Crazy Weather

As expected in a mountain climate this time of year, the weather has been a little bit interesting lately. Last week it was in the upper 50's and 60's. I even went out for the first shirtless run of the year at one point. Normally, that does not happen in mid-January, but then, northern Minnesota has a bit of a different climate than Colorado.

In any case, yesterday, far from a shirtless run, it was a bit under 10 degrees and I ran for half my run into a brisk headwind, which made things yet more interesting. And this morning, on my walk to the bus stop, the temperature registered at a rather brisk -5. But that's ok, since where I'm from, the temp was a good ten degrees lower than that.

I have felt rather lazy lately. I've only been running 4-5 days a week. The semester has come on full force, and I'm taking 12 grad credits (which is a %133 course load), and TA'ing at the same time (for a rather less-than-impressive professor). Add to that skiing every Saturday, and trying to fit in a little bit of a social life in there somewhere, and it makes it difficult to find any sort of time to run at all.

So I've been lucky to get in 25 miles per week lately. If I really feel energetic, I get a few miles in after skiing on Saturday. But, as I telemark, I consider skiing a pretty good strength workout (imagine doing lunges down a hill, and you start to get the picture of the kind of workout it is). That said, no matter how tired my legs feel after skiing, my next run always feels amazing, as though I could go forever and not use any energy whatsoever.

I'm going to try to work up my mileage a bunch over the next two months. My next big race is not till April, when I have the Horsetooth Half. After that, it's a 5k to qualify for a decent Bolder Boulder wave, the BB itself, the Leadville Heavy Half in July, and Pikes Peak in August. Somewhere in there, I'll be pacing my friend SH in her attempt at the Leadville 100.

The year begins to take shape. Now the only question is where I might end up after I finish my degree and try to find a job.

Pics to come soon.

Surfing Lake Superior

In the not-too-far-gone days of my childhood in northern Minnesota, I remember my favorite days being the windy summer days on Park Point, when the breakers would come in and we would bodysurf in the biggest freshwater lake in the world. Normally, the water never gets much above 50 degrees just a few inches below the surface, but if there was an East or Northeast Wind, it blew all the surface water towards the point, and if you were tough you could spend upwards of 10 minutes at a time in the water.

In the past decade or so, there has been an increasing population of Freshwater Surfers on the lake, and far from sticking to the warm, windy days in the summer, they surf year round. Now, I've swum in Lake Superior every month of the year, and while it's true that the water is much warmer than the air in the middle of the winter, it's still a risky proposition, and for me usually a "jump in, jump out, warm up" maneuver.

These guys, while fully equipped, are still tough. Here's, yet another, NYT article profiling them.

The Freshwater Surfers.

Cold Running

I've always been a proponent of this myself, but it's good to see that there is at least some evidence behind it. As usual, the NYT has a great article related to running. The "Personal Best" Column continues to be one of my favorites.

So, don't stop running just because you have a cold.

The Bike Path Fartlek

Anybody who has run for a while probably knows what a fartlek is. If not, see my previous post on the subject. Fartleks are some of my favorite workouts, precisely because they require you to be in tune with your running, and at the same time can improve your fitness tremendously. Without a watch, they require even more awareness of your body.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've started running without a watch most times. This requires me to adjust some of my typical workouts (intervals, fartleks, etc) and pay more attention to what I'm physically feeling, rather than what the numbers on my watch are telling me to do. So far I think I like this method.

One of the new workouts I've come up with for watchless training happened almost entirely by accident one night when I had not started running until late in the afternoon, and so had relegated my workout to the Boulder Creek Path, a place I normally avoid for several reasons. First, it's concrete, and I don't like running on roads period. Second, it's dark, and there are sometimes issues with people not paying attention. And third, it's populated by an extraordinary number of bikers, which might be expected on a bike path. However, this third negative allows for a rather interesting workout.

This particular night I was feeling quite randomly enerjectic. At one point, when a biker on a singlespeed passed me up, I decided to tag along behind him to see how long I could keep up. It turned out that it was quite a bit longer than I expected. I started doing this with every bike that passed me. It led to an interesting workout, and one that I now do on a more regular basis: what I call the "Bike Path Fartlek."

The rules are exactly what I just described: every time a bike passes you on the bike path, keep up with it for as long as you can. Granted this only works in select places (Boulder being one of them). It also leads to an incredibly varied workout. Certain bikers will go very slowly, allowing you to tag onto their wheel for a very long time. Others (especially in Boulder and like-minded areas) will blow by you and let you tag on at a full sprint for maybe 5-10 seconds. The most interesting are those that fall in between, where you might hit anything from an 800 pace to a 10k pace.

Let me tell you, it's a phenomenal workout. Uphill bike paths make it yet more interesting (the Canyon in Boulder is a good route for uphill enthusiasts). I do not recommend trying this downhill (it's rather dangerous, really, and hard on your knees).

At this point, I don't actually have a race planned until April sometime, at which point we will see how my methods are working (Horsetooth Half, anybody?).