Weekend

There is no hill running in Antarctica



Saturday I was at work for a half day which messed up my plan of getting in a few road miles. I did however do some sprint workouts as I worked on the treadmill when I got home and had to test it.

I really do not prefer the treadmill, but honestly there are times it comes in real handy and may be the difference between getting some miles in and not. it is quite a time saver for me to be able to get in a run while I am multi tasking like watching the news or when on call for work.

The problem with the treadmill is intermittent stopping for no planned reason. So while working on it I put the darn thing on 10 and ran until it stopped. This created intervals of 30-50 seconds and gave me an great workout while trouble shooting.

I didn't end up solving the problem but at least the thing is spotless clean now and I can use it for long slow running or some fast intervals. My intent is to replace it next year.

Sunday morning my plan was to run the Snow Squall course with the Trail Monsters. I went early with a plan of warming up for a bit on the new snow shoes. There was one car coming in when I did and the guy jumped out, threw on his snow shoes and started running. It didn't seem like he was running very fast so I took off after him.

It wasn't long before I realized that the hill was really slowing me down and catching my breath was more of an issue than catching the snowshoer. I found myself power walking a good portion of the first mile, which was actually a packed down snowmobile track.

Once I hit the summit the packed trail was gone and I felt so much better on the down hill portion. I really like running downhill in a partially packed powder and my cardio was happier too.

It wasn't until I was halfway down the Tote road trail that I remembered my plan was a short warm up and I was already 20 minutes into the run. I suspected it wouldn't matter much because the trail monsters were probably not far behind me and they would surely catch up.

I looped all the way back to the packed snowmobile trail before I ran into the Ian, Ryan and the others. They must have started later than they planned. I had a great run but at the same time, I was glad to be done.

My only complaint (other than not having enough cardio) was being a bit too hot. Once I got running, I realized that I overdressed and spent a lot of the time carrying my gloves. I could have easily shed at least two layers and still been warm enough.

The Tubbs running snow shoes were perfect, I didn't hit my legs once (like I do with the aluminum shoes)They felt very comfortable running down hill, they flexed with the uneven terrain very well and they didn't feel that heavy.

Somehow, I messed up on the ski trail and ended up at the Summit then hit the Tote road from there, back tracked a few times then followed it back to the ski trail so I didn't actual run the whole course.

3 miles snowshoeing @43:53 (14:11 pace)

splits:
16:29
14:49
12:03