Back to the Basement

Well the weather this weekend continued to be craptastic, which nixed our outdoor training plans. Thankfully, the sun is always shining in the Hunter family basement. We had our asses handed to us by Coach Troy Saturday in a tough 45min Uphill Grind workout, followed by a Lean n Mean 50min session. Awesome.

Today we woke up to another snow storm. D headed out with H-dog and they returned covered in mud. I was not in the mood to run long in the blowing snow, so I decided to head back to the basement sweat lodge. I took my inspiration from Dean Karnazes' Twitter update this morning: My neighbor asked me this morning, “Doesn’t running hurt?” I told him, “It does if you’re doing it right.” Go out and make it hurt!

So I made it hurt. Sometimes pain is a good thing. Not pain from an injury, but the pain of pushing beyond what your mind wants to believe is ok. The pain the comes from breaking out of the comfort zone and into the land of unknowns. "How long can I stay in this zone? Will I fall on my face? Will my heart explode?". I had one of those sessions today. It was short, dirty, and it hurt. First was a bike ride in which I alternated between seated climbs and standing climb sprints (1min at each) for 30 mins. My hr monitor was beeping the entire time beyond my 10min warm up. I even made a little puddle in that short time.
Then it was on to the treadmill. My goal was to run 3 miles under 20mins. I started off a bit slow and ended up missing my goal by 55 secods. The last mile I just kept increasing the pace and I ran the last quarter mile at 10.5mph. This was me after the run...

So tomorrow I will do my long run, outside. The weather forecast still looks wet and cold so I will take my inspiration from the video below...


Congrats to Julie, Keith and the rest of you lucky Calgarians who ran the Police Half this weekend!