Meltdown Milestones

Yet more snow here, which isn’t that terrible but bad enough to curtail most outside activity (well, running, mainly).  However, I have achieved two more milestones this week.  First, I finally ran the equivalent of here to Boston – 920km – which was the last place on my list when I started setting myself targets last year.  It’s only taken me 14 months to get there!  So now I need to shoot for the full 1000km (only just over 57km to go as of today).

Secondly, today I ran my fastest mile ever, in 8 minutes 21 seconds  😀  I should say that this was on the treadmill and with the knowledge that I was going to stop after that mile, so I don’t expect to be repeating the feat in a longer race at any time.  I also probably shouldn’t have then gone straight into a Chisel class with a huge emphasis on legwork, but hey ho.  I can still walk at the moment.

So I am feeling quite accomplished.  I think I have earned the new running shoes that should be arriving here tomorrow. For the first time I have bought a second pair of the same shoes, because they are THAT good.  They are the Saucony Virrata 2, which are spectacular because of the zero heel drop which gives a more natural running position (or summat like that, I almost sound like I know what I’m talking about don’t I?).  Anyway, the first pair have been awesome so far, and despite not needing a new pair just yet they were on sale so I’m buying them as a little celebration of my recent achievements and putting them away until I really need them.

I also bought the Oh She Glows cookbook as it was so good.  Other finds from the library during my snowbound hibernation have included Ready to Run by Kelly Starrett and Eat & Run by Scott Jurek, both of which I picked up on a bit of a whim but have found surprisingly enjoyable.  Ready to Run is not really about running but more about mobility and stretching to fix all sorts of niggly aches and pains and to therefore improve one’s running as a result.  It’s also very enlightening for anybody who is deskbound and hunched over a computer all day, which I hope not to be but expect I will be again by this time next year.  Eat & Run is a memoir by a guy who is an ultramarathoner and a vegan, but in truth I don’t think it would matter what the subject was, he just sounds like a nice chap and writes so well that I’d probably enjoy reading the phone book if he’d written it.

Oh and my Meet Me on Mars medal finally arrived too.  It’s HUUUUUUUGE, which you can probably tell from this photo:

It is so heavy, I’m not quite sure where to hang it yet, as I think it will pull down anything I try to put it on.  Something for me to consider during the next round of snowfall then.

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Snowbound

Day five of an unexpectedly extended weekend due to snow, ice and historic low temperatures for these parts.  We don’t have it quite as bad as Boston, but the state has been paralysed, with all local schools and a large number of businesses closed.  The enforced hibernation has been pretty positive here at Stateside Towers.  I have been kept inside and driven to use Satan’s Hamster Wheel (the lovely treadmill) for a couple of days, which in itself is depressing and usually demotivating, however I used the opportunity to measure my pace accurately and push myself further for a few stretches during my run, resulting in a new 5K personal best of 27:10, knocking more than a minute off my previous record.  Go me!!  I don’t think I‘ll be repeating that time again easily as I needed somewhat of a lie down after it.

I usually use my weekdays as an opportunity to try out odd and adventurous new recipes when there is only me to poison.  Stateside Husband has been at home with me this week so he has been subjected to all my experiments (and there have been a lot, as I have been trying out recipes from a cookbook I borrowed from the library that has to be returned in two days).  We were both pleasantly surprised to find that he enjoyed all the recipes, I didn’t poison either of us, and we now have a selection of new breakfast, lunches and dinners to add to our menu.  Needless to say, I am going to buy the recipe book now.

In other news, I’ve signed up for a number of races this year so I now have twelve months of events to train towards.  As well as repeating the same races from last year, I’ve added a few new ones in to keep it interesting.  I’ve also signed up to Meet Me on Mars, which is a virtual race where everyone’s mileage is tallied up and the goal is, not surprisingly, to run all the way to Mars.  I had an amazing start in January, running 75 miles towards my original 2015 goal of 500.  Meet Me on Mars is giving me even more motivation to keep up with my mileage throughout the year, although I expect my monthly totals will get lower as the weather gets warmer (which is hard to imagine right now…).

So the weather outside may be frightful but my plans for the year are quite delightful.