Baby it's cold outside!

Today I ran three laps around Lake Elkhorn!!!! That's another goal met: 6 miles in 1.06. I felt like I hit my stride and went slowly, but surely. Usually I take several walk breaks around the first lap, but today I took very few walk breaks around any lap, although I did walk up the hills. The third lap around was the hardest because it was really tiring. I had very few aches and pains and as I write this in the evening, I can say that my thighs feel a bit sore, but so far so good.

I'm also thinking about slowing down down my mileage increases to give my body more time to adjust to the longer distances and stay injury free. This is important to me because I was in a car accident about 9 years ago and had a minor injury to my right kneecap, and even now when it's cold or damp out, I can sometimes still feel that knee. Previously, I've had some problems with my right achilles tendon, and now it seems that in the cold I can feel it the cold weather or after a workout. I can't help thinking that my right leg is the weaker one--I have few problems with the left leg. So I really want to be careful and gradual in building my base. In every three-week cycle, I plan to repeat the previous longest distance, then increase by 10%, and then decrease by 50% during a recovery week. Then I'll start the cycle again with the new longest distance.

It's been really cold here in Maryland and this is the first year in a long time that snow has been on the ground for more than a day or two. It was 25-30 degrees during my run. It didn't seem quite so cold and there wasn't a lot of wind chill. The lake is frozen now, except for a small section near the dock where the birds congregate. I always feel so sorry for the birds being outside in the water in this cold weather. I always wonder why they don't go further south for the winter. The cold makes it sooooo hard to get motivated to get out there and run. I just feel like hibernating. I feel tired a lot and I can't get up in the morning. At night, I just want to dive right into my warm bed.

I'm fighting the urge to knit in this cold weather and finish up a scarf or two. But I'm in the middle of an online class that I'm taking as part of my CAE pursuit and I'm knee-deep in reading chapters and articles, and then posting online and participating in web chats. It suits me perfectly--I really like going to school.