A.M. 10.2 in 1:07:46. It was cold, 14 F, but I felt good and wanted to run fast. So after about 1.4 warm-up, I decided I would run fast until I was tired, hit too much snow/ice, or until I got to 2.5 miles of fast running. I was going to play it by ear on the pace, but I did want to monitor it. I ended up doing 87-85-85-86(5:43)-84-84-86-85(5:39,11:22)-85-81 (14:08 for 2.5). All quarters 86 and slower were on the areas with more snow/ice. The road otherwise was decent, and I did not feel a whole lot of traction problems. However, when I pushed into the 84 quarter range (5:36 pace) I started feeling that the air I was breathing in was too cold. So I remembered a recent post on the blog about cold air at http://fryrunner.fastrunningblog.com/blog-01-01-2010.html That gave me some food for thought. I do not think it would be too inaccurate to say that for a runner to start feeling breathing problems in 14 F he needs to work as hard as I do at 5:40 pace. While that pace is sustainable for me for a while, it is very stressful. It would be a disaster for me to train at that pace all the time. There is an adjustment that would need to be made in the comparison, though. The misery at 5:40 for me comes from the nervous system overload, and not so much from the aerobic stress. So perhaps a less aerobically developed runner would not overtrain as quickly breathing as hard as I do at that pace on his runs. But he would still overtrain unless he cuts his mileage a lot. And if he does, his aerobic development would not happen. Jogged about half a mile to recover from the effort, then gradually picked up the pace, and was running around 6:40 in about 2 miles without having to force it. That was a positive for me, good indication for the nervous system condition. Normally I want to run no faster than 7:30 for at least 4 miles after a similar effort. Was feeling energetic with 0.75 to go and decided to run it fast. Did 86-92-86 to finish the segment in 4:26. The reason for 92 was having to navigate around snow drifts on a slippery road. The last quarter also had some ice. Jenny ran 2.5 with Sarah. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 17:01. Julia ran 1.5 with us in 12:51. A little dog helped us with the pace early on, and then Julia stayed excited and maintained a faster than normal pace for the rest of the run. 0.5 with Joseph in 4:35. 0.25 with Jacob in 2:45.
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