A Frosty Run and January In Review

My neck of the woods was braced for the "storm of the century" or "snowmaggedon" as it became affectionately know on Tuesday evening.  Businesses were announcing on Tuesday afternoon while it was still sunny and clear they would be closed Wednesday.  True to form for our area "Snowmaggedon" became "Snowverated" when the storm we received was actually far less than anticipated.  It was still a pretty good dumping for this area mind you, with high winds, but not the worst we've seen here. 

On Thursday I had a 50 minute Fartlek run on the training plan.  I was a little concerned about running outside because of the snow and ice but gave it a go anyway.  Sydney and I headed out at 6 a.m. and it was COLD!  Running down one of the side streets by my house during our warm up there was a man out shoveling his driveway.  We said hello as we went by and he called out, "You guys are really inspiring!".  We laughed, but that made me feel really good.  I guess there are alot of people that would have bailed on that run and we were out there in the cold, running down the middle of the road because of all the snow, just doing it!  It turned out the be a really good run and I liked the structured ladder intervals as it really made the 50 minutes go by quickly.  I found that my average pace during the hard intervals were pretty consistent regardless if they were 1, 2, 3, or 4 minutes long and I did a pretty good job of keeping my hr in the right zones.  Sydney and I laughed at each other because we each looked like we had walked in front of a snowblower; each covered in an icy film.  My eyelashes were frozen to the point of it being hard to see while I was running and my face warmer had formed a block of ice in the front from the condensation from my breath.  We snapped this pic when we got in the house but it doesn't do justice to how we looked since the 30 seconds in the warm house was enough to melt alot of the ice (my headband thing had been completely white).

Otherwise, training has been going really well and I've been really consistent with my workouts.  The planned workout times are increasing with 11 hours planned for this coming week!  I love having a coach and getting feedback, and feeling like this is all leading somewhere.  Today's swim saw a 9 second improvement in my 100 meter hard time.  That's huge for me, and although I'm still pretty slow by most standards it's a step in the right direction.

Without further ado, January workout totals looked like this:

January 01, 2011 to January 31, 2011
Swim - 12,550m in 8.26 hours (22.34% of total workout time).  That's +1,550 m from Dec.
Bike - 9.5 hours - no distance as it's all been on the trainer (25.71% of total workout time)
Run - 58.39 kilometers in 9.2 hours (24.88% of total workout time).  That's +14.67 km from Dec.
Strength training/yoga - 4 hours (10.82% of total workout time)

Well I'm off to add 1:10 to my cycling time!