December Running

December 1st brought a sizable snow and cold air to the Front Range and so after a warm end to fall with temperatures near 70 degrees on Thanksgiving, winter has arrived.  December running was kicked off on Thursday with the last official (and my 23rd) Tower's Time Trial of the year.  The hill was un-plowed and had shin to knee deep snow all the way up with occasional thigh to waist deep drifts.  It was cold and foggy and wonderful.  I felt pretty good and pushed hard and still only just broke an hour with a time of 57:18.

It was snowing again Saturday morning and Ean and I got up early and met up with Scott, Celeste, Kyle and Sarah for a make it up as we went along 17 miler though town, along the river, up Centennial and then through the snow over Reservoir Ridge.  Saturday night I took Shadow out for a short snowshoe run in Pineridge.

Five of the first six races on my calendar for 2012 involve snowshoeing or running in the snow and I am looking forward to doing a lot of snowshoe outings over the next few weeks to prepare.  I hoping the snowshoeing will provide some good lower impact and high intensity cross training to start out the year and prepare me for the hard training ahead for the spring and summer ultras.

This morning was the Tortoise and Hare 10K at Lee Martinez Park and I ran 40:57 which was 1:36 faster than I ran last year.  I felt good despite having some soreness from yesterday's run and snowshoe.

It was a good week of running all around and I credit a lot of this to making much better decisions about what I am eating.  Ean and I have resolved to eat more whole foods and cut way back on sugars, animal products and processed junk.  I am amazed and encouraged about how much better I've felt for the last several days since I have been more thoughtful about what I eat.

Next Saturday should be exciting with the 2nd running of the Chubster and the WS lottery.  After that the big running of 2011 will be over and training for the events of 2012 begins.