For Whom the Dogs Bark

39F, wind NNW at 8 mph.  Ran two easy ones to get circulation going, no stats.  I felt good but the groin pull from the marathon is still chirping a little bit.  I hope it doesn't amount to much.  Saturday was my first day off except Sundays since mid-October. 

My son's Texas open house was Saturday night, lots of good company and good food; one last blowout and the holidays are now over except for cleaning up.  My son-in-law got the fireworks assignment.  I couldn't resist "helping", though.  He built two cannister cases and we spent the week looking for fuses and just checking things out generally.  Buying fireworks is a good way to meet rednecks.  They sell some big ones down here to the general public (up to 2" in diameter for the big shells), but the really big 4" stuff isn't generally available.  There are legal restrictions, but they are fairly easy to meet (i.e., get around), the main hurdle is becoming a member of the inner circle, which is a traveling, carny-type crowd.  They love to talk, though.  I think if we ever did this again we would start a little earlier, practice our accents and bad grammar to get certified (formally and informally) and go for the big stuff.

As it was, the fireworks show was a huge success.  Everybody was talking about it at church yesterday morning.  Bride and groom are back in Utah starting classes this morning.

27F, wind NNW 3 mph wind chill 22F, long pants day.  Ran 4.17 miles in 48:58, average pace 11:45, low heart rate.

I feel pretty good today, my thigh is still pulling a little bit from the marathon but otherwise normal.  Given how hard I have been running on Saturdays, running this soon after a race is not all that different, at least that is how it seems right now.  They say you don't know until the next day whether you overdid it, so we'll see.

My daughter and granddaughters return home today.  My son-in-law has a couple of more interviews for his residency, then he is going home too, leaving the remainder of our family to rattle around in this house for the rest of the winter.  Decompression time, but slightly melancholy as well.  Nothing beats having a lot of family around.

35F, wind ENE 5 mph, 31F wind chill.  Ran 6.11 miles in 1:11:12, 11:39 pace, low heart rate.  Left groin no better or worse.  I dressed two layers deep top and bottom, thinking it was going to be in the low 20s.  I started shedding clothes almost immediately and by the end wasn't even wearing gloves.  We have a cold front coming in, but this morning was not it.  On the other hand, some winters this would be one of the coldest days, it's just a lot colder this winter.

I was thinking as I ran about what I might be able to accomplish this year (more training wise than race wise), but concluded that I just don't know.  It all depends on how well I adapt to increasing training loads, how well I balance between pushing the envelope and staying healthy. 

50F, wind NNW 13-25 mph.  8.03 miles in 1:31:54, average pace 11:27, low heart rate.  The next two mornings will be in the low 20s, high teens, so I didn't mind this run even with the high wind.  I got a personal best 11:06 on one of my splits, as well as my best overall average, each by a little bit.  My low heart rate speeds are getting just fast enough that I can feel it in my legs.  That never used to be an issue.

We will by hyping our cold weather down here for the next few days, so just bear with us.  All of the plumbing is in the attics here.  The soil is clay and shifts too much to bury the pipes under the slab.  Works reasonably well until the pipes freeze.  Usually anything over 20 is safe, but there will probably be a run on wrapping material at Home Depot today.  I wrapped mine when the house was being built, about to find out  how good of a job I did.  My contractor wouldn't do it, he had the nerve to say it never freezes in Houston.

25F, wind chill 16 at start, 24F, wind chill 13 at end.  10.04 miles in 1:58:44, 11:50 minutes per mile average pace, low heart rate.  The weather is a big deal today, but it wasn't quite as cold as predicted, never is.  My face was frozen, luckily into a smile, but otherwise it was pretty manageable.  I'll be out in similar temperatures tomorrow morning for about 3 hours, but I don't think there will be as much wind.

18F and calm, 14.96 miles in 2:28:46, average pace 9:57.  I "warmed" up for two miles then tried to run 10 miles at an 8:35 pace, which is what I have to run for a whole marathon to qualify for Boston.  I didn't make it, but I have lots of excuses.  My splits and average heart rate for the tempo part of the run were:  9:05 (154), 8:34 (164), 8:41 (166), 8:44 (169), 8:43 (170), 9:00 (170) (stopped to shed a layer, which promptly froze solid), 8:31 (168), 8:37 (172), 8:41 (169) and 8:57 (164).  I was looking real hard for a bathroom solution on the last split and lost concentration.  I jogged in the last three at a 12-minute pace.  My average pace for the tempo run was 8:45, so 10 seconds slow.  Plenty to work on.  I am going to earn every minute of marathon time from here on out.  My excuses are . . . never mind, I didn't make it.

Today is a record low for January 9, by one degree, breaking a record set in 1976.  It is by no means the coldest day ever, in fact it was warmer than yesterday because there was no wind this morning.  There was 3-day stretch in December, 1989 of  13, 7 and 11, which were three of the four coldest days on record here.  The all-time record for Houston is 5F, set on January 18, 1930, before plumbing.  So we are a ways from that and won't get close, thankfully.  My attic pipes which I wrapped myself 9 years ago held up just fine last night, unlike many of my neighbors, who have plumbing trucks in front of their houses this morning.