KIND OF, SORT OF

It seems like once every 3 or 4 weeks I have a night where I wake up (or am woken up) and can’t get back to sleep for 60-90 minutes. Last night was that night. Katie woke us up because she couldn’t find a stuffed animal and then I couldn’t get back to sleep. One second I couldn’t get comfortable, then there was a draft, then my underwear was all bunched up, then it felt like I was drooling, etc. I basically tossed and turned before eventually falling back to sleep.

When I finally did wake up, I was greeted by howling winds and single digit temps. Given the missed sleep and the weather, I really wanted to crawl back into bed. However, I know tomorrow’s weather is only going to be worse. I bartered with myself, saying, if I ran today, I may be able to take tomorrow off since I haven’t had a complete day off in over two weeks. So I ventured out for an hour-long run that included 6 big hill repeats.

One of my goals for the year was to run 1,000 miles during a 3-month stretch this winter. As one of my former co-workers would say, I “kind of, sort of” accomplished that two weeks ago. I say “kind of, sort of” because I needed to convert my x-c skiing time into running mileage to make it happen. I got as close as 980 running miles before my recent string of skiing brought my running totals down. Anyway, I basically converted 9-10 minutes of skiing to 1 mile of running, so 45 minutes of skiing would equal 5 miles and an hour of skiing would equal 6 miles. Doing this and adding it to my running mileage, put me at 1,000 miles on January 13th.

The significance of 1,000 miles within 3 months, dates back to college and I originally wrote about it here, roughly two years ago when I first achieved it.

Finally, awhile ago I mentioned a Running Times article on Team USA Minnesota. At the time it was just in print. Well now I see they have it online too. So if you didn’t pick up a copy, be sure to check out the website.

Quote of the day;

“The first workout Carrie [Tollefson] and Katie [McGregor] did together they absolutely killed each other. It was more intense than a race. When they were done, I told them, 'OK, now take a couple days to recover, and when you come back, we'll try to work at a level you can maintain an entire season.” – Dennis Barker