snow in my eyes!

Winter has decided to come on back to say hello.. After several days of crazy, nice weather for this time of yr in Indiana.. I knew it was all going to come crashing down sometime soon, & I think we're seeing the start of that today. Just as I was heading out with a tri-friend of mine.. who, despite having several yrs on me, is still much faster than I am, the snow started coming down. I tried to think of all kinds of reasons for me not to run with him today.. I'm tired. I'm sore from all the crossfit stuff. I don't want to chase him up and down hills today. It's yucky & cold out.. BUT. As I've mentioned, I'm trying to improve on my run.. part of that improvement includes getting faster & the only way to get faster is to.. you guessed it.. run faster! So I'm doing that with the shorter speed-work things, and hills.. But I also really need to get back to running with people/groups that are just a little faster than you are.. making their comfy, easy run where they want to just chat & chat.. your tough, tempo run where all you can muster is 'yeah'.. or the always insightful 'ok' in response to whatever it is that they're saying (hard to hear through your wheezing & all). So that's just what I did today! We took off on a hilly out & back.. 3 out/3 back. It started with a few random snow flakes & then about a mile or 2 in we were in a pretty steady snow. Now I love a good snow-globe run. So peaceful! But when you add wind & make that snow wet.. those flakes can blind a fool! Like this fool. Especially on the way back, we were running right in to it & I could hardly see. Luckily, my running partner, Alan, had glasses on (is it uncool to wear ski goggles to run? I thought that sounded like a good idea), so I ran behind him for a bit & he blocked most of the flakes.. Why did they ALL want to land right in my eyeballs?? Sheesh. But we were able to maintain an 8:15min/mi avg for the whole hilly run, which is good for me! I'd still love to get to where I'm in the 7 min range.. but we'll keep working on it! Going back to how last week ended up, we did get a lovely 15-ish mi run in down in Brown County. Such a good day for it. Pretty much all of us just wanted to run and run and run.. so that's what we did! I think there were 7 in our group? We split up a bit throughout, but we all had a great run and had lots of fun. Lots of BIG trees down in Brown County?! Like.. full grown trees out from the roots. I guess the wind must have gotten to it? But pretty crazy to see. 1 such tree (well, several, but this 1, in particular) was lying across the trail & darn it all.. it jumped right up & grabbed me! I went over.. HARD, but it was too funny to even realize that I was pretty banged up & bloody. Other than that, though, big success on the day, for sure. This week has been good. I have continued to work on the ol run. Monday was treadmill hill sprints after my basement spin & then back out at night to continue to transform myself in to a night runner. I came to a few realizations.. 1st.. an 8 lumen flashlight IS, indeed, sarcasm. Why do they even make such a thing? "it's going to be dark.. & I want to see.. but not clearly.. maybe just enough to make out shadows? perfect" I also learned that I guess I make circles with my hands when I run? Oh, boy.. pretty sure that's not a good thing! But what I really learned is that I do, physically, like running at night. It feels good to kind of shake things loose at the end of the day. Mentally is more difficult. It's hard after a long day to get all dressed up for running when all you want to do is sit down & have dinner with your family and relax a bit. I did still have dinner with the fam. I just do a quick night run & then we sat down together.. But still.. it's just nice to get your workout stuff done early & not have to think about how/when/where/etc you'll get your evening workout in. But alas, a few more weeks and then I can go back to forgetting about all this night running business. Tuesday.. ah.. opted for the fartlek run! It felt good. It actually helps a lot to make the run feel faster when you're always either plotting your next sprint/pick-up, currently IN your sprint/pick-up, or recovering. Wednesday was back to the short spin/speed-work on the 'mill. This time we went for 2min sprints w/ 2 min recovery.. good times! Which brings us to thursday's hill tempo run (while being blinded by snow). In addition to all this run fun, I've had a couple good swims. Did learn, however, that I have poor posture in my swim & I need to work on yet another new thing in my swim! I really appreciate the coaches at Indy Aquatic Masters. Even though it's sometimes hard to think of all these little things while you're trying to just keep up, I do know that each time I finally 'get' one of the changes, I see huge improvements in my swim.. So keep 'em coming, coaches! I'll eventually figure this thing out. It's also been a pretty tough week of crossfitting. I got to learn to climb a rope! wow. I don't remember it being that difficult.. or that technical back in my gymnastics days, but I made it up.. 5x in 6min. the goal was to make it up 10x, so didn't quite make that.. maybe next time! We also had a real doozy of a workout with 100 thrusters(75#), which is a whole body lift.. deep squat up to an overhead press, I guess is how you'd describe it.. But 100 of anything is pretty tough to do.. add to that that every minute we had to stop the lifting to do 5 burpees. At first, this wasn't so bad, but man did those minutes get shorter & shorter. My 1st set of 13 quickly turned to 6, then 5, then it was all I could do to get more than 3 lifts in that minute before it was time for more burpees! But I did finish that beast.. just under the 30 min time cap.. YIKES. That was a good one. I'm also back to teaching gymnastics this week.. and back at it, indeed. It appears that I'll be the only 1 teaching classes this session.. usually I have someone to help me, but no such luck this time. So it's pretty busy, but I really do have fun with it. And I really can't wait to get started with triathlon coaching.. So bring it on, winter! Lots of fun still to be had