and tried to get a drink from my Camelbak which I had previously tried and thought I had like half an hour before it was getting very frozen at those temps...
Nope.  It was frozen solid.  Well, the tube anyway.  I was walking for about 15 minutes while I fiddled with it, pulling it apart, bending it, trying to break up the ice, etc.  But to no avail.  So I ended up disconnecting it from the pack and tucking it under my shirts against my chest and running for about 10 minutes which got it usable again.
As of yesterday I have now ordered the insulated tube.  And the meter to tell how much I'm drinking.
I tried Clif Blocks this time which may have contributed to my water consumuption along with just trying to keep the tube from freezing, but apparently I cleared out the 2 liters at around the 7-8 mile mark, so the last couple blocks I washed down with a handful of snow.

This led to the most painful part of the journey.  A serious need to pee!  Walking wasn't TOO bad, but running was like my bladder bouncing with every step.  Thankfully I managed to find a suitable spot at one point to empty things out.  But this is going to be more of a concern as the miles and time go on...  Need to get that figured out.

Took a different route this time as well, it looked like a decent 10 mile route.  Eh...  The first half-ish wasn't too bad, but then the road I would have not thought would be busy at all had a few vehicles and then the road I picked because it should be cleared more...  Well, even on a Sunday afternoon there was a good bit of traffic(as opposed to my usual NONE).  And it was nice and cold and slushy, so there wasn't a ton of great room on the shoulder, but thankfully only one vehicle managed to actually spray me with slush.  But I'm thinking I may avoid that main road at least in bad conditions.  Maybe when it's nicer out I can get some more shoulder room and think about it more.  I'm having trouble deciding just where to run!  I need to get over 12 miles before I can actually get enough to make it to the Finger Lakes Trail and get on there at all without driving to it.  At that distance, I could run to work...

As for the Clif blocks, they seem fine.  Basically gummy bears in a larger block form.  For the cost, I think I'm going to just use real food but I figure I'll try out these things just to see how it works.


Other items on yesterday's Amazon gift card order besides the insulated tube/meter for the Camelbak....
Oh, I was contemplating a GPS watch as everyone seems to like those better than their phones for some reason.  I admit, who doesn't like another piece of tech on their wrist, but they're not exactly cheap and my phone just seems like a better place to keep everything with my apps, etc.  So I looked around.  What I ended up with is that it sounds like my Pebble(watch that shows info from phone) should be semi-rugged and should show more info than the gps watches, and costs about the same if I do kill it.  So I ordered a screen protector for it to hopefully avoid any big gashes and a "NATO STRAP" that I had never heard of, but it's basically a full bracelet/strap for your watch, so as with every strap I've been familiar with, if you caught it on something, you just need to provide enough force to break one of the pins in your watch and then the whole thing falls off your wrist.  With this strap, you'd need to break the strap itself, or it's multi-faceted attachment, or BOTH of the pins on your watch.

And then since Incipio seems to be overly stupid with their announcement like 6 months ago of having a waterproof case for my Moto X and STILL having ZERO idea if/when it will actually be released...  I got myself a $15 Kyocera Hydro phone that should be water resistant and worst case if I kill it, it's only $15.  But it runs Android 4 so I should be able to hook up my Pebble and run my apps to log my more rugged races and then sync them once I get back to wifi.  That's the hope anyway!

The Humdinger is March 1st which is just about a month away and while it doesn't look TOO bad, there is some mud/water/snow/ice slides at least so I'm not overly comfortable about taking my Moto X in just a ziplock and hoping that I don't smack it too hard if I land on it in a fall/slide or something.  And the only generic cases I can find are rather huge-ish.  Might be ok in my Camelbak, but not something I want to run with for the races I don't take the Camel like the Humdinger.

Next questions....  How to keep this phone attached to me...  I have pockets, but I don't think I have any with zippers...  Although that begs another question of just what I intend to wear to these "dirty" races...  It sounds like you want good technical clothes, but that it's questionable if they will be clean again...  Gonna need to figure that out soon.  Wish there was a good location for cheap technical clothing!
Also need to see how long the battery will last in this Hydro to make sure it will handle the races while logging...


ANY-hoo...  Here I was thinking I didn't have anything to say and now I've gone on for quite a while!

Slower this week. Tried a Shot

Well, I was really hopefull after last week's great runs.
This week... eh...
Saturday's sucked.  Girls have been sick though so it's been rough at home.  Sunday's 9 miles got pushed to today and it wasn't great either.  Not super bad though.  Just not what I was hoping for.  For some reason my legs felt more tired besides the usual just tired out of breath I had before.

I also tried a Clif shot.  It tasted good, though it seems it would be a bit rough to try and eat while running.  Either way, I didn't really notice anything.  I've just been eating bites of energy bar for previous long runs.

I think tomorrow is quarter mile sprints or something, Thinking I may hit the park in the afternoon again.

Powering through. Feeling good, even if my throat, nose and head don't completely agree.

Well.  I decided to attack the cold.
I loosened the reigns on the calories.  Ate a bit more lunch.  Had I think my all time high in the last 4 months of about 2600 calories(did that yesterday too).
But started feeling a little better.

Decided to do my run down at the park.  WOW...  Flat surfaces with grip are SOOO much easier!  It's nice to see the hills and snow/ice are paying off!  So, I did just under 7 miles, but it did feel like an easier run even though I was also going faster than I do on the hills.

Since then I've kept up the feeling better-ishness.  I still have some random throat, nose and head pressure issues, but I'm not feeling dead-ish as I was a couple days ago.

Did my run this morning in the usual hills.  Over 7 miles.  No stopping.  (well I walked for 3 minutes in the middle for the "slow" period it told me.  Was nice that my seasonal road has mostly melted so it's not a sheet of ice!
I really think it seems like giving blood has about a month period for me to recover(though apparently I did up the intensity and duration at the same time, so there might be a bit more to it).  Because the last couple weeks have felt SOO much better.  I've caught myself this morning going "Oh, look I must have already gone up that hill"(realizing it was behind me now) whereas for a few weeks there it was "UGH...  I'm walking for a bit"(most all of the uphills) and I was just out of breath and energy quite quickly.

So...  Yeah.  I'm feeling good.  Not really worried about the road race stuff.

I DO still really need to get some obstacles set up so I can actually try some of this OCR stuff I'm going to be doing and see just how badly I need to get my upper body strength increasing!

The one where I get sick

Well, I'm not one to normally get sick.  MAYBE a cold once a year.  However, this sore throat that started Thursday is kicking my butt pretty hard for the last 2-3 days as quite the cold.  Best part is waking up at 1AM(or any of the other half dozen times throughout the night) when Bella needs a bink put back in or something, but then won't go back to sleep, so I end up having her sleep next to me...  Problem being that not surprisingly she/we'll just about get to sleep when I have to hack and then she's awake again.  Fun hours those are in the middle of the night!

To run or not to run...  My sore throat from Thursday is now full blown cold or some sort of awesomeness now.  Seems to be conflicting opinions as usual as to whether it's good, bad or whatever...  I've seen a few references to the neck rule.  If your problems are neck or above you should be good to go.  Just not entirely sure if the little bit of stuff I'm coughing is considered neck or into chest...  I want to run(it's the only time I feel good, the sickness disappears!)  But I don't want to run my body down and cause this to last another days/week and push off my running that much farther...

Well, after some deliberation, I think I've all but decided I'm going to hit the park for a run this afternoon.  Just remains to be seen how far/fast I'll take it.

Conquering the hills, socks/blister, watching myself...

So, this weekend was an "easy" weekend to "keep me injury free".  Well..  Mostly.

Saturday was 3 miles with some strides at the end.  Well, I did my best to slow my pace and I finally conquered Mackey Rd Hill.  I may have been closer to a power walk than running, but I'm calling it "running"!  Nonstop.  WOOT!
Though, that nice seasonal road is ALL ice and the snow at the edges is getting pretty minimal, so the strides at the end were a bit rough, I was NOT going to run full speed down the hill and hope I missed the ice!

Sunday was only 6 miles and since I was pretty sure Mackey would only be worse for ice, I went around the block.  I hadn't been wearing toe socks the day before, so I decided to just throw on my Lontra's.  Yeah, that was apparently a bad idea.  I guess I haven't gone sockless for a month or so now.  A couple miles in and my left foot, right on the right side of the ball of my foot developed a real good blister.  It seems I have trouble there sometimes with the straps that attach there on those models of Fivefingers.  Going to have to see how I do with socks and wet feet for 10-12 miles so I know what I'm doing for the OCR's.
But again, other than I think (3) 5 second stops to try making that left shoe extra tight or extra loose to make that blister happier, I didn't stop.
Of course as I thought, it's not 6 miles around the block, so I added in some trail running through the woods as well, which is good since my next race is a trail race and I really ought to be doing more.  Not exactly sure how I'm going to do that.  I went as far as looking to see if I could make it to the nearest Finger Lakes Trail point with my running.  Unfortunately taking roads, it would appear it's about 5 miles to the entry point which would mean with my 10 mile runs coming up in another week or so, I'd be able to get there and back, but not actually run on them at all.
So I guess I should consider adding in a car ride to there before and after my run.  Otherwise I'm not sure how to get longer trail runs in very well...  I can run in the woods near the house, but from what I've found so far, I'm looping a bit just to get a few miles, let alone 6 or more.

I also gave some thought this morning to catching some of the FLT points that I pass on my commute to work. I guess that would pretty much be on the way home as I don't know how well I could keep myself stinky free without a shower when I get back to work.
Work really needs a shower.
The end of the day wouldn't necessarily be that bad of an idea.  As it is, I'm having trouble getting in 6 miles or more with all of the other morning stuff and making it into work when I should.
My fear with that though is that I have done an after work run once or twice and it seemed horrendous.  And I have since read something about your mental state having a bit effect and that the morning runs can/do go a lot better...  But I may have to try it and see.  Right now I don't terribly care for these morning runs before daylight anyway.

Weight loss is still going.  187.8 or something this morning.  Not sure if it's me, the weather, the holidays/time of year in general or what, but I think I'm going to just finish off my Dietbets and not do any more.  I've got 2 finishing this month and then there are 2 of the 6 month ones that are a lot more reasonable to meet ending like mayish I think.
I guess I'm just feeling like I don't want to worry about it quite as much and after December, I was really scraping to get to within a tenth of a pound to meet my weigh outs at 4% in 4 weeks.
And who knows what my body is going to do now.  I'm definitely starting to like it more, this "medium" size thing on me is mind blowing, even if they are a bit tight sometimes yet.  I definitely still have a good bit of inches to remove from my mid section yet, but the progress is amazing to me.  Anyway, It's possible it will become harder to lose the weight.  Though if the running keeps increasing, I would like to think that should compensate, and I've at least started getting a couple strength/otherwise workouts done on my "rest" days and getting in 30 Spartan Burpees as well.  Those still suck with the pushups.

But, I think it might be the time of the year.  This weekend was just 2 days of no sun.  Dark and dreary.  I'm also fighting a cold it would seem.  Nice thing about the runs is that it all just disappears for that hour or so.  No sore throat, congestion, etc.  And I think those runs keep me a bit more sane.  But it's still a long couple days where I really just feel like eating everything in sight.  Saturday I let myself a 500 calorie overage, but really if I hadn't had a free mint chocolate swirl shake coupon from Arby's (and I haven't yet had one), then I probably would have kept it in check.  And I did keep it good on Sunday.  Maybe not the best quality of calories all around, but my #1 priority is keeping the cals in check.

Anyway, I'm trying to keep these thoughts in check.  I don't want to find myself thinking "Oh, I don't have a Dietbet, so I can eat more and it won't be a problem" and then that definition keeps stretching and I find myself having a lot of days with WAY too many calories again and not keeping it under control.  So I need to keep that in my head.
It's not like this wasn't coming anyway.  Maintenance mode is a whole nother thing.  Probably just as well that I start trying to keep things under control more myself than relying on Dietbet fears to keep me in line.

Endurance/Speed and the cold

Well, let's see...
I had my 8 mile long run a couple weekends ago.  ...  And now I forget what notes I had for that one...

Last weekend was the 9 mile long run.  That was cool.  Literally cold.  About 10F with a good wind chill.  Found out that it's about 4.5 miles the long way to the Caboose motel, I looped up the next road.  On the long downhill section, I found that about half an hour is the limit at that temp before the uninsulated camelbak starts freezing up, but thankfully it cleared out.
And after about an hour, the honey energy bar I had was hard enough to hurt my teeth when I tried to bite off a piece.
But a good run!

Tuesday was a 5 mile run.  I might have moved it a day, but it was on the schedule and it had been 2 days without running, so it had to be done!  Despite the fact that it was -10F and wind chill of at least -30F.  Despite that, it wasn't that bad of a run.  Worst part was leaving the Balaclava up to protect my nose.  It seems to get saturated with breath/water or what not and then freeze.  And with nothing to prop it outwards, it would suck up tight against my mouth, making it rather difficult to breathe.  Holding it out with my fingers made all the difference.
But still, the run felt good and was down to about 12 min miles and I could feel I wasn't stopping to walk as much as I have been.
Also was awesome to finally get the pretty frosted eyelashes I've seen other cold weather runners post!

And today...  It had warmed up nicely to like 15f! and the wind wasn't much there!

Best of all?  It seems my speed/endurance may finally be returning!

Tuesday was good and faster at 5 miles.

Today went farther, up to 6 miles, and I dropped my time down about another minute per mile.  This would be really nice if it was coming back.  It has been about a month since I gave blood and about the same time I left the nice flat paved paths of Shawmut for the hilly seasonal roads around home.  But I've been trying not to worry about that since I know the hills are having an impact, and I've still been increasing mileage.  We're hitting double digits in a couple weeks!  And even the weekday stuff is getting long, 6 miles before work!  Sheesh!

Already trying to figure out my scheduling with the training vs races (I don't have them set just right for starting, ending and like my 10K is telling me to taper off weeks early, so I think I'll jump up to the half marathon training early, not sure about tapering or not...  Gets complicated!

And I'm gonna have to get faster to be able to get all these runs in before work!

Looking forward to the weekend, Saturday might be closer to 50F and only 3 miles.  Maybe I can get in something quick again!  And not need 20 minutes to get suited up for the run!  We'll see.