Thanks for turning the heat back on

It was only -7 or so when the dog and I jogged, plus the sidewalks were mostly clear. Such a huge difference to what it has been these past umpteen weeks. I won't say that we're through the worst of winter, but it is really nice to get a bit of a breather. I don't want to talk about tomorrow too much for fear of jinxing it, but if it's even nicer, as promised, it'll be superb.

I've tried my best to get through the winter as best as possible, not worrying about pace, etc, etc, just trying to go by effort. And, honestly, the 11 and 12 minute miles didn't really bug me...the numbers, that is. So what? I jog umpteen miles a week, not all of them have to be 'fast'. The slipping and sliding and rolling over chunks of snow, however, I was getting really sick of. It was an amazing refreshing run today, to get a break from the snow-bound crap and just stretch out.

And since it was warm enough for the dog, he went with me too. We jogged for about an hour, 6.17 miles (not sure what our actual running time was, though--traffic lights eat a big chunk, lol.) And it was especially satisfying for a selfish and immature reason--he has much better traction on snow. I've been the weaker link when we've run together on snow. Today, though, I had a solid surface to run on. I was just jogging as usual, but he was hanging back. I didn't want to tire him out too badly, so I eased up. The tables have turned!

Actually, though, it was good that he was with me because I had speedwork tonight, at the indoor track again. I really like that place. It has a nice feel to it. They have the soccer games going on, too, and little kids running around...it's fun. Anyway, the workout today was 100M repeats, but with short rests: 100M hard, 100M easy. ten of those, then a 3 min break, then ten more repeats. It went by quickly but was surprisingly hard, considering that I wasn't slamming the fast bits--couldn't with the short breaks. I tried to keep things light and high and well-aligned instead of digging in.

19.55
21.38
19.15
21.45
18.06
21.88
19.88
20.75
18.82
21.23
18.55
21.58
19.00
20.68
18.60
21.17
18.45
21.03
18.70
19.43

Yes, there's a little bit of a pattern...we were using the wrong lines somewhere on one side of the track or the other. I think we were too long with the 2nd side, but the coach says that we were too short with the 1st side. Of course, he would say that. lol.

My garmin actually picked up something of a signal there, but it's pretty screwy at faster paces even when outside....it was saying everything from 250 feet to 400ish in the dome, lol. So I don't know what was short and what wasn't. The important thing is that we got did it without too much sagging, what's a second here or there?

I honestly wasn't expecting to see 20s. I'm not in sprinting shape, though, and with the short recoveries, I wasn't expecting much, maybe 18s, but it's funny to see 20s when the 300M repeats were 62-63 seconds last week. I guess I can assume that there was a long side, and not a short side. I honestly like the track atmos, though, so maybe in the future, I'll give that an honest try for a season or two. I have a few goals for that, which I'm not touching now...

So, anyway, with the two workouts, I ran 12.45 miles today.