A Heat Wave

Last week I was running in single digit temperatures and today I was back in shorts. It was wonderful outside after work today. About 36F out, little wind, and the sun still out. I ran a little over 7 miles at 8:30 pace and felt really good. An interesting part of running in weather like this is that it feels warm out but you run into pockets of cool air that is caused by the snow and ice on the sides of the roads and on rivers/lakes. The snow is still pretty deep and the ice is still thick but the roads are pretty clear, except for the water from melted snow. The good thing is that the high temps for the remainder of the week are forecasted to keep going up, possibly to 50 on Thursday. Now that is a heat wave!

Sunday it was also warm and the local TV stations were showing people outside enjoying the higher temps and one in particular kept showing this lady running down by the lake and they kept saying it was so warm she could be in shorts. That made me laugh since I had been wearing shorts most of the winter, at least until it dipped below 25.

I was able to get my long run in on Friday evening at the Pettit Center. I basically ran until I was about spent which ended up being 66 laps or just about 18 1/4 miles. I was in a zone on my run and it felt really good. My pace was really even for almost the entire run with laps being right between 2:25 to 2:28. My slowest lap all day was 2:29 and only a few faster than 2:20. By the 63rd lap, I knew I was about done. My legs were growing tired and I could tell I was getting slightly dehydrated and since open skating was already done and they were getting closer to closing the place, I said 66 was a good number to end at.

I told you all sometime ago that this weekend was my girls Pinewood Derby. They ended up doing really well. They took 2nd, 3rd, and 6th out of 18 girls cars. They all made the finals which was the top 6 cars and I thought I was going to have a real problem. Anyone who has multiple kids will understand that the compete with each other and will do anything to get underneath each other's skin. Since the first place person gets a REALLY big trophy and the rest all get a trophy the same size, I was really hoping that none of them would win. Is that bad of me to think that? As you see, they didn't win the big trophy. They really wanted me to post a picture of them with their trophies but I don't have that yet so I will only post pictures of their cars.

This was Melissa's car she named "The Pickup Artist". She took 2nd place. Her car also won the "Best Design"Award.

Katelynn had the semi truck she names "Schneider National" and took 3rd place. If you didn't know, our last name is Schneider and since we see these trucks all over the roads all the time, we thought it fitting. She ended up with the "Most Unusual" Award.

Megan wanted something a little more unusual so she had the Ocean Liner that she names "Cruisin". Lots of people likes this 'car' and she ended up in 6th place. Not the most aerodynamic but the wheels were pretty good. She won the "Best Craftsmanship" Award.