4.5 Miles, cross train, and 3.1miles

This past Sunday was a great day. We finally got some sort of break in our nasty Chicago winter. The weather warmed up into the high 30s. Yeah, I know high 30s doesn't sound like much of a break, but it was all I needed to get outside and run.
Sundays are my long run days. Since the Shamrock Shuffle ocurs on a Sunday, it makes sense that my schedule should prepare me to run long on Sunday. And since I havent run consitently in such a long time, when I say long run, I mean I top out at 6 miles before the Shuffle. This past Sunday was supposed to be a 4 miler, but with the great weather and my meandering route past Bakers Square, it turned out to be 4.5 miles in 42:30 (about a 9:30 pace). Nothing intentional about it, I just kept going and by the time I looked at my GPS I had already gone almost 3.5 miles and I knew to get home would be more than just a half mile.

Now then, Monday was reserved for cross training. I had the day off work, so I rested my legs from the previous day's long run. Some may call this being lazy, I call it important recuperative methodology. Since it was warm out, I did bike that evening, about a half hour in all. Lifted upper body only, chest x2, back x3, obliques, abs, tris, and bis.

Today continued the trend of beautiful weather. I went for a little run during lunch, the temperature was 39 degrees Farenheit (that's 4 degrees Celsius for you Canadians). I thought I went for about 2.25 to 2.5 miles. But the time of 27 minutes didn't jive with how it felt. So I visited GMaps Pedometer http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/ to get a better idea. Just as I had thought, my GPS wasn't recieving a signal while I was weaving around foot traffic in downtown Chicago. This is a known shortcoming of GPS devices, they tend to lose signals in urban areas, thanks to all the tall buildings, and in heavily wooded areas, thanks to the tree coverage. As it turns out, GMaps tells me I went 3.1 miles, in a time of 27 minutes, that's about an 8:45 pace. Based on that, I'm gonna call today a speed workout. I think that sounds better than admiting how poorly I pace myself.

Up next: 2 miles Wed and 3 miles Thurs.