I'm still Sure!

138.8 Post holiday catch-up, and yes, plenty of excess calories that were properly enjoyed, no regrets here!

Thursday we went out snowshoeing. Tom's Christmas GPS had arrived and I wasn't about to keep it from him, so we had to give it a test excursion. First, we made poor Charlie (fat cat, but less fat than 6 months ago!) walk the loop with us. He complained that the snow was cold on his bare feet, but trudged the entire .3 mile while Tom got the hang of the device. Then we put on our heaviest mountaineering boots, the ones that weigh 5 lbs/foot, figuring we should start getting our feet used to them in hopes of doing a winter ascent somewhere...

We headed south and were climbing our steepest cinder cone (the Snow Cone) when the fog moved in and with it, we started hearing gunshots from nearby hunters. Sheesh, what on earth could they be thinking, they surely couldn't see more than 20 feet and they were shooting??? It kind of freaked us out, but we were pretty certain they were about a mile away near the AT&T trans-continental cable building, so we did our best not to look like elk and kept moving the opposite direction. First hill was a steep short 350 foot climb, then down the other side, up the small hill to the west, more gun shots and we had to cross a big field of fallen trees, then up our final hill (Shadow Hill). Total elevation gain was just a bit short of 900 feet. Made our way back across the meadow and home for 2 hours snowshoe time and about 3.3 miles per the GPS.

Cooked dinner and enjoyed the traditional dishes and multiple desserts. Best of all, we have leftovers!

Friday we had plans for a yard workout if we could clear away enough snow. We did spend some time on the monkey bars trying to get a picture for a card. In the end we got a lot of work done as far as clearing snow, dealing with water collection barrels that were going to freeze solid, chopping firewood, and doing a massive pile of dishes, but no actual workout happened.

Yucky weather Saturday drove us to town and gym. I was ready for something hard and sweaty, but not running, so did stairmaster level 10 for 45 minutes. Considered jumping up to level 11 and did for a few minutes, but I would have had to shorten my time, so dropped back down. HR avg of 153, max of 159.

Headed to the treadmill next and did an hour of fast walking, 1/0% @ 4.7 mph (12:45 minute miles). Felt easy and very sustainable with HR in the low 120's. Point is, if I could manage an average of 4 mph at ATY, I could do 96 miles in 24 hours. Hmmm - unless something goes terribly awry, I can manage 4 mph even when I feel crummy and even when climbing a steep hill (say last 9 miles climbing out of the Grand Canyon, 5000 feet). This course is flat. Just hmmm...

Sunday brought no formal exercise but did do a LOT of snow moving - shoveling from one spot to another because the stuff just isn't going anywhere!
 
Monday - stairmaster level 10 for 35 minutes
3 sets of 8 pushups
20 pullups - mix of kipping and slight push-off, several slow negatives too
26 toes 2 bar

Was watching a video on the weekend that showed T2B as a progression exercise for muscle ups. Hmm, not the way I do either exercise! On the otherhand, I was transferring some info from one journal to another and noted my 2013 goals for the year which happened to include 20 T2B (continuous, I'm only at 9 at best), 10 pull-ups continuous (best I've done is 6), and muscle-ups from the low step - finally managed these from the block which is probably 2 inches higher - so progress for the year, but not total success. Still, Tom was showing me a pic he took of me this summer that shows some very nice muscle in my back and shoulders - I'm pretty happy about my gains overall.
 
Do you think a brief heavy lift in the middle of the night has any benefit? :sleeping2: - super strong winds started overnight and Tom had left some metal sheeting unsecured on the deck so we got up about 1:00 am to go deal with it. I carried concrete blocks to hold it down, and then since I was up and outside anyway, did the water jug farmer carries from my truck to the house - 50lbs per hand, and made more challenging by walking on icy snowpack. Only had 3 jugs so last was a "suitcase" carry I suppose. Back to bed!

137.6 Limited time in the gym so 10 minutes on EFX elliptical to warm up, then some BOSU balance work with the 10kg medicine ball followed by oodles of lunges. 1 song on the BOSU, 1 song back-step with 10kg medicine ball, another song forward on the bosu, and finally a song of squats with the medicine ball along with some side lunges and tick-tock lunges. Bit of stretching (am trying to hold firm on the 'stretch for at least 1 song' rule...
 
138.2 Nasty ice/snow storm this morning meant the commute to town was very slow and ate up all workout time. However, I have a plan to get in a long training run/walk on Thursday. Have to go to Phoenix anyway, so will go early, take the day off, and spend some quality, not snowing time in 50-60 (F) temps doing a multi-hour excursion along the flood canals. Also, my new gadget, Garmin 310XT showed up yesterday so I can take it out for it's first excursion assuming I can master the complexities of setup.
 
Left the newly fallen snow and freezing cold temps (was -4F when I got up this morning and 41F in the house since we don't heat overnight) of home and headed to Phoenix today - coolish here too with temps only in the low 50's, but the azelea's are still blooming so it seems far from winter!

First excursion with my new Garmin 310XT and everything worked perfectly - footpod and HRM both communicated properly and I loved getting the little buzz on my wrist with every mile! Ran some, walked some, mixed the miles up a bit, and overall felt good about the whole excursion which exceeded 17 miles slightly. Ran out of daylight and it got chilly even for a winter chicky like me, but I feel pretty good now that I've had a bite to eat and some chocolate milk. I'll have some Glycofuse (supercarb) and a hot shower and be ready for tomorrow's day-long meeting. Big question - will I feel like a short 2 miler in the morning?

Hmm, wonder if this link will work:
 
Easy 2.4 miles this morning (gym, not outside as it was dark and cold and I didn't bring cold-weather outside running gear with me). Good stretch and I feel really good this morning. Hips and hammies were a little stiff when I got up, but eased quickly once I started moving.
 
Cold-weather outside running gear? You mean snow-trax to clip onto your shoes right?
In fairness cold there looks a bit more severe than here but I do have a reputation that it would be absolute zero before I stop running in shorts. I don't think this has ever been intended as a compliment.

Link has worked. Good stuff.
 
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No snow since I'm in Phoenix, but all I had was a tank and shorts and the temp was right at freezing. I would be perfectly happy in shorts, but would be a bit chilly without long sleeves. My legs don't get cold, but upper body does. Actually was good to be inside, less pounding, more blood flow thru muscles that were a tad stiff.

Will be going home to nasty cold and more snow this weekend, hoping to get in another good snowshoe excursion.
 
Yikes! Suddenly seem to be ads everywhere...

Finally escaped my snowdrifted snowbank - sheesh - it is bad news when we get 8 inches of snow that all came down sideways... drifts everywhere and I stupidly did not move my truck at the top of the hill when it started. We started digging out Sunday mid-day and made it Monday with a little help from a neighbor. Won't be making that mistake again soon. Shoveling snow is great exercise, but not what I need to be focused on right now.

Saturday 137.4 Did our favorite Shoe Hill Loop on snowshoes and added a climb up the steep cinder cone to the south for an extra 400 feet of climbing, 3.8 miles. Wind was fierce and darn cold, but it was so great to be outside and doing. Video!



Sunday 138.4 (Tom is starting to make jokes about me "bulking", might have to kick him!) Lots and lots of shoveling snow, a little snowshoeing to make paths, more snow shoveling, then spent the afternoon messing with putting chains on tires and seeing just how bad the road situation is (it was nasty!).

Monday 138.4 3 hours of shoveling snow to break the road open

Ugh, now the "cold wave" is supposed to linger all week. I do like winter and winter sports, but these first couple of storms always take some getting used to.
 
138.4 Nasty cold this morning as forecast, -8F/-22C when I left home to walk up the hill to my truck. Brrrr, at least my truck started. The little bit of warmth built up in that .75 jaunt quickly left me while sitting in my freezing vehicle.

Went for the best warmth generating device in the gym this morning, the stairmaster. It is located next to the huge windows, so that side of the room was chilly, but as planned, I quickly warmed up and then went over the line into dripping sweat. Level 10, 35 minutes, 192 floors. Out of time so while I would have liked to do some upper bodyweight work, it was not to be. Did do some stretching.
 
CrazyOldMan said:
I like the idea of those temps. Looks like dry cold, my favourite weather.
Click to expand...

yes, dry cold is what we get. I'm not crazy about my nose hairs instantly freezing when I step out the door, it just feels bad. This morning I was making a serious effort to decide if I could tell any difference between -4F and -8F and the result was no, I really couldn't. Nose hairs froze, fingertips froze, toes froze! Happily, our frigid nighttime lows are slated to ease up by the weekend.

137.0 Lunge day for me. Tom did his big leg day yesterday and was telling me how sore he was already this morning and I was envious... Tuesday should have been lunge day for me as well, but my schedule got out of whack with the snow problems on Monday. Anyway, after a 10 minute EFX warm-up, made up for it with a solid 15 minutes of lunges - BOSU, step-back with 10kg medicine ball, and more tick-tock lunges than usual. I realized I tend to be a slacker when it comes to the tick-tock lunges. They are really hard, really make my leg burn, and I often do only a single set per leg. So I devoted the last half of Layla (about 3 minutes) to them today. Finished up with lots of body weight and 10kg medicine ball squats.

Realized that all I can really do in terms of upper body work is slow the decline until after New Years and after Across the Years. There just isn't time to do much upper body work right now when I need to be focused on being able to rack up the miles. That's OK, I can get it back, but I hate to lose the gains I made over the summer.
10 pull-ups
10 T2B
3 sets of 8 pushups
 
137.4 Ran 4 miles on the treadmill this morning and it felt good. Started at 6.4 mph and ramped up to 7.0 by the last 1.25 miles. Finished off with some fast walking at 4.7 mph and 3% grade.

Temps were above 0 this morning by a smidge but nose hairs still froze instantly. Can probably drive home Friday night. I love the walk home at night - clear, cold, silent and with lovely moonlight. The morning walks - not so much... just COLD!
 
Never considered if my nose hairs have frozen if fair. I have been in some seriously cold places doing what I considered ordinary things but others seemed less convinced.
One that I remember well was cycling about 2/3 of the way north in Norway, so around 100 miles or so south of the arctic circle, during a November. The Norwegians consider themselves an authority on weird, and most agree. One of them was talking to me 'So your cycling out there?'
'Yes.'
'You know, we don't do that?' said with a definite meaning behind it, as far as he was concerned if they didn't do it, I was beyond weird.


Cold but stunningly beautiful. Roads were just the patches of snow and ice most packed down and the soft compound tyres coped wonderfully, braking took forward thinking but it was safe.
Back here in the UK I was living in the south west when they had around an inch of snow. Whole city gridlocked, I cycled to work no problem, it was like riding through a car park. One section of downhill I heard a shout with my name in it, stopped turned and a friend was in a car declaring I was mental for being out riding in that 'extreme' weather. He had travelled less than half the distance I had covered in 4 times as long and thought being in the warm car made him smarter. I pointed out that I would be at my journeys end within the time it would take him to get to the roundabout we could see, where it was warm, with sofas and food. He and a number of others in cars seemed to see the merit of my choice.
 
I love how you embrace your weirdness, Crazy Old Man, very healthy!

Practically a heatwave this morning, 25F/-3C and no frozen nose hairs! Heck, I wore my lightest down jacket for the trek to my vehicle.

137.2 Was actually ahead of schedule and looking forward to a good workout/experiment with the Garmin on the treadmill, then last minute Tom suggests we should do the Christmas card photo upload "because it will only take 5 minutes". Uh, right... Well, it is done and that is good, but my workout was shortened to just a quick 3 mile run/walk and in the rush to leave the house I forgot my HRM strap so only got to play with the cadence, not both cadence and HR. Oh well. I was pleased my step rate was high while walking fast (shortens my stride and is easier on my still grumpy hamstring), but my running cadence is not what it ought to be. And there are a couple of songs in my running playmix that need to come out of that list!
 
Ran a major chunk of the Sedona Marathon course on Sunday with Tom, 20 miles. That would not be a race to run for a PR - half pavement, half dirt, lots of hills. We parked in the middle of the course and first ran out the dirt side for 7 miles (loved the Garmin for that!) then turned and came back. As an aside, time for a half marathon that was embedded in there would have been a PR, I've never done a half outside of the tough, trail, high elevation version in Flagstaff. This course is rough jeep road too, but being 2500 feet lower helps a lot! We stopped the timers and took a break to eat and drink, then set off on the pavement side - ugh, felt terrible! Ran 3 more miles of hills then turned around and came back to the car to finish out the day with 20 miles in a time of 3:39, so averaged 11:00 min miles for the day. 3:39 is the same amount of time I took to do 17 miles along the canal on 12/5, difference is having company who pushes me (in a good way!)



Tom was coming down with a cold and was getting progressively worse as we drove home. He is sick in bed today and I have to admit to feeling a tad wimpy myself, but my legs feel amazingly good. The left portion of my left quad is sore, it cramped a little as we were finishing up on the pavement. Definitely need to do some rolling this evening.

As "proper" training for ATY, this wasn't that great in that we went faster than we would plan to do and did not stop regularly to eat and drink as we would want to do in order to go 24 hours. It was just hard to resist going steady on a marathon course...

Sweats on Saturday came in the form of digging out a snow drifted basement - lots of steps, lots of shoveling hard packed snow, lots of tossing said snow, so overall, a solid core, leg and upper body workout!

137.8 but no workout today as I needed rest more and so slept in.
 
Running on road and Tarmac is very different to dirt and off road. The softer knees you need to compensate for uneven ground will bring pain on road. The strike has to be lighter as you don't need to dig in for stability but avoid excessive impact. Posture is pure upright, all forward focused no lateral compensation.
I was naturally off road, but have trained roads so much now it feels natural.
 
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