This title is appropriate because I’m both training for a half and half training. The past two weeks have been filled with plane rides, car trips, company holiday parties, family dinners, and making it work. I’ve also been struggling with some IT band issues (not fun), so I canned a couple of runs.
Here’s what week four of training looked like:
Line 1 = planned training. Line 2 = actual training. I know. That’s a lot of rest days. But I was able to do Saturday’s run in Prospect Park, so I was a happy camper.
Week five was better:
3 miles turned into 2 miles because of the good old IT band. I detest giving up midway through a run, but it had to be done. Wednesday and Friday, I stuck to the treadmill, partly to give my knees a break but mostly because Illinois was covered in a thick sheet of black ice the whole time I was home.
Which brings me to today’s run, 10 miles with Megan. Thanks to sleet yesterday and overnight temps in the twenties, the city was pretty icy too.
We crossed into Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge, and the patches of ice made it, honestly, treacherous. Once we hit the West Side Highway, things got worse; the ice was so thick that we had to turn back. We came back over the Manhattan Bridge, thinking it might be a little safer, but it was still slick.
Our 10 miles were very slow and careful, clocking in around 1:36—definitely not my goal race pace. But the run flew by since we had a lot of catching up to do after three months apart. And it ended with a big group brunch at Hill Cafe, making it nothing short of a fantastic Brooklyn Sunday morning.
I got Hoppin’ John… let’s get this New Year’s party started!
Wow, what a lovely picture! Good effort during a holiday filled with travel and not-so-great conditions.
You know better than most about crazy winter running conditions! Remember our insane run on that freezing, ridiculously windy day in Rockford? I feel like after running in the winter in Illinois I can handle most things in life. ;)
Yep, I was so proud of our mad speed until I realized, once we turned around, what was propelling us forward! Good times … in retrospect.