Sunday, 2/1/2015: A rest day.
I felt like crap most of the day. My stomach was not happy but I did manage to eat. My darling wife, Christine, made a package of Lloyd's Big Ribs along with some zucchini and salad just the Super Bowl came on. It would have been better if my stomach had felt better.
The Super Bowl was between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. I liked the Patriots the least so I kind of rooted for them. They were down 14-24 as they entered the 4th quarter. The Patriots won 28-24 in a close finish. The Seahawks had the ball at the 1, 2nd and goal, a time out and about 30 seconds to go. They should have gave the ball to "Beast Mode" Lynch but ... they tried to be cute and pass over the middle ... intercepted and game over. Lot of links ... here, here, here, here and here. The commercials were pretty good, link here.
Monday, 2/2/2015: 3.4 miles, 52:52, 15:32 pace, 12F, 78% RH, 9 mph NW wind, chill chill 2F, overcast, light snow.
Garmin Connect Activity for A run/walk on snowshoes in deep snow
It snowed about a foot of fresh powdery snow during the day so I needed to get out. I thought up another run/snowshoe/run over to nearby Seneca Park. It was cold but I have the clothes for the cold. I ran 0.9 miles over to Seneca Park before I put on my Dion snowshoes. Then I was off ... a foot into the snow with every step ... wow! There were some spots that weren't a foot deep and some that were deeper. I soon found that you can't run ... you can only walk. I did find a spot on the trial where a cross country skier had been. This was easier and I could run. But I only went about a mile before I turned back and snowshoed home. I just kept to the edge of the unplowed edges of the side streets and walked slowly across the main streets.
Tuesday, 2/3/2015: Rest day.
The usual rest day before a Snow Cheap. I declared a "Cabin Fever" day and met up with my darling wife, Christine, at Salvatore's after work where we had fish. I had the Haddock Parm and she had the Haddock dinner.
Wednesday, 2/4/2015: 2 runs of 0.43 and Snow Cheap #4 of 2.27 miles, around 32F, light wind, light snow, overcast.
It was a Snow Cheap Wednesday so I had my customary pre-race bowl of cereal when I got home. I dressed like hundreds of time before, threw extra clothes in a bag and headed out to Riley Lodge at Cobbs Hill Park. I arrived in plenty of time to snag a relatively close parking spot.
It was a bit breezy so I changed into my heavy Sugoi long sleeve tech under my short sleeve tech along with the usual CW-X tights, full balaclava, beanie, skiing mittens and black Salomon Speedcross 3 trail shoes with screws. I headed out for a 0.43 mile warmup run, link here. I found that it was going to a run through deep snow with lots of slipping and sliding.
And ... we were off! This start was a bit of a scrum. There is a choice ... go out fast and have break trail in snow or go slower and follow slower runners on the stomped down trail. I chose a bit of both and got pretty winded.
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| A line of runners running .... |
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| Cowbells are always appreciated! |
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| About 200 yards from the finish. |
Soon I was home with my feet up. I tried to upload my Garmin Forerunner 310XT data to Garmin with no success. It would always fail at 51% or so. I tried deleting all the Garmin software (Communicator, USB drivers and ANT agent), rebooting and reloading all the Garmin software. It had to try reload all the data from my Garmin which took 20 minutes before it failed at 98%. I deleted all but last month's data with no joy. I deleted all data but Snow Cheap #4 with no joy. So I deleted everything, put on a dummy 15 seconds of data and then tried to upload ... success! Somehow my Garmin data from Snow Cheap #4 was corrupt. I was a bit pissed but what can I do? I spent 2 hours working on this software issue and didn't go to sleep until 12:30AM. Ugghhh!!
Anyway after all that, I did OK. I was 46th out of 232, link here. I was 5th out of 15 in my M50-59 age group, link here.
Thursday, 2/5/2015 through Saturday, 2/7/2014: Rest days.
The "fun" of Snow Cheap #4 affected me more than I knew. My ankles ached the rest of the week. I could still barely walk on Saturday. I talked with Bill Beyerbach and he told me that probably the stabilizer muscles in my ankles were strained.
I had thought about running either the 4 mile or 2 hour relay version of Cast A Shadow out in Black Creek Park but I just wasn't up to it. I read a lot of Facebook posts about it though.
