Long Hilly Run

First off, I want to congratulate Melanie of the completion of her 6th marathon today at the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, AL and her 2nd marathon this fall. Awesome job Melanie!!!

Over the last 2 day, in fact over a 17 hour period, I ran the equivalent of a marathon on 2 different runs. First on Friday night, I went for a nice 5 miler through the street of Waterford looking at all the Christmas lights along the way. Some nice display and some not so nice ice. I didn't slip and fall at all, but it did get hairy at times. this is why I don't like running on the sidewalks. People don't take care of their sidewalks well enough so there is plenty of ice.

After some pizza for dinner and a nice sleep, I was up early to go to Mike's for our planned long run. We started at just before 7AM and it was somewhere between 10F and 15F out. The plan for me was again to take it nice and slow and run at about 9:30 pace for the run. Mike stuck with me for about 7 1/2 miles before he took off and then I maintained the nice easy pace. The sights along the way were spectacular. It was sunny out and the trees were full of snow still from the last storm we had a few days ago. It was absolutely beautiful and I wish i had a camera along to take some pictures of it. It was that way most of the course.

At about mile 15, my right calf started to feel a bit tight and almost felt like it was going to cramp up but I had a salt packet along so I downed that which I think helped later on. At mile 18, I took a small break before I went up the hills on Townline Rd. These hills finally kicked my butt and I struggled up them. This was my slowest mile of the entire run by about 45 seconds including some really steep hills during mile 9. I did get it back after 19 1/2 at cruised the last 1 to 2 miles and finished the 21.23 miles in 3:20:48. Mike finished ahead of me but had a nice large glass of Chocolate Milk waiting for me. It was a quite hilly 21 miles today so all in all, a very good workout.

I feel pretty good now after the run. 43.2 miles through the snow this week is not too shabby.

I did take the girls down to something fun tonight. We went down to Miller Brewery in Milwaukee to see their Christmas Light display choreographed to music. It was spectacular as always. They have been doing this for a few years now. A few new twists but same 250,000 lights. They still used a lot of music from Trans-Siberian Orchestra and it lasted about 10 minutes or so. Here is a link to a YouTube video from Miller that shows about 30 seconds of it from a few years ago.