Snow

Workout: your mom

I have negative a million hours to get my shit done, but since I'm too anal to not post, I'm giving you some more filler bullshit, which you all apparently loooove so much.

Winter wonderland!

Or, at least, more winter wonderland-y than before. We're still working on getting our snow act together.

4 miles tomorrow. Okay bye.

New PSF PR

Workout: 6 miles, 9:47 average

Heyo, new PSF (that's "post-stress fracture" for the uninitiated, which is everyone) distance PR! It wasn't fast, it wasn't hard (at all, really), and nothing interesting happened, but it was a momentous occasion nonetheless!

I ran on the Coastal Trail and it was splendid.

You may notice things look a little grey. That's because, FINALLY, we are supposed to get a dump (we're talking snow, here). Hopefully multiple dumps, if the forecast isn't full of it. It wasn't lying about the higher temps, which is a good sign. It's supposed to get up to 27 (!!) tomorrow, if you can believe it. Get out your Coronas and some sunglasses, kids, we're in for a heat wave.

I went back to the part of the Coastal Trail I always seem to go to. I want to go somewhere else, I really do, but I like that I can have Bailey off leash when I go here. That dog has an unlimited supply of energy so letting her run (literal) circles around me the entire time means she gets to run about twice as far as I do.

I got off to a slow start and then settled into a surprisingly consistent pace.

I didn't really feel like taking pictures so didn't stop as much as I usually do, which probably helped.

Obligatory creek photo

My run's elevation profile made me laugh (it's the little things, right?) so I'm posting it.

Overall, a very successful 5+ mile run. Hopefully the first of many.

Before I get knee-deep in tax policy and Taylor series, here's a moose for you.

Have a good weekend, folks.

And a Turd Pie in a Pear Tree...

Workout: finally doing THE CORE (yes, I've been a dirty liar the past two days and haven't actually done it)

Let's talk about this past week in run/hike-land:

Saturday: 5 miles at the Coastal Trail! It was a blast
Sunday: a beautiful 2 1/2 hour hike and an epic 250-mile drive to flee -20 degree temperatures
Monday: 4 frosty miles near the dog park followed by a 5.8 earthquake
Tuesday: 2 ice rink miles and a half-assed filler post that, for some unknown reason, generated mega views
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: 4 undocumented miles and frozen coffee

Total: 15 jogged miles and 2 1/2 hours of hiking

Not great, but not terrible either. At least I got some hiking in there. I'm looking to up my time in the mounts over the coming weeks (well, starting a week from now).

I do believe Bailey is not only dumb, but also disgusting (and yet I still love her to pieces). I present to you this picture taken on this morning's walk:

That thing she's eating? Obviously moose poop. Even worse than that though, it's a frozen disc of moose poop. Turd pie, if you will. That revolting creature carried that thing all the way home with her, and there was nothing I could do about it. Her turd pie may be the strongest argument yet in favor of keeping her on a leash.

Two other shots from my walk:

DNF. What a loser, amirite?

I've done it-proven that aliens exist!

I took today off work to study for finals. Although I've crossed quite a few nagging "to-do" items off my nonexistent to-do list, I have yet to actually study. The day is young, however!

6 miles on tap for tomorrow. My longest post-stress fracture run to date. Wicked excited.

An Awkward Reunion

Workout: 4 miles, pace  unknown

I'll get to that oh-so-mysterious "pace unknown" in a second (that's called "pretending you've got something really exciting to talk about but not talking about it yet, thereby forcing people to keep reading"-at least, I think that's the technical term). So my challenge from yesterday? Nailed it. 4 miles outside. And just as I suspected, it was no big deal. Really. It wasn't actually 15 below, so that certainly helped, but it was definitely still below zero. Eight below? I don't know. Does it matter? It was cold enough to freeze my coffee.

#coffeefail. And YES, I instagrammed even this piece of shit picture. Deal with it. I ended up waiting an hour for this to thaw enough so I could spoon it out. #AKproblems #stophashtagging

So, about that pace unknown. UGH. Big ole rookie mistake. My garmin ran out of batteries. This doesn't happen to me. In fact, it's literally never happened to me. I usually freak out about it running out of batteries when it's at like 90%. The one thing in life I'm anal about. It's a tragedy, really. What if I only ran 3.96 miles and not 4 miles? I'll never amount to anything! Anyway, I was pissed. I'm pretty sure the heat (or lack thereof) had something to do with it. So no splits for you today. Just believe me when I tell you they were 3 minute miles, NBD. But really, it was probably something around 9:45/mile. But who knows for sure. It's the eighth wonder of the world (15th? How many of those have we got these days?).

I ran at a new place! Well, sort of. It was right next to the scenic road to school, but it was trail-ish and woodsy so that was nice. I spent about a mile getting there from school, spent two miles on the trail, and then one final mile getting back to school.

I've pulled a fast one on you. This is almost exactly the same picture as the one above, only I focused my camera on the sky and not the trees. 

Obligatory creek photo

Run felt great, body felt great, blah blah blah thanks Hal you're the best, lemme buy you a drink sometime. I felt like I could have kept going for miles.

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I had kind of a weird experience at work. Let me preface this story by saying that three years ago, I had a summer job as a nature counselor. You read that right. A nature counselor. I don't think I had even talked to a kid before I took that job, and I knew that I would either be the most hated counselor or most beloved. There would obviously be no in-between. Fortunately, it ended up being the latter. They called me Lynx (we weren't allowed to tell them our real names, which now that I think about it, is fucking weird), and I'm pretty sure I had at least one kid hanging off of me every waking moment that summer. It was actually a ridiculously fun job, at least when I wasn't having to come up with an endless number of nature activities (which, by the way, is HARD. Apparently "nature walks" every day of the week aren't acceptable educational activities).

Anyway, my story. One of my favorite campers was this sweet girl named E (no, I'm not going to tell you this kid's real name, are you crazy? The internet's a creepy place, y'all). Well, my office building had a holiday party tonight, and I suddenly saw E. As she came running by, we happened to lock eyes, and I'm pretty sure there was some recognition there. So what did we do? Did we have a joyful reunion and reminisce about the good old days? No. What we did was pretend we didn't know each other. I was so embarrassed. What am I, two years old? No. I'm (ostensibly) an adult. It's my job to make this kid uncomfortable as hell by forcing her to acknowledge that we know each other (but then having tons of fun remembering the aforementioned good old days!!). Oh well. Twenty-five and still learning basic life lessons.

Counselor Jeano.

To Be Continued...

Workout: THE CORE

Y'all are crazy. I write a bullshit post about nothing yesterday and suddenly my page views jump up? On the one hand, maybe it means I'm a whiz and can write interesting things without even trying. On the other hand, it suggests that perhaps my bullshit is better than the stuff I put an effort into writing (the idea being I should just give it all up). I'll choose to ignore that possibility.

Today's Anchorage-y photo theme: COLORS!

 This building is atrociously ugly, but its colors are delightful.

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I was cruising the blogosphere this morning, as I tend to do, and I happened to come upon this review, which pissed me off. I want to be clear that I mean nothing against the blogger herself; she's fine. Great, even. I read her stuff. My issue is with shoe companies using the "barefoot running craze" to sell shoes when they clearly don't care about/understand the whole idea behind barefoot running at all. This shoe advertises itself as being "the next best thing to naked feet," despite the fact that wearing it is pretty much the shoe equivalent of being on another planet. There is no similarity whatsoever. A zero-drop shoe isn't barefoot. It's just a zero-drop shoe.

Let's put aside the whole "is minimalism dumb?" question. That's a discussion for another day (another 'nother day-too much anger surrounding that issue). "Barefoot running" means running barefoot. Period. I'm not a barefoot runner (except during the odd mile when I am). If my shoes don't count as barefoot, neither do those damn shoes. 

Love these things

So what's my point? I don't have one, really. It just pisses me off that companies can slap a buzzword like "barefoot" on everything to sell more product, and it bothers me even more that doing so actually works. Ugh.

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In other news, it's still cold.

I think I may have finally hit my temperature limit. I have four miles to jog tomorrow and I may just decide to do them inside. I was curious to see when this would happen. Now, I could most definitely run outside and be completely fine. I'd warm up in a few minutes. I'd probably even enjoy it. But I guess that somewhere around -10 degrees my mental game collapses. Although now I'm worried that I've just challenged myself to run outside tomorrow. To be continued...

Filler Tuesday

Workout: 2 slow miles, 10:15 average; possibly THE CORE if I ever manage to get up from my chair

Those things look like they've been through hell. They haven't. Not sure why they're so dirty.

I ran in these guys. I don't think I talked about them in my shoe overview. They're pretty much Pace Gloves with some more padding for the roads. I don't like them nearly as much but I've been running almost exclusively in my Pace Gloves since they're the only pair my Yaktrax fit, so I thought it would be good for me to wear something else. I don't know, it made sense at the time.

I don't really feel like writing today so I've decided this is going to be a filler post. Yep, you read that right. I'm telling you that I have jack shit to tell you today. I was supposed to get all random-y on your ass, but I don't feel like it. Blame the weather. And maybe the light.

But actually, don't do that. I'm just tired. Blogging is hard. I have, like, -20 readers. Putting in a ton of effort right now wouldn't be rational.

Here are some pictures I took while at work:

The ocean. It's frozen.

That's all, folks.

A Big Earthquake and a Run

Workout: 4 miles, 9:38 average

Before we begin: as I was in the middle of writing this, there was suddenly a BIG earthquake. Now, when I say big, I mean big. Alaska gets legit earthquakes. Not that 4.0 shit that scares East Coasters. I was in a 7.9 earthquake in Iquique, Chile in 2005 in which there was a moment where I literally thought I was going to die (it didn't help that I was standing on an elevated platform hanging from the ceiling by cables on the top floor of a mall), and which made me fall to the ground. That was big. The earthquake I just felt, while not as big, was still enough to make me run from the house in my towel. It's 0 degrees outside. It was also big enough that shit fell off shelves. I'll let you know how big it was once the news reports it. That's two large earthquakes in three days... I'm hoping that's not a signal that "the big one" is on its way. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled verbal diarrhea.

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If my average pace is any indication, running in cold weather makes you run faster. It's a scientifically-proven fact. Although let's be clear that in this case, "science" is synonymous with "Jeano who lives in Alaska."

Anyway, I went for a run after class and it was great. Cold as hell, but relatively fast and requiring relatively little effort. Nearly every run has been awesome since I started my most novice of novice plans, but this run felt particularly fantastic.

I won't bore you with the details, but here are some pictures.

Alaska Native Medical Center

Frosty face take two

Fogged up iPhone doing pretty things

You may notice that the sun seems to be going down. Yes, it's setting early these days. Don't believe me?

That made me slightly depressed until I realized we'll hit our darkest day in only a few weeks. It really hasn't been bad so far. I remember it being far darker when I was in high school. Teens are so dramatic.

Wait, this is a progression run, right? Even if your pace only increases by 4 seconds per mile? Score.

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It's funny how amped up I always am to run outside in freezing cold weather, yet the prospect of taking my wench of a dog for a walk afterwards is torture. That's mental training right there. If only it would WARM UP, maybe it'd snow a little. We sure could use some.