INDOOR NASCAR

Six laps a mile. Pretty big for an indoor track, which is nice!

There is a silver lining to most everything. So despite Brandon's basketball experience being a disaster, I did take one very important thing away from it... there is an indoor track I can use! I guess I sort of knew there was an indoor track at that facility, but I would have probably never checked it out if Brandon didn't have basketball practice there.

I've used that indoor track twice now in the last week. Last Wednesday as the artic air was pouring into the area in preparation for our snow storm, I decided to run inside instead of with the PRC group. I only had shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt and it was 22 degrees out with wind chill in the low single digits (the wind was howling consistently over 20mph). The few who braved it for the PRC group said it was absolutely terrible and they probably had more appropriate clothing than me. So good call on that one. Ran seven miles at 8:33/mile.

After that run on Wednesday I didn't run again until Saturday, when I did my super fun five mile snow run. Wish the soft powder would have stayed one more day because I would have loved to do another five on Sunday. Instead, I took Sunday off and then ran at the indoor track again last night. While the roads had mostly cleared up, the sidewalks were still a mess and covered in snow. PRC cancelled their runs for obvious reasons, so that left me inside at the track.

Pounded out another seven miles, this time at a 8:07/mile clip. That'll likely be my marathon pace so it was nice to see what it felt like and lock it in. Running inside isn't the most fun thing in the world, but it's a viable alternative when outside is not cooperating. Much better than the treadmill! So I'll continue to utilize that facility from time to time.

The weather can easily put me in running funks. Who wants to come home from a long day at work to run six miles outside in the pitch dark when it is 36 and raining? Nobody. So if I ever feel like not running because of the "weather," I need to truck my ass to the indoor track. If I still don't want to run, that means I am using the weather as an excuse. And I can't have excuses when training for a marathon.