Weather Wackiness

I ran from 11:20 until about noon on yesterday. The sun was peeking through the clouds, the temp was near 60, a breeze was blowing from the south, and I was in shorts and a thin wicking T-shirt. On January 29.

By 9 pm, the temperature was around 9 degrees with a howling west wind. In between, we'd had rain, sleet, and snow.

This weather is so wacky. There's no chance for anyone to get acclimated to any level of warmth or cold. I'm just hoping I get through the next couple of months without a major cold or case of the flu that puts me out of action for a week.

To focus on the actual running, I really can't get over how strong I'm feeling on these Tuesday runs. I usually run the eastern part of the Frostbite Festival course so I get some hills. These are hills which used to knock me out. Now I'm rolling through them--they require effort, of course, but I don't feel exhuasted when I get through them. It's really kind of fun.

And I'm concentrating on doing leg exercises on Wednesdays, my Nautilus workout of the week. This week I actually got up early Monday morning to run 3 miles (3.4 or whatever) and then some Nautilus upper-body work at noon. Wendesdays, though, I make sure to use the leg machines in additon to the upper-body machines. I've been told several times that it's vital to have strong muscles around the knees.

I HAVE to keep my knees healthy this spring. They're going to take a lot of pounding.

Tomorrow is the last 2-mile run on the schedule until we reach the taper weeks, so I'm going to stick pretty close to 2 miles. And then Saturday is 6 miles, the last time I run anything that short on a Saturday until after the marathon. So I'm planning to enjoy both runs.