Cold Snap! Surviving the Polar Vortex

Louisville experienced some of the coldest temperatures in over twenty years this week.  I felt ready, being from Michigan, I'm used to the cold.  I'm used to snow.  The forecasts were making me a little nervous.  It was supposed to rain on Sunday and then freeze.  I was a little worried about ice, but as usual, it wasn't nearly as bad here as they thought.  It did get super cold, and the kids' Christmas break got extended by two days.  And of course, my husband and I worked for two of the very few companies that were actually still open, Ford and the YMCA.  Couple that with all the people that decided to make their resolution to go to the gym, and my work has been downright nutty.  On Monday, when it was super cold, there weren't a ton of people out and about.  In fact, at one point I swore we were the only customers in the grocery store.  This was really funny to the workers because over the weekend, they were selling out of things right and left, and the place was packed.  There were definitely more people restocking the shelves at the store than customers for the majority of the time we were there.

Tuesday is usually an indoor workout for me because I like to do my track workouts on the treadmill.  It just makes it easier for me to hit my splits and keep track of the times.  I write it on a post it and then stick it to the treadmill.  I was able to tolerate the shorter faster sprints than the longer ones which are still super fast.  It was packed at the gym.  It also seemed like the kids totally outnumbered the adults.  One lady brought her kids and her neighbor's kids (who were Y members).  A lot of people were going nuts with the additional days off from school.  I actually really liked the additional days off.  It was nice to just a few days more to relax with no commitments because everything was cancelled!  I love sleeping in, and my kids let me sleep in on Tuesday, so it was fantastic.  Hopefully our summer will go the same way, except I will want to run and bike outside instead of inside, so it will get interesting I'm sure. 

Wednesday was finally back to normal.  Just Soren came to work with me in the morning, we got our Chick Fil A (Wednesdays are our CFA days).I hit the trainer for the USAT club challenge, and I need two cross training workouts for the Run Less Run Faster program to work properly, and I can do this at home after I've used my childcare hours at work.

Today I had both kids back in school, and it was not crazy cold.  It was in the high twenties/low 30s for my 17 mile run.  I filled my camelback with hot tap water, which is nice.  It kind of warms my back at the start of a cold run and then keeps my water from freezing in the tube (usually).  I was able to hit my splits (8:19 actual, 8:34 goal), but I was worn out for the rest of the day.  I was initially worried about using the 3:25 plan since my last marathon was no where near that, and my half times are off, but so far I have been able to do the workouts no problem.  Hopefully this will continue.  I messed up my start date for training more than once, but it worked out in my favor.  Between being sick and an upcoming ski vacation, I'm perfectly on track without missing any workouts.  I just spaced some of them out a little more so hopefully I don't run into problems doing that.  It has to be better than just skipping, right?  I guess I'll see.

I also found out that I should get my Coeur gear in February.  Yay!  I can't wait.

And I made a fun Flipagram from last year's pics.  Check it out
http://flipagram.com/f/RGvW2PheEQ