Over doing it...

Days off work can be dangerous. Especially when wedded to a high mileage week, speedwork that needs to be done, and a love of running trails at night.

So yesterday, I did my Q workout- four 1200 meter intervals at a 7:02 pace with ~ two miles of warm up and cool down for a total of about eight miles. Again the snow and ice covered path made it a little difficult to hang onto the pace, but I ran hard and was fairly happy with the result.

About eight hours later I was back out on the trails, doing my typical 10 miles trail run... slowly. Seems my stomach either disagreed with dinner, or was just unhappy with me on general principles. made for a difficult run, in more than one sense. it's been a while since I was that happy to see my car, even though it was a beautiful night- silent, still, and moon lit. I probably could have navigated the forest without my lights, but I wanted to be sure of my footing.

I did have an running companion for a minute or so- I think an owl was entranced my my lights, or something, because when it cut loose with it's call it scared the bejesus out of me. A few seconds later up the trail, it cut loose again, and then a third time. I tired to shine my light up to where I thought the sounds came from to see if I could catch its eyes, but never saw them. In retrospect, I think it was a good thing. Deer eyes I've caught when out on a run can be scary as hell. I have no idea how much more scary big eyes would be gleaming out of a tree some 30 feet up.

I got myself a new running toy, too: katoola micro spikes which make running at night on ice a not-too-insane of an idea. Or less-insane-than-it-sounds kind of idea. Think of a cross between Yak Trax and Crampons, and you might know what I mean. Or just hit the link. that works, too.

So anyway, I did ~18 miles yesterday, four of them relatively hard intervals. Today I skipped out of my group run because I'm feeling kind of beaten. tomorrow I've got a ring in the new year run, friday 15 miles on the schedule, maybe seven on saturday and ten on sunday. with the seven I did on monday, I should be up to 63. If not, I'll figure out something...