A Taste Of Winter

Today:
Run 15 miles
Bike 18 miles

Yesterday:
Run 9 miles
Lift 16 lifts
-3 sets of 12 reps

Saturday:
Run 34 miles

Friday:
Run 9 miles
Bike Commute 3 miles

We finally got a little bit of snow. About 6" on Saturday. I was hoping to go xc skiing Sunday or today but it turned warm and started raining just as soon as the snow stopped. now we just have an inch or two of slush everywhere.

I ran 34 miles on Saturday during the midst of the snowfall so it made for a quite adventurous time. I was hoping to be out for about 4.5 hours but the going was slow so my route that I planned took me 5.5 hours. It was 15 miles of road and 19 miles of very technical trail. The snow and ice on the trail made for some horrible footing. I was pretty lucky not to hurt myself on any of the several falls that I took.

I've been very encouraged by how quickly I'm feeling energetic again after my long runs. It always takes a few hours to replenish my water and calorie deficit but as soon as that's taken care of I feel pretty much entirely normal again. A year ago when I was training for the Susitna 100 a 34 mile run would wipe me out for the rest of the day, and sometimes part of the next day. Now though, presumably because I have worked more gradual up to this point, and because I'm doing more mid week runs of 12+ miles than I was last year, I feel like a long (30+ mile) day is just another day of training. Hopefully I can work up to 50 miles in a few weeks and still feel this way.

Training totals for the week (as of Saturday): Bike 35 miles; Run 120 miles; 22.5 hours (including weightlifting time).