In The Long Run

In OKC for Christmas visiting family.  Explored the neighborhoods near where we are staying.   Very cold and windy. There was a bad ice storm on Friday/Saturday, but things are much looking better today.  

More exploring in OKC. Still cold and windy.

Even more exploring in OKC.  Warmed to 45 today.  Most of the ice is melted.  

6 miles weaving through an OKC subdivision.  Incorporated 12 x 1 minute pickups.  Somehow all the pickups seemed to be slightly uphill and into the wind.  The wind here is ridiculous, almost as bad as Laramie.  

Easy 4 through an OKC subdivision.  Beautiful day!

This race was postponed a week because of the ice storm. I wanted to run at Lake Hefner once while I was in OKC anyway so I decided to sign up even though I had barely run in December due to illness, 50k recovery, travel, and work.  I ran a 1.5 mile warmup and a 1 mile cooldown.  I had no clue what pace I was capable of running for 8k.  I hit the first 1k in 5:05 and thought maybe I could run low 40s, but then the wind hit me.  Most of the second K was into the wind and I slowed down a lot.  I had the wind behind me for the next 2k and picked it back up, but as soon as I turned around into the wind again, I just completely died. But it was a nice race, I got to see a new area, and now I know where I'm at fitness wise.  I was in pretty good shape (for me) at the end of November and I'll get back with a few weeks of consistent running.  

Ran the SLC Track Club's Beat the New Year 5k.  Ran 2+ laps of Sugarhouse Park as a warmup then ran the 5k with Nate and Vanessa. My only goal was to beat the new year (<30 min 5K) and we did with about 4 minutes to spare.  It was quite neat to run in the dark with fireworks going off overhead.  My garmin recorded 3.2 miles at a pace of 8:11.  Not too bad for how my December went running wise. Looking forward to better running in 2014. No excuses this year.