February 11-17

Monday (14km)
59 minutes with Chris. It was cold and the roads were slippery in many places. Neither of us hit the ground at any point, so that was good. We went up behind Brescia and around Alan's neighbourhood. The subdivisions allowed us to hide from the wind. My stomach was not happy at some moments - I blame it on lunch.

Tuesday (OFF)
I am no glutton for punishment. By the time I left my office for the day, it was -8, with a strong wind pushing small ice pellets close to horizontally. The roads looked like a mess, and I did not want to risk an injury.

Wednesday (workout - 14km total)
The roads were not very nice after yesterday, and I really did not feel motivated for this workout. It went reasonably well, though. My group did 2x4 loops of about 1050m, including the Windermere Hill. Our first repeat started slow, going 4:01, 3:58, but we were back to 3:50s for the next two loops. Our second repeat was faster, averaging 3:51 per lap. I had a large piece of cake in the middle of the day, and that normally causes stomach problems for me. I could not do the hills afterwards, and jogged/walked back to the university hospital. It was a pretty good workout. In better conditions, I think we'd be trying to go about 3:50 per lap at this point in the season.

Thursday (13km)
A leisurely run with Chris on the east side of Richmond, down to the South St. hospital and back. Did it in just under 54 minutes. I nearly slipped and fell a few times but was able to regain my balance in time each time. Interestingly, while we were on Maitland St., we saw Paul Davenport walking in the opposite direction. We were both surprised - it was not a nice part of town to see the president of the university out for a walk, alone, at night. There were a lot of cars parked at a restaurant nearby, and we decided he must have been dining there.

Friday (elliptical)
I did not feel like going outside in fresh snow for my run, so I went to Goodlife in the morning and spent an hour on the elliptical before heading to school. I went harder than last time, covering about 4% more than I did last week in the hour that I was on the elliptical. It was a different crowd at this time of day. I prefer the other kind of crowd, I say, cryptically.

Saturday (workout - 20km total)
Tough one. Chris Nagle and Connor Hammond were the other guys doing it. 4.5km tempo followed by 6x1km. I went 7:45/8:00 for the two halves of the tempo (got distracted with 500m to go by some ducks), which was even with the other two halfway, but I fell off with about a km to go. The k's were okay. We were supposed to hit 10km pace for the first 4, then 5km pace for the next 2. I went 3:25/3:24/3:22/3:22/3:20/3:22. I was not able to go faster for the last two. It felt like a lot of volume today. I had breakfast beforehand, which is unusual. It worked fine - no stomach troubles.

Sunday (9km)
Fitness-wise, this was a waste of time. It had rained overnight, and the sidewalks everywhere were slick. It had not stopped raining by the time we ran. I met up with Chris about 15 minutes into the run, and within three minutes, I had slipped going around a corner and soaked myself. There was a lot of pussy-footing and sliding going on. I made it for 46 minutes. G-ross. Chris and I remembered that today was the Really Chilly road race in eastern London. I am really glad I decided to not do it this year.
Mid-afternoon I decided to do some work on the elliptical to take my total workout time to something respectable for the day (and week). I was on for an hour, and did 1% more than on Friday - a tiny bit faster. I did a few weights afterwards. It has been a while since I did them, and I was not able to do as much as I had before the break.

Total - 70km. Low, but if I give myself credit for 15km for my two elliptical days, I hit 100km of effort for the week. That's okay.