Colder than a ...

You can fill in the rest with your favourite Canadian winter cliche and you would be right. On Sunday, I was attempting to do 26K, but I made a bad choice about the most appropriate route and lived to regret it. A big chunk of our run was through the Experimental Farm, which sits on the highest part of Ottawa and offers very little shelter from the biting cold wind. If I'd been smarter, I'd have mapped out a route that kept me along the canal where it's lower and more protected. It was a very sunny day, and the parts of our route that took us along the canal were much more bearable. As it was, I was out long enough to have done my 26K but because we were running with a slower pace group I failed to make my distance. There was some confusion, too, about our actual mileage. Lessons learned: map out the distance ahead of time, choose the proper route for a cold day, wear my balaclava when the wind chill is minus 27, and bring some recovery food to eat in the car. Oh yes, and try to have plenty of gas in the car so that you don't have to fill up before you can get home to the kitchen.
So that's what I did wrong. In the afternoon, Peter and I did everything right. The secret to doing everything right is to plan to do nothing. We had long hot baths, read in bed, napped; we hibernated really. Luckily, we had enough ingredients for Peter to make a delicious comfort food dinner of stuffed turkey breast, sweet potatoes, and peas. We watched our old Year in Provence videos and were in bed again for the night at 9:30. Since we're both training for the Rome marathon, we've decided that this should be the new agenda for Sunday afternoons. Do nothing. Let's hope we can stick to it.
This past week was a pretty good training week. I ran alone on Tuesday evening and mapped out a new 6K tempo route through the neigbourhood, accompanied once again by my ipod. On Wednesday, I was forced to do my hill training inside on a treadmill - due to work commitments and weather. I ran through the farm early Friday morning with Terry and Frederica, but added a 10K steady run on Saturday morning in the rain. From now on, I plan to run on my own on Friday mornings to get a good 10K steady run in.
Tomorrow night brings more hill training. This time outside. I really hope it starts to warm up out there.