Per Aspera Ad Astra

Early afternoon: 8 miles outside in a -21 degree windchill (with some colder gusts).  I guess the prediction map from yesterday was factoring the max speed wind gusts.  The wind was pretty high, coupled with the negative temp, but there were occasional much faster winds that cut to the bone.  Still, when it didn't pick up that high, it was kind of fun out there.  I did a loop of Katherine Abbott Park, popped out on the Southeast side, went up to OHA, did a loop there, popping out on the Northeast side, took Hilton to St Jude, lapped the perimeter of the high school, did a lap of the very crunchy and slow XC ski loop back there, popped back out by St Jude again, went up to Hickory, took that to Park Ave, and followed that along by the lake before cutting back across Wildwood Road and heading home.  Old Mahtomedi is a super fun area to run, and I had forgotten how nice the MHS/MMS campuses are.  Pace was extremely relaxed, like 8:25 or so.

PM: Treadmill (so rep times are about 13 seconds faster than they should be on a track, by Daniels, due to lack of air resistance).  On a brand new $9000 treadmill yet again, which was fun.  1 mile warmup at 6:00, then 3 by mile with 4 minutes rest (ie, LOOOONG rest) at 4:58, 4:54, 4:53 (would be 5:11, 5:07, 5:06 in ideal conditions on a track) then 1 mile cooldown at very slow ~9:00 pace.  Since can treadmill take up to about .05-.06 miles to get up to full speed, I started timing when the distance hit  .07 miles on each rep and just considered the mile to be from .07 to 1.07 each time (what I typically do for speedwork on them).  The long rest meant that I was pushing very hard on the reps.  The focus was purely on running fast.  This will be interesting to compare to if I do any similar short/fast/long rest workouts later in the winter...  Since mile reps are so much less aerobic than most of what I do, there's not much difference in pace at sea level vs SLC.  In fact, sea level to 5000' for someone like me would only be a 2 second difference, so I can run these sorts of long rest workouts, in which each rep is done pretty fresh, both at home and in Utah and be able to compare without having to consider conversions much, other than, of course, tacking on 13 seconds per rep for being on a treadmill.  All of this aside, the important thing is that I pushed myself very hard 3 times for about 5 minutes, with a focus on running quite fast. :)

Came home, skied (day 14), was going on far too little sleep and I had a slightly irritated tendon in my right foot (completely better as of Tuesday), so I just relaxed and went to bed instead of running.

8 miles easy with Holly in Memory Grove / City Creek; now I'm going to head off for a brief ski day #15 (90 minutes of skiing before close beats no skiing, and I have to be down in Sandy at 5:00 anyway).  Ideally, I'll get in a few more miles before the fesitivities tonight.

15 miles at 6:38 pace with a big group at Riverton.  Pushed the last 6 a little bit harder than the rest with Jon Kotter, probably about marathon effort, but very very relaxed.  These 6 had a couple hundred feet of hills and an average pace of 6:24/mile (including that annoying run up and over the bridge, which cost a good 15 seconds on that mile's pace), which would be worth about 6:04 on a course like Phoenix.  I felt really fit today, which is always a nice feeling. :)

PM: Skied at the Bird for 2 1/2 hours, 3rd day in a row and 16th day of the season.  Legs felt super solid, even though I spent a lot of time hitting moguls really fast and hard.

Ski day #17 for the season (4th in a row).  Legs were a little tired, so I just skied moderately for about 100 minutes.

Run: With Holly.  Didnt' get out until right around midnight.  Wanted to avoid the poison gas that we have to breathe outside, so I stuck to the upper aves and ran pretty close to an exact loop of the perimeter.  A little over 9 miles with nearly 1500' of gain, a little under 9:00 pace (8:55 pace correlated to 8:15 effort on flat, so quite easy effort).  Perimeter was pretty complete other than an offshoot of Terrace Hills Drive and a small loop off of Capital Park (the latter a gated private community that I couldn't run even if I wanted to).  I'm sure the air is still quite bad up there, but at least the visible smog line was lower in the valley than where I was running.

On a note related to air quality, I've been coughing constantly, despite not being sick, ever since getting back to Utah.  My lungs feel simply awful.  At this point, I've never been more excited to finish my PhD and move to a place where the government won't put more effort into selecting a state gun than solving an extreme health crisis that affects millions of people.

My place to Sears to pay for some tires that I'm going to have mounted on Tuesday (they only had 3, have to wait for the 4th from Tire Rack), to 27th South, to 5th East, to Smith's (needed new pillow cases), back home, carrying my purchase over the last mile.  7:25 average pace.

AM: Ugh, that kind of sucked.  17.5 with James from Highland, up to Wasatch, along the bike path, and down to 6200 before following some complicated route back with a pickup from 13 to 17.  Kinvaras were a terrible choice today, as it was extremely snowy and icy for the first 4 or 5 miles, so my legs started to feel it too fast and I didn't have much on the MP pickup.  James started pushing really hard right away and I didn't have it mentally, so he got away from me.  I averaged 6:29 on the pickup.  Granted, it had some significant hills and is at altitude, so this isn't terrible, but I wanted to be faster and feel better.  I think I felt crappy due to a combination of:

a) 3rd run this week that was at least moderately hard (Mile repeats on Sunday, somewhat similar 15 mile pickup on Wednesday, and then this) plus skiing 4 of the last 5 days

b) Mentally wasn't really all there on the pickup, as it wasn't physically all that bad, breathing wise.  Strangely, I tend to run workouts best solo a lot of the time.

c) Have a horrible cough from the inversion still which probably won't go away for another week or so, at which point we'll probably have another inversion.

d) Shoe choice.  Kinvaras were really really awful on snow and ice, slipping all over the place, and my stabilizers were already feeling pretty shot by mile 5.

Anyway, runs like this that you have to suffer through are good training for the marathon, so I'm glad that this happened.

PM: Ski day #18 at Snowbird (5th this week), legs actually felt good.  Great day to ski. :)