Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.  Coming to you from the first snow of the season which is occurring as I type.  When I checked last night they mentioned maybe an inch or two with no road accumulation .. well, that was yet another wrong forecast from our weather talking heads.  It started around 3am and hasn’t stopped since now into the middle of the afternoon.  Guessing we are currently somewhere in the 5-6 inch mark – when it will stop, nobody knows.  My main interest in the weather was we planned a Springdale run this morning and wanted to make sure my apparel matched the conditions.  Ended up having to switch a few layers after seeing the snow piling up.  I will tell you, there is few things more enjoyable than a nice 7 mile run in the snow especially when you can pass those miles in the company of good friends.

In keeping with that theme, figured it would be a good time to give you a break from the birds and wait for it … bring you a post on the last race of the season.

Yep, another year in the running book closed out with the Peoria Half Marathon completed back on October 16th.  I am not a big fan of this race, but it is conveniently close and most of all, I needed some race redemption.  If you remember from my previous post, the race before this wasn’t a stellar outing (link here).  This race was the third half marathon in less than 1.5 months and was a chance for me to prove to Linda that the previous race was just an anomaly.

Hit the jump to see how the race turned out!

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In the final week and three posts to go!  Thought it was good time to give a break on the bird posts – a short break, but still, some relief for those out there that prefer their birds on a plate.  Today’s post was prompted by last Sunday’s big step in my running career.  For the first time ever, I finally crested the 20 mile mark on a training run.  Damn near killed me, but a notch is a notch.  One of the things that keep me going on long runs is thinking about blog posts.  This particular one was helping to motivate me through the hell my body was going through!

For the second Sunday in a row I was breaking personal running records.  Yesterday was a distance record, the previous Sunday was a speed record.  As you can tell from the swag above, I ran the Peoria Half Marathon a week ago.  This was supposed to be a final warm up before tackling a much bigger endeavor planned for the end of the month. The intent was to go out at a comfortable pace and simply relax to the end – slow and steady and more importantly, not cause injury to anything that would jeopardize a bigger goal.  Well, that was the plan.  The morning started off as an answer to a runner’s prayers – it was downright cold out.  We left the house at 29 degrees!

No worries about overheating that day.  I even decided to pull out the tights knowing it wasn’t supposed to break 40 until after my expected finish time.  My training partner Ryan was toeing the line that day as well – he prefers to run a lot cooler than I do as you can tell by his attire.  A hat and long sleeves means it is definitely cold out for normal people.  Linda was complaining I was not smiling in this pre-race shot.  Wanna know why –  I WAS SHIVERING.   Luckily my grimace was countered by the happy photobomber hehehe.

Hit the jump to see how the frigid start turned out!

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