One of the down sides of living in Portland during the winter is the length of time that it takes to get the streets and sidewalks cleared after a major snowstorm. By Tuesday morning there was still much evidence of Sunday's big storm in the form of packed snow and ice, 1" to 2" thick on most surfaces which made running pretty sluggish even with screw shoes. It wasn't our intention to go fast so we plugged along a nice 4 mile loop of the peninsula at about a 9 minute pace.
On Friday I took the day off from work in honor of Emma passing the Nursing Board exam and decided to repeat the same loop as before, this time at 3:00 in the afternoon. Feeling recovered from the previous nights adult beverages and with a spring in my step I headed out towards the Western Prom and found the roads to be somewhat better than before but the sidewalks were still a mess. I didn't check my watch as I ran but cruised along at a comfortably quick pace, broken occasionally at some of the busy intersections in town and by the need to dodge and weave around people on the sidewalks who weren't expecting to come across anyone moving at my pace.
Not that my pace was incredibly fast, but I was happy to run the loop almost 7 minutes faster this time around in a 7:20 pace, with a last mile of 7:10. I was pleased with this run but it didn't give me a ton of confidence about the thought of the Mid Winter 10-Mile Classic coming up next weekend. Last year, after two months of speed work and hill reps I managed to run the race at a 6:53 pace. This year I've been doing a lot of slow miles in the snow. I feel strong but certainly not fast. We'll see...
Tuesday
time: 36:14
distance: 4.0 miles
pace: 9:03
Friday
time: 29:22
distance: 4.0 miles
pace: 7:20
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