I Can't Get Warm

Our last big freeze out weekend was over the 9th and 10th...they said that was going to be the last real bad cold spell (of which we've had way too many this year) for the year. Ummm, yeah, they were wrong. I can deal with the cold, I've been doing it long enough, but I'm at the point where I just never feel warm anymore and it sucks. I drag my butt out of bed to get to the gym, freeze on the way to the gym, only getting warm about the time I pull up, get out, freeze a bit in the gym, particularly when running past one set of windows on the track. Then I get back into another cold car and drive to work. After work I really want to run errands or go to the gym again, but the idea of getting into the cold car a couple of times again isn't appealing...last night it didn't happen, tonight I might force it, but we'll see. I hate being cold. I want nice temps (OK, this weekend wasn't terrible, but I wasn't feeling so well on Saturday so didn't get to really enjoy it).

Now for the running stuff. Last couple have been related to dating, etc and I haven't really touched on running so wanted to get back to that, before I go on another rant!! Anyway, two weeks ago I managed a respectible week of 33 miles. And realized that I had run 6 or 7 days in a row, before I forced a break (one day was only a mile so it kind of was a rest day) and it's not perfect still, but things are better than they have been. Last week I managed to get in 37 miles. Way too many of them on the track, so far only long runs have been outside, but still respectible. I had 11 miles at a 9 minute pace 2 weeks ago and 10 this week at 9:22 but that's a little skewed because the first 2 miles I was messing with my phone and trying to have a conversation with my dad so those miles were slower. Last week I did my first "tempo" in quite a long time. I kind of consider it a tempo/interval workout. I was planning to run 7 both days. I ran 1 mile around 9 minutes to warm up, then sped up to planned 8:30 or so, and every other mile went that way. The last mile though I extended to keep the pace up both weeks and added one more to cool down for a total of 8. Last week I didn't wear a watch so was only guessing, this week I did wear a watch and the 1st tempo mile was 8:22, second was 8:14, 3rd was 8:09 followed by one more at 8:01 and a cool down 8th mile at 8:22 (yes, I was slowing down, but I obviously didn't slow enough for a bit). I had an average if 8:28 for a pace for the 8 and it felt really good to get going faster again. Although I felt sluggish and didn't want to pick up the pace...you know, was out of bed at 5:15 and damnit, it was cold!!

I don't think I'll meet or beat the 37 of last week this week, maybe it's good to have a fall back after 2 weeks of "up" considering how running has been lately. I just don't see getting my long run in this week because of busyness of the weekend this weekend...I'll post more about that later. We'll see though. Hopefully this means I'm getting back up there. Of course my crosstraining has suffered...