Training Log - Wednesday, December 15, 2010

4:30 AM...the alarm goes off...way too early. It's dark and cold...very cold. I started texting Richard, James and Mike to see if anyone else was feeling gloomy, lazy or whatever else you wanna call not wanting to get out of bed on a cold winter morning. Anyway, it appeared everyone was awake and asking themselves the same question. After a few minutes I was awake...no point in looking for excuses any longer so I got ready, had my cup of coffee and a half a bottle of Propel and headed over to Richard's house.

Mike had already arrived. We all jumped into my car and headed up the mountain. The forecast was predicting snow, sleet and ice rain, but not until later this morning so we figured we'd be ok to drive up to the state park for a quick loop on our favorite trails. When we arrived at the hiker's parking lot, it was still very much dark and the ground was covered by patches of snow. The ground was frozen solid for the entire run with some patches of ice thrown in for fun.

Richard came up with a loop a little different from our usual routes. We headed down the North Loop trail and turned onto the Kieth trail before reconnecting with the North Loop trail again to finish out the run. While I do feel a little sorry for the guy, I can't bring this topic up for one of our running crew and then fail to do so when another fellow runner experiences the same fate...and in miserably cold and unwelcoming conditions. Today it was Mike's turn to loose a sock. Sorry, buddy.

Anyway, after getting our heart rates to climb in unisom with the trail, we arrived at the top of the North Loop trail and headed back to my car. While I was reluctant to get out of the house intitially, once again I was so glad I did as it was another enjoyable run on the local trails. We ended up with 5.5 miles at an easy pace.