It is predictable. I start a running program where it is vital to run every day, only to fail. It has been more than three weeks. Today I started again. I'll call it Day One and restart. This is legal because I build the beginning of any program with a false start. If I want to call a "Year of the Marathon," and define it as the first of January through the last of December, I need to start long before January, so that there are no missing days once the year gets going. Hence, the beginning this time in October. If I keep going now, I will be regular and daily by the time the year actually gets going. The challenge is that today is most likely the last good day before the cold sets in. I hate getting started in the cold, but that's where I am at, and it's my own doing, so I'll tough it out.
Rules for winter running are varied, largely designed by me to avoid injuries. Rule number one: Do not run when the temperature is below zero Farenheit (0 F/ -17 C). I often find that running between zero Farenheit and freezing (32 F/0 C) is more enjoyable than the few degrees above freezing because it is dryer air. The variables here are wind and surface condition. Whereas on a day with no wind at all, a run below freezing can be invigorating, even a light breeze will turn the exercise into a dangerous ordeal. Also, I will not run when the only surface to use is covered in ice. This is a great problem here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I know my Minnesota friends don't understand our native aversion to winter, but they don't have 150 miles / 90 kilometers of lake water to mess with the precipitation. I am native to a transition zone. More times than I can count, it rained south of my home, snowed north of my home, and blasted a nasty combination on top of me while at home.
Thanksgiving has come and gone, and my lovely wife has so managed our diet in the last half dozen years (while I was working at Laser Dynamics I reached 240 lbs / 109 kilo) that we had a magnificent feast, and I gained only one pound. The "sergeant" will not allow another feast until Christmas Day, so I don't have the common American holiday guilt.
Next semester I have an early Differential Equations class (8:00 am), so I must somehow shift my schedule. Currently, I get out of bed around eight or nine in the morning, and study solid between my wife's bedtime around 10:30 until three or four in the morning. I love the dead of night for studying, but there is no way to manage eight o'clock classes. The result of shifting my schedule will probably be good, in that I will be able to re-institute my old friend, the "good morning" run. I anticipate the singular joy of being the first pedestrian on new snow, illuminated in the early winter dark by reflection off the white blanket. Once this semester is over, I hope to start getting up by about five in the morning, six at the absolute latest. I can't tell how this will play havoc with my bedtime, but I had better get more than six hours, or I'll accumulate deficit again.
Yesterday: Thanksgiving left-overs, but went easy on the stuffing. Ate modest helping of turkey, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, almond tart, and had a good bowl of Dorothy's lovely chicken soup from Wednesday. (that was the best part) One PBR at the beginning of study hour, and a vodka tonic near the end.
Bedtime: 2am
Weight: 200 lbs / 91 kilo
Today's run: 1 mile on track: (9:35)
That is another queer thing, the time for my mile. I hadn't run for over three weeks, and I was winded, only able to run one today, yet I easily covered it at the faster pace I reached in the summer. When I started rehabilitating after my burn, I could only run twelve minute miles. By the end of summer I was in the mid-nines, but did not break into the eights. Here, with relatively little effort, I was right back in the mid-nines. My theory about how muscle both builds slowly and leaves slowly might be close to the truth.
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