I’m getting a little tired of saying, “at least the snow is pretty.” Trail conditions were rough this morning with about an inch of fresh snow. Places that hadn’t melted off already were horrible footing with the footprints frozen into crusty mess. You weren’t really sure what each footfall would give you. I did almost roll my ankle once and it was hard to get traction on some of the uphill. 

Today was a 5x400m workout. The first two were fully on trails and the last one was a mix of paved and dirt trails. 

2:46

2:53

2:05

2:01

2:36

Total mileage was 3.91 in 43:15.

This afternoon’s run ended up being a little bit of a mistake. I jumped ahead a few weeks and did a 2×2 mile time trial. I was supposed to do a 2x 2mile workout at 90% of last week’s 4 miler. Oops! It was a nice day to run around the river. The trails by the house are all still a mess. I thought about the best place to run 6 paved miles with as many hills as possible. I think I got a pretty good workout in with some long hills. The 2nd interval had some head wind and more shorter hills. I ended right on an icy patch in the shadows.  Otherwise the trail was in great shape! I saw a Bald Eagle at the end of the first 2 miler. 

My splits were 

15:35

16:18 

My overall run was 6.37 in 57:43. So I was happy about that too. 

I’m not 100% sure what I’ll do in 2 weeks when the actual time trail comes, but we’ll see.

A chilly morning, but the sun is out and will continue to melt away the April snow! I’m getting a little bored of having to run the same routes to get decent footing. Overall today most of the sidewalks were cleared, the only place I almost fell was actually on Victory Memorial Parkway during a recovery interval! It was 9f at the start of my 6x800m run. Overall it was 5.9 mile run in 57:03. I did a 5 minute warm-up and then a longer cool down which was a little challenging in the snow.  There was a narrow path that had been well packed down by a fat tire bike and a few other runners/hikers. The reward was getting to see some Hoar Frost in the valley.  It was quite beautiful. For some reason, my phone didn’t charge well overnight so it died while taking pictures during the cool down! But you can see some of them below.  The only noticeable thing about the intervals was that the second one started at a bad spot – right in the middle of an icy block with no sidewalk and then almost immediately needing to cross Broadway (busy street). The last 3 were all on the Parkway trails and they had been well plowed.  The last one was in the flat area near the 26th Ave Parking lot.  Overall I felt pretty good throughout the work.

4:00

4:04

3:46

3:46

3:56

3:34 (all flat)