Mileage reporting 7th week 2014

Time flies indeed ! Soon, summer will be over and we'll get some nice(r) weather for running :)

Today I ran about 10.6km/6.4mi, reasonably early (6am), very nice weather, about 20C/68F

Friday I am driving north for the Port Stephens run, looking forward to it, the region is beautiful, I will try to take some pictures
 
after walking dogs to the park i shoveled my neighbors driveway and sidewalk. no gym workout necessary. wore my vff lontras. they aren't very good in slush, ok in snow, and good in cold weather. no grip on ice, pretty sure you need spikes for that. it is quite entertaining watching the dogs bound through snow. they're too small to run through it so it wears them out fast.
 
Just a 3.1 mile run, mostly on the easy side. Felt good, very alive in the cold air and running with the expanses of snow to both sides of me. Still can hardly wait for spring!
 
Ran 5 Chilly miles at 4:45 am., 30 deg.F., 24 deg wind chill.
 
Monday - 90 minutes on spin bike next to hubby riding his spin bike, watching a movie together and chatting.
Tuesday - Unexpectedly got to run barefoot. Thought there would be too much slush, but the pond loop was decent with air temps of 43°F and not too many puddles. Thought I maybe wasn't running "hard" enough, as I didn't feel I was exerting myself, but found I was running faster than my more recent paces but with less effort. This is working for me!
 
Sunday - just deadlifts early in the morning. The bars in the garage are pretty frosty to the touch in this cold weather.

Monday - slept an amazing eight hours, 2mi run-commutes, box jumps at office, and st in garage -- bench press and curls. Got it up to 195 for the first time in a while. Shoulder felt fine. Will try for 215 0r maybe my max 225 next week. I think it's been two months since I last max benched.

Tuesday - wimped out of morning run (-11F, and even colder with windchill), even though I felt strong, and just run-commuted, then tried running bare in the afternoon on my way home. Made it 1.7 miles at 13F, don't know about windchill, before tapping out on mostly compacted sidewalk snow, just as I got to my fairgrounds street, which was mostly dry. So put on the Sockwa G4s and called it a day, and ran home another 1.7 miles. I wanted to do some back-n-forths on the fairgrounds street, but I didn't want to risk running more and getting frost nip, since I wasn't sure if the Sockwas would provide enough insulation for my feet to warm back up again. It seems like once I pass the numb-plunge threshold, that's it. In any case, my feet were still numbed up when I got home, but no frost nip tingling. Then I did my rows, landmines, etc.

Today, run commutes, med ball and mobility, and then squats when I get home. Got a little snow this morning.

I think this week I'll finally be able to implement my new routine in full:

1] 20-40 minutes of strength training every day (ideally in the afternoon);
2] two mezzo runs and one macro run per week (ideally in the morning);
3] one-to-three miles of run-commuting most days, and;
4] 5-15 minutes of plyometrics and mobility stuff 3-5 times a week (ideally mid-morning)
(See uploaded file--the bold-faced st exercises are the essential ones, the others I do if I have time.)

My body feels mildly sore all the time. I love that feeling. I think the trick to lifting every day is to just do high rep, more explosive sets on days when I start to feel tired or overly sore. Or I can simply skip a workout and double up the next day. It's kind of a haphazard version of Westside's "conjugate" training, which alternates lower body and upper body, max effort and dynamic effort days, totaling four weekly workouts: LB/ME, UB/ME, LB/DE, UB/DE. In my "system" I divide the body into three areas--front (pushes/presses), back (pulls/rows), & bottom (lifts/squats), which are color-coded in the attachment--and alternate maximal and dynamic effort by feel, pyramiding up to 3-5 reps of max effort the majority of the time, and leaving dynamic effort for finishing exercises and days when I'm feeling over-trained on max effort.

Tomorrow it's supposed to be 31F, then back to teens, then 30s next week! Hopefully the compacted snow on the sidewalks will melt off within a few days and I'll be able to run bare most of the time from here on out.
This winter has made me think of those conditions as not chilly at all.
Even my wife, born and raised in the tropics, said that same thing when it was in the teens this morning! And I way over-dressed on my run-commute. Gotta get rid of the third, outer layer.
 

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Wednesday afternoon, run-commute home unshod at about 24F, 16F windchill I think. There was about an inch or less of fresh snow on top of the compacted snow, and that nearly did me in. I kept checking my toes and they stayed nice and red, so I kept going, but at a pretty good clip! I made it home, did my squats and good mornings in our cold garage, but then in the shower the pain began as the toes warmed up. After an hour or so it began to diminish, but I relearned my lesson: Never run in fresh snow, no matter how little!

Still, I felt very invigorated while doing it, and I like how running bare in sub-tolerable conditions pushes my pace.

Today the toes are a little sensitive and crispy, so I drove to my office, but I should be able to get in a decent run later.
 
We're getting dumped on with snow again here. I stepped outside on the porch barefoot into some of it. YAWK! It was cold cold cold.

I've realized that this winter has greatly simplified training some. The basic rule is run when you have time and can do so, because you may not tomorrow. So that's why I popped out for a quick and easy 5K at my brother's place last evening before we went to the bowling league.

Hopefully I'll be able to run with clear enough roads by Saturday. I'm slightly behind the 1000 miles for the year pace bunny so far. I'd be well ahead of it if we weren't getting snow or ice almost every week.
 
Wednesday I got in a 20 minute swim. Today, I ran 8.3 miles at 50°F in soggy wet conditions on pavement with a layer of water nearly everywhere. I know it's nothing like what some of you are dealing with, but my feet were numb the whole time. They were pink, though. I've not tested my barefooting to that extent before, of putting up with that much numbness for so long. It is harder to run when the feet don't have optimum sensibility, but I don't appear to have done any damage. I still think it was more fun than running non-barefoot.
 
Drove to the fairgrounds late morning and got in four bare miles yesterday, temp was 28F. My frost-nipped toes are still too sensitive though. They didn't hurt while I was running because they numbed down, but I felt it a bit afterwards. So I think I'll skip tomorrow's run, which was going to be my first long run since the California trip, and start fresh on Sunday, when temps are supposed to start rising again. Today and tomorrow we're back down into the teens.

So 16.4 miles on the week, 6.7 bare.

Did my dips yesterday, today it's pulldowns and seated rows, then tomorrow shoulder presses, raises and swings, and power cleans for the first time in a while. Will get to some plyo and mobility stuff later this morning as soon as my breakfast has been digested.

Hopefully this will be the last week of a very mediocre winter season. My ST is coming back nicely, and I feel primed for getting back to barefoot running full time in the coming weeks as daily highs approach freezing or higher and the surfaces gradually clear of compacted snow. Some patches of dry sidewalk are already blooming.

I'm slightly behind the 1000 miles for the year pace bunny so far. I'd be well ahead of it if we weren't getting snow or ice almost every week.
Yah, I'm already off my mpy goal by a good ways, but hopefully we'll both catch up with strong springs. You guys out East have been getting a sh!tload of snow, right? For us, the snowfall has been average, but it's been the coldest winter in 30-some years.

Next winter I'm going to try to adopt more of a grin-n-bear-it attitude and not hold out for good bareable conditions as much as I did this year. That really knocked me off my game. Now I'm shooting to become a full-time early morning runner like Runlite01 as soon as temps allow for full-time barefoot running, and then put on the shoes and stick to that schedule next winter when BFR is no longer feasible. The Sockwa G4s are so good that the balance has tipped towards maintaining a good schedule through the winter months over seeking out ideal times and places in order to continue running bare as much as possible. At least that's the thinking right now, subject to change of course at the slightest whim.
 
Yah, I'm already off my mpy goal by a good ways, but hopefully we'll both catch up with strong springs. You guys out East have been getting a sh!tload of snow, right? For us, the snowfall has been average, but it's been the coldest winter in 30-some years.

It's not as much snow as we got from the 3 monster storms of 2009-10 winter season, but it's been colder and more storms overall. I can quite seriously say now this has been the worst winter I've ever seen around here in southeast PA. We got walloped yesterday, about 12 to 15 inches of snow. Dry snow. Wet snow. Sleet. Rain. I saw some thunder sleet last night. Really could use a bit of thaw over the next 2 weeks because I'm running out of room to stack snowpiles. But they're calling for another 1 to 3 inches tonight and tomorrow. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to run on Sunday.
 
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