When the heck is spring again?

Back in the late fall, we had a little stretch of seasonally warm weather. I recall reading a long term weather report that said if the weather was that warm that late in the season, it meant we were in for a pretty mild winter. It was right around the time my participation in the marathon was confirmed, and I can remember thinking to myself that it might not be that bad training outside this winter. All that I have to say to the person that came up with that theory is that you should never predict the weather again....ever.

This weekend was brutal. Having reviewed the forecast earlier in the week, I decided to skip Saturday morning (0 degrees with the windchill) , and wait for the afternoon, when it was supposed to warm up to a July-like 20 degrees.

I missed a run earlier this week and decided to make up for it by going the full 14 miles. I decided that, due to the relatively low mileage for a weekend run, I'd hit the hilly course I did a few weeks ago and extend it out a bit by adding a tough hill at the end.

I felt lousy for the first 2 miles. I felt slow, my shins started to hurt and it was just damned cold. But, once I hit the 4th mile and the GU started to kick in, I started to warm up and feel better and stronger. But as I got to the 9th mile, it started to get cold again as it started to get dark. I had to keep pulling my face mask up over my mouth, as it was starting to get numb and had trouble moving my jaw.

I also had to contend with an unbelievable number of pine cones that we lining the sidewalk along Route 30. I never realized that these things could be so treacherous, until I slipped on one and then found another lodged within the outer sole of my Mizunos which was there for about a 1/4 of a mile.

As I pulled into my driveway at the end of the run, I was exhausted, even more so than from last week's 16 miler. I still ended up with a decent time, but my splits were still far from negative. This is obviously something I still need to work on. Not having a lot of experience at mileage like this, I still need to figure out how to keep things in check on the front end so that I have something left in the tank on the back end.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/23571505

I'm looking forward to a week of sticking to the schedule and gearing up for the 18 miles next Saturday will bring. It's kind of a nice feeling to set a new personal record each week related to distance. Right now, the forecast looks pretty good, but we all know how that goes...

On the donation front, I received a few more contributions this week which was terrific. It's pretty amazing that these have still been coming in, and I haven't even sent out a follow up notice since my first one went out in the beginning of December. Thank you again to everyone for helping up to this point.