Weekly total: 30 miles trail, 11 miles treadmill, 2 hrs swimming, assorted other stuff.

Sunday AM: 11.5 miles trail, 800 ft elevation gain, 3 hrs. Right now, I need hard miles. Road and treadmills have a place in training, but it’s the hard miles — the miles trudging through 3 inches of snow on rocky technical hilly trails in the woods — that will get me physically and mentally ready for Miwok. So I drove to Middlesex Fells, threw some Yaktrax on my Gore-tex trail runners, and drudged through the woods for the next 3 hours. Hard miles (my pace ranged from 12 minutes to 18 minutes per mile) but I had a blast. I freaking love being in the woods in the winter. Physically I could have gone for another hour, but I was due at home to take Little Boy to a birthday party. Days like today = life, awesome.

Middlesex Fells, Snowy January Sunday

I'm SUCH a dork

Monday AM: 7.25 miles trail, 650 feet elevation gain, 2 hours. More hard miles in Middlesex Fells. I only had two hours to run and it was hard-going on the Skyline Trail; yesterday’s hikers left icy patches on the rocks and I, being overly-cautious lest I end up fracturing bones/splitting skins on piles of pointy rocks, slowed considerably on these sections.

Winter's Stark Splendor

Monday PM: 30 minutes stepmill, 40 minutes spinning. We signed Little Boy up for a “school’s out” camp at my gym so I could run some boring errands and he could have fun. Around 2pm, my errands were done and I was missing my Little Boy! I decided to go to the gym and get a head-start on this semester’s reading while working my Vo2 on the stepmill and getting some stationary bike recovery. After I finished and showered, I picked up Little Boy in the Kid’s Zone. He was not happy to see me. He was running around like a little maniac with all the other little maniacs, and he wanted to stay there forever. We will both sleep good tonight!

Tuesday AM: 60 minutes swimming. First time in the pool for more than two weeks — I needed to give my sinuses a break after the calamitous illness that ravaged them.

Wednesday AM: 6 miles treadmill, mild speed intervals, light weights. The big snowstorm that was predicted to slam Boston turned out to be about two inches… but man, it’s cold outside. At least the roadways to the gym are clear.

Thursday AM: 5 miles treadmill, some speed bursts, 15 minutes spinning. It was 5 degrees (“feels like -12”) this morning. This is the kind of weather when the treadmill becomes an oasis.

Friday AM: 60 minutes swimming. The New Year’s Resolution crowd is slowing drifting out of the pool. But there is one woman I see routinely who does alternating laps of freestyle and butterfly. Bad ass butterfly. Last winter I tried to start doing butterfly, figuring it would be easy with my new flippers. I wound up pulling a muscle in my neck/shoulder and was unable to turn my head for a few days. So I am so impressed by this lady (who’s probably in her late twenties and has a pudgy swimmer’s build), flying across the pool doing one of the most arduous cardio exercises known to humanity. Me, I crawl across the pool and throw in an occasional backstroke.

Saturday AM: 12 miles trail, 850 ft elevation gain, 3 hours. More hard miles at Middlesex Fells. It’s remained cold enough that the snow is still somewhat powdery, making the packed cover on the trails easy to run on. I started out running in 17 degrees but warmed up quickly on the Skyline Trail and by the time I finished it was a whooping 35 degrees and felt like springtime.

Panorama of Reservoir & Trail

Total: 46 miles running.

Sunday AM: 10 miles mixed road and trail. Still lots of unpleasant expanses of ice on the woodsy trails nearest my home. I did find a .5 mile hill loop that was ice-free and commenced to run it 5 or 6 times.

Monday AM: 8 miles road, Bread and Butter Loop. My first Bread and Butter loop of 2014! I call this run my Bread and Butter because, when I’m training, I’ll run it 2-3 times during the week. It’s a bit more than 8 miles (8.14, my Garmin says) and just under 500 feet of elevation gain. All on major roads, so I feel safer running it in early morning. The whole route is rolling hills, but there’s three sustained climbs. I know my training’s going good when this run feels like a recovery run; this day, on rested legs, it felt pretty awesome.

Tuesday AM: 6 miles road, to gym, for weights. I tripped on this run. I blame the Christian Scientists, who always do strictly the minimum to maintain the sidewalk surrounding their church’s property. Maybe they’re at home praying for something to remove the clumps of frozen dead leaves on the pedestrian byways. But as I was cruising down the hill in dim dawn past the church, my mind was so transfixed by these obstacles that my left foot smoothly caught a differential in the height of the sidewalk slabs, and I careened to the ground — “oomph!” Ow. Huge scraps on my right knee and left elbow. I am forgoing medical treatment and trying to heal my wounds via metaphysical-based prayer.

Wednesday AM: 40 mins spinning, weights.

Thursday AM: 8 miles road, Bread and Butter Loop. I saw more runners out at 6am today (a 32-degree foggy dark morning in January) than I’ll see on a typical morning in May. First I passed the two lady Chatters (I see them quite often and they are both always talking simultaneously). But then, I saw 6-7 more runners at various points in my route. The power of the resolution, I suppose! I hope I continue to see them well into Spring and Summer, as I love passing other runners on the sidewalk in the pre-dawn and saying “good morning.” It’s just the right amount of social contact that I want during my run.

Friday AM: 8.5 miles road, Bread and Butter Loop plus a half-mile of extra hill. I was going to go swimming but, it being winter, if the sidewalks are clear and it’s not 15 degrees, I gotta run outside. Next week looks snowy and cold — I’ll swim then.

Saturday AM: 6 miles treadmill, speed intervals. A wintry mix and possibly slick sidewalks sent me back to the gym, where I expect to remain for the rest of the winter! Thankfully my sinus/chest congestion has improved to the point where I can do a 8 minute mile pace without hacking up a lung.

It’s my second week of maintaining a formal training log (as opposed to keeping a running rally in my poor, aging, overloaded brain), so I feel sheepish that I now must explain why there is no training log. The week started off great…

Sunday AM: 1 hour/3 miles snowshoe, 1 hour/4 miles backcountry XC ski, 90 minutes skate skiing with really only 15 minutes of hard effort. See here.

But all during Sunday, as I frolicked in the powdery snow, I could feel a sore throat and congestion coming on. This didn’t bother me. I get about 3 or 4 colds a year, but while the resulting sinus blockage is a nuisance, it rarely slows me down. I woke up Monday with the sinus congestion, and also feeling tired and sore all-over-my-body — which, considering what I did Sunday, was too be expected! I had planned a recovery day anyway, but as I plodded along on the treadmill that morning, I began to feel not good at all — dizzy, fatigued, with severe chills. I jumped off after 4 miles.

I didn’t want to admit that I had something more than a cold. It’s been 10 years since sickness has confined me to a bed. I went stubbornly to work. I tried to work. It didn’t work. I left at noon, not to return until Thursday. (I’m a lucky girl to have Mr. P who had to be single parent, homecare nurse, and full-time DBA for 3 days.)

Symptoms: Extreme fatigue — like, couldn’t even muster the energy to blow my nose. Chills. Fever. Loss of appetite/taste buds. Sounds like the flu, right? But that went away after 3 days and I was left with a wicked bad cough, sinus stuff, congestion.

Bottom line: I managed to do 20 miles on the treadmill for the week. With my sinus issues, I couldn’t go swimming, and the unpleasant weather coupled with my sickness made the treadmill the only option. And I went slow and took lots of breaks (breathing without coughing was challenging. I hope no one around me caught anything.)

The good news is, I’m recovered and rested. And, it’s still over 3 months until Miwok. Hopefully I won’t get sick again for another 10 years…