Winter, Definitely

Well, Wednesday’s evening workout on the bike did not happen, mostly due to laziness on my side. What I did do was half an hour of core strengthening; I never even check that Yoga channel (wrong gender and all), but when I spotted that a core workout was on I flicked over out of sheer curiosity. Well, how hard could it be when that girlie is demonstrating it? Turns out, pretty damn hard, and my core is in obvious need of strengthening. We’ll see if I can do something about that.

Running is more my kind of thing, obviously, and an early Thursday morning call enabled me to do 12 miles, with a set of 60 second accelerations thrown into the mix. The temperatures are below freezing at the moment and I had to dig out the tights from the depths of my wardrobe without waking Niamh. Then I had to be really careful at times because there were quite a few spots of pure ice on the road, but I managed to keep upright. I didn’t check the Garmin during the run, but when I did afterwards I was a bit surprised about the slow pace. I think the cold weather has something to do with it. I seem to remember the same thing happening last year – as soon as the temperatures drop below freezing the pace slows even though the level of exertion remains the same. Since I’m trying to do most of my runs at easy level (I’m training for an Ultra after all), it didn’t bother me.

Thursday evening called for another endurance session in form of the boys’ school Christmas plays. As always, the standard of acting was, well, let’s just say I’m sure all the parents were proud. I managed to pull through but spare a thought for our poor babysitter who was given a very rough ride by Maia. She really did not like being left behind.

I’m still fiddling with my training plans, and interestingly I am usually cutting miles rather than adding them at the moment, very much unlike my normal behaviour. When setting the alarm clock last night I decided to do only 8 miles rather than 10 this morning, and the additional 15 minutes of sleep were highly appreciated, so I guess I made the right call. It was even colder than on Thursday, -4C/25F is just about as cold as it gets around here, and this is supposed to last for a few more days. I definitely prefer the cold clear nights to the more usual dreary rain that took up most of previous winters, so I’m definitely not complaining. For the kids a bit of snow would be great for Christmas, but that’s unlikely to happen. As soon as the clouds turn up the temperatures rise just enough for the snow to turn into rain of the worst sort. I’m glad to leave things as they are.

There is a race in Killarney on Saturday which I can’t make because of Lola’s CTY classes in Cork and there is another one in Newmarket on Sunday, which I won’t make because over an hour of driving each way is a bit much when there is a race on the calendar every other weekend anyway. I used to complain about the lack of races around here. Now I can’t even attend half of them. Good days, really.

17 Dec

12 miles, 1:37:27, 8:07 pace, HR 150
incl. 9x60 sec pickups

18 Dec

8 miles, 1:05:01, 8:08 pace, HR 142