Its the start of a new year and the weather here in the Northeast continues to be awful … snow yesterday, ice and sleet overnight, what a way to ring in 2010. I think the sign I caught a picture of and included in this post while I traveled to Belvidere, NJ today says it all … THINK SPRING! I had to take a road trip due to a stupid thing I did at work yesterday, i won’t go into detail, but it was a nice drive… thankfully I was scheduled for a day-off today from running since it took me 2 hours roundtrip..

So I did a 6 mile speed workout yesterday morning, before the snow started … well actually I started with no snow coming down at 5:30am when I first went out, but by the time I was done 50 minutes later with my workout, it was snowing, really hard ..it made for a fun ride to work. I decided to keep with the speed work plan I was doing during the summer, basically running 800’s at a 3:45/lap with an easy lap in between to recover. I got 6x800m in, but 6 miles in overall with the recovery laps.. I was happy with my times for each lap, i kept the pace I had planned for, but by the last lap, I was certainly feeling the effects of my first speed session.

Tomorrow the cold weather returns for my 16 miler, actually more wind than cold … they expect 10-20 MPH winds, but I continue to look at the positive side of the experience, it will help me deal with the headwinds that will be present for the Ocean Drive marathon (it never lets me down every year).. The key tomorrow is to keep my pace and to stay hydrated as best as I can (even though its cold)… then we have hill work on Sunday, hopefully it will be better this week than last week, I can only hope.