Merry Christmas

We have had a wonderful day here in the Burke house.
The kids slept until 7.
Santa brought some wonderful gifts.
Marcie made homemade breakfast.
Presents was fun.
The kids and I have been playing outside.
Getting ready to start Christmas dinner.

I hope you all have a great day and joyous New Year.

My first cold run of the season....

Well, the southeast is frigid - at least by our standards. We were running down at Wrightsville Beach tonight with a temp in the mid 30's and a wind chill of 26. Nice.

I had planned well and had multiple layers ready to add and subtract as necessary. I had my Asics running pants, a compression short sleeve t-shirt, a long sleeve tech shirt and a plain old cotton sweat shirt along with gloves and a hat. Standing around before the run, it was cold, cold, very cold. We started the run right on time and our warm up run was an easy 1.75 miles to the north end of the island. I was sweating like a pig by the time I got to the end of the island. Thankfully Kristen was there with the truck, so I dumped my sweatshirt and gloves. From the end of the island we had a 3 mile tempo run - one long straight shot down the island. Our pace was to be 8:50 to 9:00 min/mile. Our first mile was 9:06, a little slow but in the cold, I will take it. Our second mile was about 9:00 even. I was running with a buddy, Doug and we began to pick up the pace for the last mile. We finished with a total time of 26:45 - yah.

We had a cool down run back to the car - about 1.3 miles. I have to admit that is when I started to get cold. We got back to the cars and had to do 4 sets of strides - about 60 meters. I grabbed my sweatshirt and gloves, finished the strides and did a quick stretch. Now I was cold - I turned the heat all the way up for the ride home. It was a good night - ran with friends, held a good pace, and was home in time to kiss the kids goodnight.

Starting back with a new PR

Its been 2 weeks since the B2B and I am happy to report that I have only done one workout over the last 2 weeks. I did a 30 min run last week then nothing. I really took the whole rest and recuperation idea to the max. I ate what I wanted and just took it easy. I have to admit, it was really nice.

My two weeks ended on Monday with a 3 mile run. I just wanted to stretch my legs and try out my new shoes. It was an easy day and it felt good to get out and run. I am planning 4 runs a week, about 16-18 miles, until after Christmas. This should be a nice "off-season" to just enjoy my running without all the craziness of extra workouts and increasing mileage. Until Christmas, its just about having some fun.

The New PR - I did my Tom workout tonight at the track. We were running 3, 4, or 5 miles using an alternating pace every 400m - I was in the 3 mile group. We were to run 2:10/400m and 1:55/400m throughout the entire run. The 2:10 was to be the recovery pace. I did not do the math in my head before we took off but that pace was faster than my best 5K. I really did not realize it until we were 6 laps or 1.5 miles into the run. By then I was doing the math in my head and my scheduled 12 laps was only 200m short of 5000m and I should finish the 12 laps in around 24:30, well ahead of my 5K PR. Now it was all about the time for me, the hell with the workout - I was after the PR. I finished my 12 laps in 24:37 and just kept on going for the extra 200m. I was breathing hard and my heart rate was in zone 4 (175 bpm) - only 200m to go. I finished in 25:45. That is 29 seconds faster than my old PR. It was a nice way to start December.