A little run

I could hear the wind howling as I lay in the pre-dawn darkness of my bedroom under my covers, and felt my house shaking as the wind gusts buffeted it.  I had run two kilometers the day before in my attempt to return to running, and I almost succumbed to my inner urgings telling me to not run back-to-back days.

But I got out of my warm bed, put on my running togs and left the house as the sky started lightening with the dawn.  It was cold outside but I was warm enough at the start with three layers on so I knew that I was foolishly overdressed.  Still, I wasn't going far so I figured it wouldn't matter too much, except that I stupidly didn't bring gloves so my hands were frozen throughout the slow, loping mile and a half run.

The sky was streaked with colors as it often is at that time of the morning.  I occupied my mind, as I tried to ignore my labored breathing, with reflecting on signs that I passed along the way.  One roadside yard sign sarcastically told me to slow down, please, while another storefront sign mocked me with the name of the establishment, Jimmy John's, also the names of my two oldest children who have been long-estranged from me, and the sign on its door, Fresher Faster, seemed to be urging me to get a move on.

Then I finally arrived at my destination via my circuitous route, the McDonald's restaurant up the street on the corner just past the Stop sign, where I indeed stopped and went inside for my morning cup of java.  Running is a glorious sport.

Buffalo, or Global Warming

I went to Buffalo last week on business, in December!  Up there they were complaining that they'd had no measurable snowfall this season yet, which set a centuries-old record.

Buffalo is a great old town, I understand once it was the fourth largest town in the country, an American president was killed there and now, despite its nasty weather, it is a hotbed of regulatory enforcement because it has an underemployed, underutilized educated population coupled with a good phone network which leads to this.  Think commission sales.

I was there in January for a week (!) when there was no running because of their record snowfall then.  Too much ice and snow around which violates my first rule of running, Be Safe.

This time there was no snow or ice underfoot and though it was cold in the morning, it was not inhospitable.  I had a great four mile run running down Main Street, by the river, back up the other way and past the old being-restored great buildings from the 1910s.  Check out the pictures.

Cold Running

This past week presented a sudden challenge in getting used to running in frigid conditions.  We went from running in shorts and shirtsleeves to dressing in carefully layered clothes practically overnight with the arrival of a lingering arctic air mass that plunged temperatures to or below the freezing point in all the lower 48 states.  (The arriving arctic conditions knocked down most of the remaining autumn leaves by Tuesday, which had retained their fall brilliance through the prior weekend.)

Monday it was raining along with being cold and windy so I didn't run, which left me feeling guilty the whole day.  Tuesday I had to bundle up but I ran 3 1/2 miles around the Tidal Basin, being careful to avoid the ice patches created by standing water on the footpath.  (On Wednesday I did my "long run" of four miles.)

Wednesday I ran 4 miles with a friend and former colleague I met on the Mall although I jammed my ankle when I stumbled on some stairs behind the Capitol.  Thursday I tenderly ran a mile early in the morning to test my sprained ankle and then, since it felt better, I loped 3 1/2 miles around the Tidal Basin at noon, bundled up against the cold with my ankle in a brace due to the slight sprain.  (The wind was down slightly on Thursday which created nice reflections on the water.)

Friday I went out with the noontime running group at work, a shifting band of runners, and four of us did a brisk 3.6 miles around the Tidal Basin at an 8:44 pace, faster than usual because the fastest guy in the division was running with us "to slow him down" because he's coming back from an injury.  We were glad to be able to help him out on his road to recovery.  (A totally clueless tourist wandered across the field of our posed picture on Friday as we laughed unbelievingly at her.)

Cold

Coming home from work last night, the sign outside the school said it was 30 degrees.  It was cold for a mid-November evening in DC.

I had run 5K during the noon hour, around the Tidal Basin.  Given the frigid conditions, I had layered up threefold, which was naturally too much so I was perspiring freely by the end of the run.

I had the footpath encircling the tidal body of water mostly to myself and it was imperative to watch out for ice patches as the tide induced water tends to encroach upon the gradually sinking cement path.  There were a few other runners who went by, one who was actually in shorts and running without a hat or gloves.

All the autumn leaves, so brilliant in their scarlet and golden hues last week, were much dulled and pretty much all knocked down given the gusting winds accompanying the current cold front.  The tall, imperious MLK statue next to the Tidal Basin gleamed coldly white with scarcely anyone present to see his frigid stare across the water at the TJ statue housed inside the Jefferson Memorial's open rotunda.

Slip Slidin' Away

It's been a rough winter.  This is my fourth snow day of the season, the government closed again.

I went out intending to do a 2-mile run in the blowing snow this morning, but the whipping wind made it too cold so I reduced my run (with plenty of pauses to take pictures) to one mile mostly on the pristine W&OD Trail.  There was about 3 inches of powdery snow covering an undercoating of sheer ice from last night's freezing rain and sleet before it turned to snow.

The going was okay, but my ears and face were cold.  Gotta keep up the five-times running per week, you know, or all order might disrupt in the world and bad things could happen like WW3 in the Crimea (tone down the rhetoric, prez).

On the street leading back to my house the snow plow was operating.  His scraping of the roadway exposed the ice sheet overlaying the asphalt so I had to walk it in the last quarter mile, but it was an invigorating run.

First Run of the Year

It was record cold in the District yesterday morning, in the single digits with up to 30MPH winds which made it feel like it was well below zero.  Just like in the old days in Boulder County when I used to be outside (albeit in my car for long stretches) for eight hours each shift covering wrecks, arresting drunks and stopping speeders for the Colorado State Patrol when it was sometimes 10 degrees below zero or even colder during the winter months.

At night, up in the mountains.  I wore thermal long johns and polar leggings under my wool uniform pants, and the same sequence upstairs under a bulletproof vest, wool shirt and padded CSP windbreaker, and I got by.

The real problem is the wind.  It cuts through everything and takes any residual warmth right out of you.

Today it was in the twenties with low wind and I went out for a noontime run on the Mall with two co-workers.  I wore leggings, a tech t-shirt, a long-sleeve shirt and a windshirt, gloves, earband and a ball cap.

I was hot after two miles, but it was a good run.  I hadn't run since last year, because of the holidays, but I was gratified to see that I'm still under 200 despite the inactivity, achieving that milestone finally in December having worked towards that goal for three years and having dropped almost half a C-note during that time.

We ran by an outside water fountain outside the American Indian Museum that had been left on (DUH!) that was frozen into an ice sculpture of rising and cascading water.  Workers were scraping away at a thick slab of ice extending all along the sidewalk from the fountain to the curb.

I didn't go running yesterday because, as a running friend of mine at work said, "There's a fine line between being a hard ass and a dumb ass."  Of course, he went running yesterday, but then again his best marathon is 50 minutes faster than mine and he's not even fifty yet so he's young and good.

I enjoy running with my work running buddies because they all think I'm fast and they force me to get out to run when I don't really want to (the commitment thing) and I get to show off my history trivia knowledge as we run by things (which "martyred president" is that a statue of?).  Plus that 50 pounds thing; the comeback from that started on a horrible noontime run three years ago when I finally got back to running regularly at noontime with a co-worker returning from maternity leave, after letting the onset of my chronic ankle injury dictate my inactivity for the two prior years.

Three snowy miles

Unable to sleep, I slipped out of the house for a run on the nearby W&OD Trail early in the morning, stepping into the white landscape of an early spring snow, wet, heavy and splashy.  Twelve hours earlier I had traversed this very same path in my first race of the year, a completely satisfactory effort in a 5K on the same paved blacktop pathway, now covered with snow.

                               (Railroad Avenue.)
Off I set down the street that led to the trail, my footfalls evoking a splash of wet snow at every foot strike.  Though the street was dark and deserted this early in the morning, a silent wonderland it was not.

Down Railroad Avenue and onto the bike path I went.  My initial labored breathing had modulated into a regular pattern of deep breaths as I gingerly ran along, being careful not to slip on the sloppy, slippery surface.

                (The trail approaching the bicycle bridge.)
It was a pretty landscape, every blemish in the land covered in a billowy white blanket with further large, thick snow crystals coming down heavily.  Half an hour and three miles later I slipped back into the house, wet and cold but feeling fulfilled.

Running in Fairfax

Yesterday was a cold, rainy day but I got four miles of running in with my weekend running buddy, J.  He lives next to the Government Center in Fairfax and you'd be surprised at the extent of trails and wooded patches out that way.

It's a little hilly out there too, it seemed that no matter which direction we were running it was always uphill, even when we doubled back after two miles.  There were other runners out and about as well, despite the challenging elements.

Layering is the answer on such days, wicking clothes next to the skin and fleece on top of it all.  In about forty minutes we'd done our appointed distance and by mid-morning on Saturday we each had our weekend still stretching out ahead of us. 

Afterwards, cold and sodden, we retired to a nearby Starbucks for Vanilla Blonde Roast coffee and a little girl watching.  I love the current style of boots that women wear these days and I watched an interesting and stylish procession of women walk in and out of the store in towering high heeled zippered suede boots, low-cut multi-buckled biker boots, rumpled buccaneer boots, boots with a flair over the knees, flat-soled black boots, Ugg boots, hush puppy style boots, high snow-pak boots, fleece lined boots, anklet high heel boots, French poodle boots, boots with a split back and old-style high lace up boots as J hummed the Nancy Sinatra tune, These boots are made for walking...

Closeness

It's official. This is the snowiest winter (54+ inches) in recorded history in DC, with six weeks to go.

My office has been closed since last Friday. That's also the last day I received any mail, two blizzards ago.

It reminds me of when I lived in Colorado, all except for the closed-office part. All of the sidewalks are shoveled and the sun is doing its work on the icy parts.

Snowshoveling promotes neighborhood closeness. The standoffish couple across the street were shoveling the ice chunks left by the snowplow at the head of their driveway this morning in preparation to driving away and going to work. I went over to help clear the debris so they could get underway.

Did I say they were standoffish? My appearance to "help" mortified them. They started shoveling feverishly to complete the task in as little time as possible. We finished swiftly, they thanked me and drove quickly away. Snowshoveling really brought us closer.

Twenty-five inches.

Local friends and family, please stop calling, I haven't expired. And yes, I have run out of things to shovel.

In Falls Church we got 25 inches of snow over two days. Obama termed it Snowmageddon. The fourth largest snowfall ever in DC. But this is DC, not Colorado (where I used to live).

Some young newscaster, in local-coverage's twenty-four hour breathless live tracking of the storm's progress, cautioned viewers that such a heavy snow (20-1 water content) is known as "Heart Attack Snow."

Well, I never heard that before. Yes, I know people keel over while shoveling snow. Oops! But I think you made that up, young man.

Anyway, you can stop calling to check up on me. I'm sore but fine. I even shoveled a path from the end of the block through the snow wall to the route to the Metro Station. Come on by instead and see the eight-foot snow banks I created by tossing dozens of cubic-yard blocks of frozen ice chunks up atop the pile. It was fun.

An icy track workout

Here in DC we're wimps in the winter. The One couldn't believe it, for instance, when they shut down the school system earlier this week for "some ice," as he described it. He's from Chicago, by way of Hawaii with a layover in Indonesia. Winters in Chicago are ferocious.

Our running friends to the north just deal with it. They find indoor tracks to run on, indoor marathons to race, and venture out to run in minus degree temperatures.

Wednesday's track workout for my Half Marathon Training Program called for 4X1600 with 200M recovery jogs. That's at tempo pace or interval pace or race pace or something. I can never keep it straight. It translates loosely, with the gang I run with, to 7:55 miles or 1:58 laps.

Tuesday and Wednesday it snowed and sleeted and froze so the track was closed on Wednesday night. No school, remember? Track workout was cancelled. Yay!!

The cold temperature has been hanging around and putting a nice polished sheen of ice on the snow that is extant. It's slippery. So running out there violates my one rule of running--Be safe.

Runners aren't obsessive. The week was about to slip away without my track workout. So this afternoon I headed up to the W&OD Trail behind my house. My house providentially sits right on MP 7. Lessee, one mile thataway and back, and one mile thisaway and back, with a minute jog at the end of each mile, that sure sounds like the track workout to me.

Off I set eastbound. About a third of the trail was rutted with icy frozen snow fields but the rest was clear. There was no black ice because it had been above freezing all day (38 degrees). I booked on the clear parts and ran haltingly and gingerly, like the old man I am, on the clumpy parts.

I hit the first mile at 8:20, after passing the half mile marker at 4:00. I looped around on the trail for 40 seconds and then came back for the second mile. This was into a stiff wind and I covered the same terrain, with the same gingerly steps in the same places, in 8:40. This time I jogged around for 1:40 before I took off westbound.

It was hard to tell, but I think there were more ice-afflicted parts of the trail to the west. The wind seemed to have dropped though, and I had the hang of the exercise by now, breaking out of my periods of mincing little steps on the clotted parts of the trail with rapid bold strides on the long clear parts between the islands of ice. The third mile was 8:20. I jogged down the path aways, turned, and as I came back I hit the milepost at full speed, where I switched on my watch.

The wind was at my back for the last mile. I wanted to do at least one sub-8. And I did, with a 7:44 fourth mile. I jogged back to my house, having "checkmarked" in my head this week's track workout. It was a little different, but then us runners have to adapt.

Wednesday was Ugly!

Wednesday was a hard day. After not running for a week due to frigid temperatures, travel and Inauguration restrictions and closures, Wednesday was the day of the 420th running of the monthly noontime Tidal Basin 3K race. It was my 92nd running of it (out of the last 102).

My agency’s rock star, G, ran the two and a half miles to the race’s start with me, at a 7:45 pace. So at the start, I was already dying, with my glasses so steamed from my perspiration that I had to put them in my pocket.

Off we went. My legs were feeling tired so I hoped that if I went out fast, the speed might come. I caught up with my doppelganger Peter early in the race and ran by him, elbowing him out of the way as he tried to pinch me off into a curbside bus as I passed him on the inside. A quarter mile later I heard his familiar shuffle coming up behind me and he ran by me, for good.

I entertained my familiar I-should-just-walk-now thoughts as I passed over the inlet bridge across the water from the Jefferson Memorial. The septuagenarian who always beats me passed me there.

I passed the mile mark in 7:28, well off the pace of most of last year’s runs, which tended to be around 7:00 or better at the mile mark. Running along the serpentine walkway by the Memorial, I felt sluggish and slow. I knew the only two women in the race, a sexagenarian and a septuagenarian, were behind me but I wondered how close. I successfully fought off the urge to turn and look because that is a sure sign of a struggling runner.

I passed the 2K mark at 9:08, a 7:21 pace, so I had picked it up a bit. That didn’t last long. Coming down the long last quarter mile straightaway, the wind hit me just as I was having a fantasy that I was making up time on the runner 30 meters ahead of me. All I had to do was summon a burst–from where?–and pass him, I thought. What are you, weak? I asked myself. And 10 yards further up was Peter. I could pass them both!

We finished in the same order. The strong arctic wind blowing in off the Potomac on the straightaway stayed our speed. My normal goal in this race is to break 13 minutes, something I did twice last year, but I had to hustle to break 14 minutes this race. I finished in 13:58 (7:29), my slowest time in well over a year, 51 seconds slower than last month.

I was 19/24, finishing just ahead of the first woman, and ahead of only two other men who were younger than me. A nice 79% showing for the race, or 86% for my gender. This race can suck.

My booby prize for being so slow was running the two and a half miles back to work with G, who finished fifth in 11:14 (6:01). He had mercy on me though, and trotted back alongside me at a leisurely 8:58 pace.

And then at 7 pm I went off to lead the weekly track workout for my Half Marathon Training Group. We did 5X1000 at 1:51 laps (7:27 pace), with 200M recovery jogs. Yeah, Wednesdays can really suck alright.

Running after dark along Constitution Avenue

Sasha was busy so I led the Monday Night Footmall run for the half-marathon training group. It was cold, so I layered up for the Smartbike ride the two miles from my workplace near Judiciary Square over to the group's meeting place by Foggy Bottom. Those bicycle rides in the dark on the busy and bumpy DC streets are more worrisome than carefree to me, because I constantly worry about getting doored on the right by a parked car or clipped on the left by a passing motor vehicle. Not to mention running into one of the innumerable jaywalkers crisscrossing the streets downtown. Imagine, jaywalkers in DC!

There were four runners waiting at the appointed place, despite the cold. Off we set, down Virginia Avenue to Constitution Avenue and straight out Constitution to the top of Capitol Hill. I prefer this route because it is more busy and well-lit, whereas Sasha dislikes running on concrete sidewalks and prefers the more scenic, albeit dark and deserted, asphalt footpaths on the Mall.

Three miles out, with the top of Capitol Hill attained, I could tell one of the group was struggling. This slower runner, who is a swimmer branching out into running, was working hard to keep up. So I told the others to circle around the Capitol and come back to Constitution below it, where we'd meet them. I ran back down the hill with the laboring runner, and we rested a little by walking to meet the oncoming group as they completed their circle.

The reunion effected, we returned to the start point the way we came, along Constitution and Virginia. I made the group stop opposite the ellipse for a photo op with the National Christmas Tree lighted in the background, and endured yet again the calls made upon me in mock-disgust to get a digital camera already!

The other male in the group started speeding up as we headed towards the barn, and I engaged in a delightful 5-block flat-out run with him at the end. Neither of us said a word, we just sprinted faster and faster along Virginia Avenue, each man trying to reach the finish ahead of the other, our labored breaths bespeaking our effort. I won't tell you who won by half a block.

The others came running up shortly afterwards and a pleasant apres-work six-mile run, in under an hour, was in the books.

Duty Time

I gave back on Sunday. I volunteered at a club race.


No race goes on without largely faceless support. Here are the volunteers manning the finish line. It was cold and windy.

I did duty at the Gatorade and water stop. I got it down after awhile. Gatorade up high and away, water down low and tight.

It got a little tricky at times. Good thing I practice yoga.

Winter running

It's cold! Frigid even, 23 degrees with a gusting wind. Treadmill weather? Not necessarily.

I never run inside, so that makes it easy for me. Unless it's icy-treacherous underfoot, I'll be running outside.

The secret to running in the cold is thin layering. Compression shorts and polyester warm-up pants take care of your lowers, along with polyester socks and good running shoes of course. Tights and long trunks work too.

The uppers should be all-polyester items (a little nylon or spandex for "grab ability" is okay). Go to Target and stock up for under $20 per item. Or Walmart for a dollar or two less. These are not pretty running togs, just cheap and effective.

Today I wore a tank top, a short sleeve t-shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a nylon wind shirt. I took off the wind-shirt and tied it around my waist when I got hot.

I also wore polyester gloves and a stretchy thin polyester headband that I pulled down around my neck for a loose neck warmer when my ears got hot. I wore my small waist pack with my camera, money, a fare card, a GU packet and a small tube of Vaseline stuffed inside. I carried my half-liter water bottle. When my hands got hot, I hung my gloves on my waist pack belt.

I would have added a polyester scarf (go to Old Navy), a polyester fleece zip-up (22 bucks at Target) and a polyester mesh ball cap if it had been really frigid and windy.

What I have described is actually not that much stuff. I keep it all isolated on a shelf on which I keep only running gear. I also have a yard-sale dresser dedicated to my various sizes and types of running shirts, shorts, leggings, sox etc. I call it the Polyesser. I can be out the door in 5 minutes with a stop at my Polyesser and shelf.