Geat Western Half Marathon

Awesome.  Fabulous day.  Sunny, light breeze from SW, temperature rising from about 45 to 60 degrees.

Well organized, 800 runners, about 150 no-shows.  Organized by Fox River Trail Runners.  Nice job!

Pizza, banana, bagels.  Nice running shirt. 

13.1m 2.06′51″ 

shamrocks are bloomin

Me and Charley Farley did the Shamrock Shuffle today.  I love running with the kids!

I’m now in the run-up to the Fox Valley Half-Marathon.

6.8 miles door to door

getting a new rhythm

the thaw is coming

Today it’s gonna get into the mid 50s!!!

So I should be able to get back on the Leroy Oakes trails soons.

It was so nice to get out in the sunshine today, I took off my hat and gloves halfway through the run.

Still had to go carefully over patches of ice – the freeze-thaw cycle is producing some nasty slide zones.

don’t adjust your volume when you’re running uphill

Almost a full month since I ran.  The weather has been lousy and it’s been too icy.

So today, for the first time in weeks with the temperature above freezing I got out and ran for 43 minutes – I’m guessing about 3.5 miles.

I’m so glad I broke the spell.  It’s only 8/9 weeks to the half marathon.

lake harriet minneapolis

5.1 miles of pretty level running.

snow running

6.1 miles of bloody hard work through Leroy Oakes with about 6″ of untrodden snow.

Signed up for the Fox River Trail Runners half-marathon today.

i have been running … honest!

It’s tough to get the miles in, in the winter. 

But if you want to make sure that I’m not slacking you can take a look at the journal. 

Sub-zero temperatures, 60’s yesterday, 50’s today, and I think the temperature plunges tonight.

It’s all good fun, and I’ve been playing with the ipod and trying to find tunes that hit my running rhythm – seems like my steady pace is 175bpm.

Gilberts Cross Country Challenge

“Plodging through the clarts”. 

That’s what we used to say when I was a kid about this sort of run.  You know the sort of thing – it seems like it’s raining upwards.  Your shoes get stuck in the mud and you feel as though you are running uphill all the time.  It’s a 5 mile course that plays like 6.  But it’s fun.

I last did this race back in 2001 (also December 2) when Tori and a bunch of her mates from Purdue Crew came.  We had maybe 15-20 athletes crashed around the house – I found this old picture of some of them taken in our backyard after the race.

Here’s the results.   My time 57′ 14″.  597/776.