Fri 2/12 - PM 55 minutes easy

Tiger Drive to Longfellow. After yesterday's early start fell right back into the typical pattern, exacerbated by getting home later than normal as well. Realized about halfway through the run I was forcing the issue a bit, and needlessly so. Made it a point to relax and not press so much. The arctic airmass brought in by the jetstream has taken over completely, with the worst yet to come. Full winter kit necessary.

Thu 2/11 - PM 50 minutes incl. 2k, 2(5x1 minute)

Levittown. Skipped the nap entirely today after too many sluggish late starts to runs recently, and decided to get right to it instead. This meant running in daylight on a weekday for a change. Finding out earlier in the day that I would be participating in the old fart olympics after all due to the field being smaller and much thinner than normal had me geeked up as well. On the negative side, the jet stream turned its baleful fury on the area starting in the afternoon with screeching awful winds blasting out of the NW. Requisite cold came with them of course. Bundled up and decided, somewhat on the fly, to do a mixed bag of a longer threshold piece with shorter faster pickups after that. The longer piece was two laps around the Loring/Orren/Amory/Hazelwood rectangle, which appears to be about 1km around. Likely a little shorter than that as I knocked off two laps in about 6:55 with all the clothes on and getting raked by the wind half the time. 3.5 minutes later started in on the first set of shorter reps of one minute with even shorter 30 second recoveries. Still clinging to the "new interval" setup in structure if not in fact. Running on effort and feeling fairly wiped out by the end of it. Pressed for time which resulted in a short cooldown, happy to get out of the wind quite frankly.

Wed 2/10 - PM 70 minutes easy

South Acton to Lower Village, back via Summerhill. Not the most inspired or inspiring effort ever. The plan was to head back via White Pond/Hastings after a stop at the supermarket for some produce, but the typical late start and sluggish pace meant I had to take the more direct route up and over "Summer Hill Pass" instead. Seemed like more cars than usual at every turn compared to previous runs on this loop which got on my nerves of course.

Tue 2/9 - 80 minutes

Tiger Drive to Longfellow Loop/McMansionville. Originally I had delusions of doing something of quality today, but the lolligagging and procrastinating after getting home from work were indicative that I was nowhere near a place where I could reasonably expect to do such a thing. Started out slowly, feeling fairly sluggish and decided just putting in some time and not overdoing it would be a better plan. Had what felt like a twinge in the right calf around 15 minutes or so which put me in a foul mood but this didn't bother me any more after that. After about 40 minutes or so the pace picked up gradually and in time got to a reasonably quick if not overly impressive level. Take what I can get at this point. Roads a mixed bag, some relatively clear others icy crap.

Mon 2/8 - off

Second zero in four days, thanks to another snowstorm. This time the snow took a while to get started, and I could have got in a run in the morning before 10 AM or so but of course I didn't take advantage of that. Two rounds of shoveling later and with the wind and snow flying, the only option was the treadmill and I had no interest. Not in a great headspace at the moment when it comes to the whole running thing. Perhaps February has that effect on me, perhaps something else. 

Sun 2/7 - AM 80 minutes easy

Levittown with the CH for the first 50 minutes or so, then another half hour tacked on to Greenwood/Turner/Old Marlboro before heading back via Tiger Drive. The twist today was that I did the run with 30 second walk breaks every 2 minutes. A long time since I've done this particular Van Aaken twist on a recovery run but it seemed like the thing to do. While the pace picked up some for the final part of the run I did on my own, at no point could it be considered fast. As such didn't feel like I did any further damage to the calf, although it's stiff from last night of course.

Sat 2/6 - 70 minutes incl. track 5k

Not at all triumphant return to racing 5k indoors. Didn't realize the possibility existed of doing this event today until quite recently. With hopes of racing in the old fart olympics next weekend having faded to nothing I figured what the hell. In my mind the 5k from a month ago wasn't truly a race but rather a high-end aerobic workout. Wore road flats that day and tried (unsuccessfully) to progress the pace from one km to the next. This was meant to be a full-on effort, spiked up and hitting the edge of fitness from the get-go which I judged to be 39 sec/lap. Found out to my chagrin that my fitness level was in fact at 40 sec/lap which is roundly unsatisfying when compared to both results of the not so distant past and even last month's glorified tempo. The meet as a whole was massively behind schedule but this had no effect on my performance, in fact it gave me more time to both digest lunch and warm up for the race. Had to hold back the first km, which went too fast anyway, then hit the unsustainable 39 groove for the next five laps. By just before halfway I no longer had anyone to race with and was time-trialing. It became readily apparent that the pace was slipping and I was powerless to do anything about it. In fact, every lap leading up to halfway was under 40 and every one after that slower than 40 which is as clear and obvious a dividing line as one could ask for. Having someone to race with the second half might have been worth a few seconds, five at most. Not that it matters, just not fit for this distance.

Adding injury to insult, the right calf started twinging to an alarming degree starting right at 4k, to the point that I considered dropping out. I had noticed some stiffness on the warmup and thought little of it. In hindsight, a slip I took while checking the depth of snow outside the kitchen door yesterday was the culprit, as the calf hasn't been bothering me like this at all this year. Stubborn ass that I am I pressed on, hopefully not doing any lasting damage. While I wasn't DFL, I was lapped once by every single person that finished ahead of me, twice by more than a few, and three times by the winner. A pity clap would have been appropriate, better yet the Sandman from the Apollo with his broom.

Splits, thanks to the CH whose attention was as ever unflagging and much appreciated:

38.5/38.3/38.9/38.7/39.1 - 3:13.5
38.6/39.1/39.0/39.2/39.2 - 3:15.1
39.3/39.3/39.8/40.3/40.5 - 3:19.2
40.6/40.3/41.0/41.1/41.1 - 3:24.1
41.2/41.3/41.6/42.2/41.2 - 3:27.5