Last weekend’s time change made it a little easier to get up in the morning for a run.  But by the time I get home from work… its pitch black.  That’s no fun either. Even with the earlier sunrise I still found a lot of excuses not to run.  Talk about temperature contrasts though… geesh.  After last week’s race I walked around in a sleeveless shirt but after this week’s race I was looking for more dry layers to put on.

I ran Monday 3.25 miles on my Metrodome loop. It took me a meandering 24:35 to do it, but it was warm and sunny.  The temperature was around 50 and it felt pretty good.

I stayed up pretty late Monday night writing a blog post – not a smart idea because I was really tired and slept in Tuesday morning. Plus I had to be at work extra early to make sure our students handled the election without any problems. Everything went smoothly and at 4:30pm when I left they were at 76% voter turnout without counting the absentee ballots.

We stayed out late on Tuesday watching the election returns with friends.  And I had another early morning with a meeting on Wednesday. Pretty much everyone there was exhausted – it was a school related meeting and our referendum passed!

Luckily the weather held out for one more day. Thursday I got a nice 4 mile run in on my Park-Downtown loop.  It was raining but in the 50’s so it felt really good actually. I ran it in 30:07.  I’m glad I got one last run in with pretty nice weather.

I skipped Friday so I would be well rested for Saturday’s race.  It snowed though.

Saturday morning was the USATF-MN XC Championships. It was a 10k on a cold (32f) morning.  It was snowing when I woke up but the ground was just really soggy.  I ran the 10k in 43:09 on a pretty hilly golf course.  More on that later though!

Sunday was a nice cold 8 mile run.  The temp was around 27 when I left and it was snowing off and on throughout the morning.  We met at the Sibley House and ran south along the Minnesota River for a nice, fairly easy hour.  The final time was 64 minutes.  This was my first time on that trail and it was fairly scenic. I was surprised at how good I felt after the 10k.  My toe still hurt a little bit but nothing major.

Total Mileage:

Running – 21.5 miles

Biking – 22.3 miles