Winter's Ruining My Marathon

Doug enjoys the snow much more than we do

Not a fan of snow
Forces my running inside
Kills my marathon

That's a Haiku. Not a good one.  But it is a Haiku none the less.  A Japanese 5-7-5 poem.  It's brilliant.   But like everyone else I'm just really tired of winter.  Don't get me wrong, it's not because I don't enjoy being freezing cold all the time with below zero temps ... or because my car sliding all over the icy streets isn't a blast ... or not even because the snow weighing on my roof is probably eventually gonna cave it in ... nope, all those things are awesome!  Actually, the thing I can't stand the most about this winter is it's forcing me inside for seemingly every run ... every day!  And for me, running indoors = bad race.

I know a lot of runners do most of their training indoors.  Heck, I think EMZ trains almost completely on the treadmill and she's an awesome runner.  But I've just always found that I need elevation to improve and train effectively for races.  I try to change the incline on the treadmill regularly, but it just never seems to truly simulate hills.  Plus, running on the treadmill just seems a lot easier than the actual road.  I mean, the churning belt provides all of the energy ... really all we've gotta do is lift our legs in place.  It's obviously better than nothing, but I know that after a few consecutive runs on the ol' treadmill, my first run back on the road feels tougher than normal.

Michael leading me at the Legacy Park Community Center indoor track for our Sunday run

Actually, for my two runs this weekend, I split the time up between the treadmill and the indoor track at our gym, Legacy Park Community Center.  Dividing the time between the two breaks up the monotony, and also provides at least a little incline and simulated elevation change when I'm on the treadmill.  However, the downside is that our gym is very small.  It takes 14 laps to make a mile.  Plus, as you can see in the picture, there are only three lanes, which since it's a Community Center, seems to fill up with quite a few walkers.

I thought if I ran faster and faster I would completely disappear

Saturday
I had 20 miles on the schedule for Saturday, and since we got 12" of snow earlier in the week with temps in the single digits, the sidewalks were still obviously completely covered, and will be for some time.

So I headed to Legacy and started with 3 warm up miles around the track.  There are only 8 treadmills at my gym, so when one of the became free, I jumped on it and ran the next 8 miles there, alternating a mile at an incline between 2-4, and then a mile with no incline.  After that, I ran the next 9 miles back on the track ... for a total of 168 laps, and an hour on the treadmill.

Overall, it was a good run with a 7:41/mile average pace overall.  But when I run inside a lot, I typically find that I'm a little slower outside at that same energy level.  So it probably would have been closer to 7:50, which is fine at this point.

Sunday
Michael and I both headed to Legacy on Sunday.  She had her 11 mile long run, and I had a 10 mile recovery run scheduled. Typically if we get there early enough, we have the track to ourselves for a while.  So with that in mind this morning, I took along the camera to record my stride so I could analyze it later.  But wouldn't you know it - THIS MORNING it was busier than normal.  So when I set up the camera I got like 57 questions about what I was doing with a camera at the gym ... which actually is a logical query, but still annoying.

After I took some video of my stride, I hit the track for 5 miles.  Then I jumped on a free treadmill for 3 incline miles.  And then finished up with 2 more light miles on the track, all at about an 8:00/mile pace.  So in total, 30 miles for the weekend at a decent pace ... 228 total laps ... but unfortunately all of them indoors. The good news is, last week was a 63 mile week, which was my highest total in a while.

My Little Rock Marathon is now three weeks away, on March 2nd.  I've got one more long run before then, and I'd really like for it be outside on normal pavement, without having to wear YakTrax in the snow.  But since it's snowing again today, that's probably not likely.  The only thing that worries me about the marathon ... other than it's 26.2 miles long ... is the 200 ft of incline from miles 14-17.  Not a mountain by any means, but the first time I ran this race, it kicked my butt.  I just wanna make sure that I don't let that happen again.  So we'll see how the next few weeks go.  Who knows, maybe a heat wave will come through and melt all the snow and we'll have an early Spring.  But right now it looks like the snow will most likely be on the ground much longer than that.  Have a great week.
... be great today!