THIS is why I'm a bad blogger. Right now, I probably could care less about posting to this thing, but not by much. Nevertheless, the idea is to post, so posting I am. I'm in a sour mood, so forgive the lack of what are supposedly entertaining anecdotes.
Accordingly, we'll keep it strictly business so that you wouldn't know I was in a sour mood unless I hadn't just told you. Was back down in the great state of Texas over the weekend (which ironically is where I have done the majority of my running, not up here in Oregon. Its always weird to realize that). Thursday was shorter than it should have been, I think because it was just simpler given the fact that we were flying that day. Ran to Nike and did one lap (oh wait, you don't know what that means. The Nike World HQ Campus is a touch over two miles from my house. The bark chip path that goes around it is about the same distance. So twice around Nike is about 9 miles and an hour, once around Nike is about 7 miles and forty-five minutes. Thursday was the latter). Friday was down in Texas, and ended up being a small bitch of a run. The idea was to run out from the hotel in College Station and possibly circumnavigate the Texas A&M campus (can you guess why I was there? Guess its hard to not bring a few personal items in to this blog...). Well, one of the nice things (read: annoying things) about the roads around there is that often regular farm roads, usually labeled something like "FM 2818," take on names when they pass through someplace like College Station. So "FM 2818" is simultaneously called "Harvey Mitchell Rd" in town. But if you don't know that, or more specifically if you don't know the number of the road you're looking for when the in-town name isn't present on some street signs, it become easy to run right by that left turn you were planning on making. Suffice to say what should have been a relatively nice run around campus turned into a run along a 4 lane highway with no shoulder, cars going by at 65 mph, and rough and clumpy grass underfoot. Fantastic for the lungs, nerves, and ankles, let me tell you. Did run the full hour though...
Saturday was a "hill" workout in Houston. This was kind of amusing: the workout called for some 60 sec hill repeats. Not sure where best to do that, I called up my old coach and asked where to go. Thing is, there's no hills in Houston; best he could do was a 45 sec hill. Of course, it barely counted as a hill, more like a shallow incline towards the top. Hope it accomplished what it was meant to accomplish.
I expected a long run on Sunday, but in fact it was an easy run, so I did 45 minutes weaving back and forth along the streets in the neighborhood by my aunt's house. It was probably 65 degrees, relatively high humidity, breezy and sunny when I did that. Quite the contrast to the 30 degrees, sunny and windy I ran in today, especially with snow and ice underfoot. Not sure how the workout tomorrow is gonna work...

Thursday 12/11: 45:13 easy (Nike once)
Friday 12/12: 59:44 easy (highway)
Saturday 12/13: Hill workout
10 min warmup
Scheduled 2x60 sec hill, actual 3x45 sec hill
6x30 sec hill
Scheduled 2x60 sec hill, actual 3x45 sec hill
all with jog back down for recovery
10 min cooldown (@ bayou)
Sunday 12/14: 44:23 easy (heights)
Monday 12/15: Scheduled 1 hr w/5 min pickup, actual 49:21 easy (snow/ice/subfreezing; duck pond x3)