Cold Play

No, not the band. The weekend!

It was good news for Meredith this weekend, as the temperature in Columbus fell off a cliff to the 60s. She, after all, was running the Columbus Marathon on Sunday!

Before we got there, we had a Saturday of fun and rest. Our niece was playing in a soccer game conveniently located in a town just over an hour by bike from our house. My scheduled workout? A 75 minute bike ride. Charlie and I got up early and left the house about 7:45 AM. Now, I've never really trained in the winter. And I *certainly* haven't ridden a bike in cold weather before. Just a few minutes out, I found myself wishing that I had more than three layers on, or at least something to break the chilly morning winds. Once I got going, my core was fine, but my fingers and toes were not! (This led to a trip to my local Roll store to pick up some booties for future rides.)

I'd never ridden this way before, so it was sight unseen as to how the little back roads I was taking would look. The course ended up not being too bad, though it was uphill most of the way, and on a one way ride, there's no "at least it'll be downhill on the way back" with which to comfort yourself. One of the roads got a little rough, too, but was more of an "uggityuggityuggityuggity" rough, as opposed to the end of the Muncie race's "ka-CHUNK ka-CHUNK ka-CHUNK" of crack repairs. A few stretches, though, were new blacktop, which just feels like heaven on a bike.

Meredith met me out at the...um...pitch?, and got me some warm clothes (whew, much better) in which to watch the soccer match. After that, it was back home for the first lazy Saturday in a long while, and a chance to watch our Buckeyes beat up on Michigan State.

Sunday was marathon day, and we were downtown really early this year for the 7:30 start. I'll let you read Meredith's report for the details, but suffice it to say that she ran a great race, and hit her goal of 3:30. I was really proud of her for achieving it after putting in so much hard work.

And what better way to celebrate than to go out for a run of my own? I hit the trails at a local park for an hour run. Let's just say that cross country is not my strength, and I may have booed out loud when I came upon a couple flights of unexpected stairs on one of the trails. After an hour, I had gone just over 6 miles, which isn't too bad for the terrain and for trying to keep it at a fairly easy pace.

Today's my first brick (bike-run) of the training plan, which I'm actually looking forward to quite a bit. Next week begins the harder training, as well as heart rate testing. I'm not exactly sure what that will entail, but the words "Here be dragons" from old maps come to mind...