Roller Coaster Weather Continues

This is a picture of the corner of our street and Lewis Avenue (the "Main Street" of our town), which I always begin my runs on one way or another from yesterday (Friday) morning as I was heading out to do my inspections for the day for work. The new blanketing of snow brings a refreshing look to the scenary, but the snow on the shoulders makes for a pain in the hoohaa of a run. But, again, I am not going to complain because winter/snowfall could be much worse than it has been so far this winter.

Fortunately, today the shoulders were relatively clear for my long run, which was a scheduled 12 miler that I stretched to 13. It was a fairly nice day to run, temp was 34, the winds were slightly high, but out of the south/southwest so, since I was primarily running most of my mileage east to west, it wasn't that much of a factor. Ole sol even tried peeking out a couple of times toward the end of my run. Tomorrow the roller coaster takes another plunge as we are to have very high winds and a high of 9 degrees. Glad tomorrow is a day of rest. :-)

The 13 mile run was more difficult than I was anticipating it being. I think this was probably due to having done a medium-long tempo run (a faster-paced run) just last evening of 9 miles. My legs were pretty well trashed at the end of today's run and I had some pretty serious aches and pains. I'm thinking this is just making me stronger though and I'm not currently feeling any residual effects from this morning's run so, I don't think I am doing any damage to my body, other than short term muscle damage which will heal and strengthen my body.

Here's the specs on this mornings run for those interested:

Miles: 13

Duration: 2:03:33

Avg. Pace: 9:31/mile

Calories burned: 1,662

Mile splits:

1: 10:41

2: 10:12

3: 9:35

4: 9:35

5: 9:29

6: 9:25

7: 9:25

8: 9:17

9: 9:21

10: 9:18

11: 9:15

12: 9:04

13: 8:56

I ran the first mile and a half with Tammy who did 3.1 miles this morning. I love having her company running, even if it was just for a short while, it makes the rest of the run seem to go better. Although, today's was an unexpected and unanticipated physical struggle. That which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger though, eh? (the eh is the Yooper in me comin' out eh)

Today's run marks the completion of the 9th week of my training plan, which is the halfway point of my 18 week program and also, the highest weekly running mileage (41) I have run to date. I have some serious weekly mileage on the horizon in my training plan, which you can look at here if you wish.