Cold and Wet

Well, it looks like tomorrow may be our first true test of running in some potentially nasty weather this year. The latest forecast I saw was a high in the low/mid 40s, and a 70% chance of rain (how's San Diego Terry?...jerk). Regardless of the weather, I'll still be there, and hopefully at least a few of you will too. In all honesty, I believe running in this type of weather is better than some of those very hot/humid days we ran in this summer.

So, meeting time and location is the same as last week: 5:00, OLP. Since the 1 mi (1600m) intervals we did last week result in a similar type of workout as a tempo run (for most of us anyway...we'll leave Katie and her 7mi tempo runs out of this calculation), and the rotation we're all used to is 1/4 mi, 1/2 mi, tempo, the order of the day tomorrow will be 1/4 mi (400m) intervals as follows:
1 mi warmup

1/4 mi hard
1/4 mi easy
(repeat for 5 cycles)

1/2 mi cooldown

This adds up to 4 miles. If you're not up for that, drop an interval cycle and you'll end up with 3.5 mi. You could further shorten the run by dropping back to a 1/2 mi warmup, but I would advise against this due to the cooler temperatures. The increased warmup time will hopefully allow everyones' muscles to get ready for the stress of shorter, high speed intervals, while decreasing the risk of injury. It simply takes longer for our muscles to loosen up as the temperature drops.

Lastly, since I've never really organized anything like this before, and I think Terry's done a pretty damn good job, my plan is to pretty much just keep things going. I realize this is going to be difficult for some of us with the shorter days and inclement weather. Therefore, please feel free to offer up any suggestions/comments/criticisms/copious amounts of praise/etc. on how we can make things better or just keep more of us involved through the winter months.