Running Chick

Finally, Spring has arrived. It was warm, sunny & lovely this morning and the rest of the week is supposed to be the same. The forecast ways it will be 65 on Wednesday! That’s bike ridin’ weather, so I think I’ll unleash my road bike from the trainer and take it out for a spin.

This was a cut-back week, so I topped out at eleven miles. Nothing exciting to report except that I saw a decent speed increase during my first two runs. Maybe those hill sessions are starting to pay off? Tuesday, 3.5 @ 9:44; Thursday, 3.5 @ 9:54 and Sunday, 4 @ 11:25.

Oh, and good news, I got my running partner back! We did our long run together this morning, it was fun to have someone to chat with again.

Here’s a photo of us running. Josh says hi with his special finger. Rotten.

Here we are with our obnoxious fancy new shoes. Brooks Cascadia’s all around. Can’t beat ‘em for snow, ice and general Spring slop.

My old Cascadia’s are about 75 miles from being dead, so I thought I’d throw these new ones into the rotation. Running Warehouse had a liquidation sale and thanks to a coupon I found, I got them for less than $60. Rock. Anyway, these are the Cascadia 6’s and I’m too lazy to look up the specific the improvements over my old 5’s, but upon first inspection I noticed that Brooks relocated the lace eyelets so the tongue doesn’t shift around (apparently a complaint about the 5’s, but I never had an issue) and they changed the treat significantly. I’m a little bit skeptical about the new tread pattern as it doesn’t seem as aggressive as the 5’s, but it did just great on pavement. 

The first thing I noticed when I started running was how stiff they were on pavement, way more stiff than my 5’s were. I did some reading and found that Brooks added an extra layer of cushion in the midsole to prevent you from feeling sharp rocks and whatever other pointy objects you may encounter (porcupine?) on the trail. So, the stiffness is probably due to that.  They’re not uncomfortable or anything, but I’m hoping that that’ll settle down a bit after I get them broken in.  Overall, though, I really like them. Go Brooks.

Next week is a biggie: four milers on Tuesday and Thursday and a 10 miler on Saturday. I can’t figure out where to do my long run. I was thinking about running out to Chassell and having my chauffeur pick me up, but eh, I’m not really feeling that so I don’t know.

Remember that brewing post that I did a few weeks ago when Josh bottled his first batch of American brown ale? Well, it’s conditioning period was over and we cracked into them yesterday. Guess what the verdict was?

Good! Even my picky beer palate liked it. We bottled the second beer, an American pale ale, yesterday and now we’re currently brewing an orange golden ale. Watch out, Keweenaw Brewing Company.

Finally, I’d like to state for the record, that I hate this time change. Kitties do, too.

I think winter is having a little fun with us.  Between Sunday and Friday, we had two storms that dumped 18-ish” of heavy, wet snow on us. Schools were closed and even MTU shut down early on Wednesday. Granted it was during the peak of the storm when visibility was next to nothing when they sent everybody out on the roads, but it’s the thought that counts, right? 

I snapped this photo Sunday morning, just before SNOWPOCALYPSE 2012 began.

Just a few hours later, when SNOWPOCALYPSE 2012 was raging, I took this photo of Josh plowing snow.

Nasty. Thank goodness for the tractor, though.  It saved our backs from having to deal with that mess using the snowblower/shovel. Except that on Monday morning it broke, so after work I scooped while Josh took apart the entire engine and attempted to get it running.  And then he had to order parts that weren’t going to come in until Wednesday, and that’s the day we got another nasty storm. Long story short, the parts came in, Josh did his magic to get it running, and when the storm died down around 9pm on Wednesday night, we joined the rest of the people in the neighborhood for a snow removal party. Fun! I got my exercise by digging  a path to the street for the tractor.  My back was not happy about that.

I lucked out with running this week. The storms were on Monday/Wednesday and I had runs scheduled for Tuesday/Thursday, so I didn’t have to take any weather-related skips.  I did my hill route on Tuesday and dropped 30 seconds per loop from last time. Thanks to all the scooping & shoveling on Wednesday, my legs were feeling especially tight and heavy when I headed out on Thursday.  It wasn’t one of my better runs.  I felt a little better on Saturday after a rest day on Friday, but not as good as I was hoping.  My eight miler was just okay. Oh well, what can you do, shit happens. Next week is a cut-back week so I’ll end up with around 11 miles. They will be easy miles, for sure.

Anyway, to summarize, Tuesday 4 @ 10:12; Thursday 4 @ 10:31 and Saturday 8 @ 11:27.

Here’s some pictures of some graffiti I spotted under the bridge on Saturday. Some folks have been busy.

And some final pics from the Copper Dog 150. I wasn’t able to get more than a few photos because I was too busy freezing my ass off working, but it was pretty cool to be right at the starting line.

These guys were drumming up support for the snow bike race on Saturday. Check out their tires. Fat.

Here’s the first team getting ready to head out. The dogs are built like marathon runners, tall and lean. Much different than the fluffy husky types that you usually expect to be pulling a sled. And, fast! When they took off, they took off. It was really impressive.

They’re also holy cow loud. They’re excited to run and they bark and whine and howl and make all sorts of weird noises in anticipation of taking off. One dog is bad enough, but most teams had eight dogs in their team and when they were all making noise together, the sheer volume of it was mind blowing.  I have a video of one particularly noisy team, but it’s stuck on my new fancy phone which I have yet to figure out how to work properly. And I’m supposedly an IT person. Yeah, right.

It’s snowing like a banshee outside. We’re supposed to get a foot or more, so I imagine I’ll be deploying Snowscoop later on today.

Pippen is fascinated by the snow flying around outside.

And this little bunny has been taking refuge under my car. I think he’s been hanging around since August. He’s an all season bun. 

Josh has been playing around with home brewing beer over the last couple of weeks, and yesterday he bottled his first batch.

It should be ready for drinking in a few weeks. Once that was finished, he promptly brewed another batch. He’s obsessed.

Weekly running recap: I got sick with a sinus thing (complete with a fever!) on Saturday/Sunday and felt like crap all week long. Oddly, the only time I didn’t feel like crap was when I was running so even though I missed a day of work, I didn’t miss any running days (priorities, man).

I ended the week with just over 11 miles: Monday 3.5 @ 10:48; Thursday 4 @ 10:43; Saturday 3.5 @ 10:09. I have no idea how I got so speedy on Saturday, I didn’t feel like I was pushing the pace or anything so maybe my Garmin was messed up.

Anyway, next week is two four milers and an eight miler on Saturday.  We’re working the start & finish of the Copper Dog 150 on Friday & Sunday, so it’s going to be a busy weekend.

p.s. somebody remind me to take my fuel on Saturday’s long run.