Saturday, December 10, 2016
Well, it's two weeks since my fall and injury. Two weeks of healing. Good progress on that front. Earlier in the week the coach had proposed that this weekend, rather than a standard training run, we do the Jingle Jog, a fund raiser for a couple of schools in the area. It was to be in a local park, untimed, you could do 1, 2, or 3 loops of the park, constituting 1.1 mile, 2.4 miles, or 3.7 miles.
Training run *would have been* 10.5 miles, had I not been injured. As it was, at this point in my recovery, I was very happy to complete the 3.7, and bailed right after to come home and warm up. Hot shower felt wonderful!
You see, unlike those folks running in FLORIDA today, I was looking at 24F at 9 a.m. start time, with enough of a breeze to put the wind chill index at 15F. Brrrrr! Especially Brrrr as this was in a park, with no indoor spot to be warm right up to race time or to re-warm following. The 30 minutes or so of standing around waiting to start was the WORST part of it.
Once we got moving, though, no problems. I was wearing two layers on the bottom: my good running tights, augmented by knee sleeves to cover up the holes my fall tore in the knees, topped with my Wild Turkey Chase sweat pants. Four layers on the top: base layer tank with built in sports bra, topped by long sleeved running shirt, a quilted vest, and my warmest winter running jacket. On the head, my ninja face mask (honestly, I can see the advantages of Muslim headgear in this weather!), and a knit cap on top of that. Since I tore my new running gloves in the fall two weeks ago, I substituted last year's solution: two pair of gloves, including the ones with the windbreaker mitten covers, and Hot Hands chemical warmers inside the gloves.
Wool socks and my good ordinary running shoes were good for the feet. Looped around my waist were the bells pictured above. On the wrist with the RoadID bracelet, I had attached five smaller jingle bells using dental floss as the thread. Bad plan... those bells managed to fall off during the course of the run. I had seen other bells on the path in the second and third loops, so I'm not the only runner who was dropping jingles on the jog!
Still, those bells on my waist? Had me sounding like "Bobtail" in the Christmas tune. "Bell's on Barb's Waist Ring" somehow doesn't have quite the same cadence, does it, but I wasn't going to take the obvious match to "Bobtail", either. Anyway, in the third mile I mentioned to my coach that I felt a bit like a sleigh horse with them jingling in time to my steps. He commented back that it was a very consistent sound... I must have a steady pace.
We ran faster than we should for a long run, but this wasn't a long run. We kind of called it speed work, if you can call a 10:13 mile speed work... but for run/walk/run it's a very respectable speed work pace!
Coach let me set the pace and decide on the walk intervals, and being cold, I didn't take as many. They were all 30 second walk breaks.
In short... very glad to be back out there! Next "official" run will be New Year's Eve / New Year's Day "Last Run / First Run", with training in between now and then.
Hope you're all living the very best Saturday December 10th, 2016 you can. Because as with each day that comes along, it's the only one we'll ever get!
