14 Weeks to Ice Age

I wanted 7 hours this week in base building and fell a bit short, finishing up with about 6. I put in 2 hours of decent effort on Thursday morning in the snow (actually, almost all my runs were in the snow this past week, and considering we're supposed to get up to 18 inches in the next three days, that story isn't going to change).

This weekend I'm throwing around the idea of doing the John Dick 50K on Saturday morning. If I don't get there, then I'm hoping for a 3 hour run on the trails around here.

34 miles, 6 hours (with an additional 2 hours of shoveling) on the week. I'd like to have 8 hours this week...snow permitting :)

Base Building

January weather in Wisconsin is not all that conducive to any kind of speed work (unless it's on a treadmill...and I HATE treadmills), so I'm taking a slightly different approach to my buildup for the April STL marathon and the Ice Age 50K. I've been running based on time and not really distance, and really working to keep my HR under 150.

Last week included about 6.5 hours of aerobic base building, with two long runs on the Ice Age Trail. I recently purchased a pair of Kahtoola Microspikes and loved them! Before getting the spikes I was in snowshoes, which I don't mind with the exception that my left foot seems to twist a bit at toe-off, resulting in my right ankle getting slammed by the snowshoe. Not fun.

With the STL marathon on April10, I'm hoping to continue with this aerobic building (HR under 150) until around February 10, at which point I'll have 2 months to start building more strength and speed.

I'm not sure that I will have a sub-3 performance in me at STL. I'm okay with that, though, as I'd much rather have more of my running done on trails (even with the 2 feet of snow we've got right now) than on a treadmill.

Hopefully this week will see my running time get up to 7-8 hours total with some more time on the trails.