NAILED IT - A Long-Distance Training Run

After a slew of crappy treadmill runs these last couple of weeks, I decided to "man-up" and face winter head-on. So, today (yesterday) I ran outside! Yes! I did it! Wow, I'm so awesome! This run made up a very key workout: a 7-mile tempo run at half-marathon pace +00:30 sec/mile (8:30 min/mile). Lets start off by looking at how I geared up for this outdoor adventure.

The top half, consisting of a Nike hat-liner, Nike hat, neoprene face-mask, Native sunglasses, Nike thermal long-sleeve shirt, Nike long-sleeve Nike Dri-fit shirt, windproof EMS cycling jacket, Zoot windproof cycling gloves and my Garmin Forerunner 305 w/hear-rate monitor.

The bottom half, consisting of Nike Dri-fit socks, Nike compression shorts (underwear), Nike thermal running tights, Nike running shorts (w/liner) and my Brooks Ghost 2 running shoes.

Irregardless of this past week's snow-emergency, which dumped over a foot of snow on the Albany-area, I decided to drive down to the waterfront to see if the trails were plowed. I'd much rather run an out-and-back instead of 14 laps around the semi-plowed Empire State Plaza. As luck would have it, a walker was exiting the trail-head just as I was arriving and he was able to confirm that AT LEAST one-mile of trail was acceptably plowed. Excellent!

Where I started on the trail in front of my car.

Looking down-river and down the trail. Quite peaceful, eh?

I started the run off and felt very comfortable. The first 1 mile of the run is definitely the "hilliest" part of the entire 4 1/4 mile trail. It doesn't have hills, really, but mild-and-steady inclines that show up on your Garmin more-so than in your legs. It's also BY FAR the area most exposed to the wind. While none of these factors are necessarily favorable, they do allow me to break up the run into different mental segments that I could focus on overcoming. This paid dividends in the end, I think.

It turns out only about 1.65 miles of the trail were plowed. Beyond that?.. 12+ inches of snow. I had brought my yaktrax with me for the trail, but it was plowed so well that I didn't need them. On the other hand, the unplowed sections beyond the 1.6-mile mark were so deep that yaktrax wouldn't have done me any good. The one problem I did have was that two out-and-backs would only net me about 6.6 miles, roughly 0.40 miles short of my 7.0 mile goal. Crap, that would make me incorporate an extra turn-around, most likely near the end of the run, which means another mental hurdle to keep track of when I'm deep in the pain cave.

As the title of this post most-certainly already gave away, I made it past that last hurdle and successfully nailed the run. Of course, I did have to haul ass for the last mile in order to hit my time-goal, but that lapse in tempo was easily attributed to running against 15-20mph winds.

Post-run. If you look close, you can see snot/sweat mid-drip over my mouth/chin. Nice!

After the run, I celebrated in a way that only I know how - beer, nuts and nfl playoff football. And boyyyyy was that nice!

In other news, I tweaked my workout plan just a bit.

The revised, revised plan!

My weekly miles section is now fully updated, unlike where it was when I left it last. Wednesday and Thursday are now back-to-back days instead of Friday and (long-day) Saturday. This should allow me to perform much better on the long-runs, minimize the chance of injury and come much closer to mimicking the race conditions.