I guess you can say this post is the 'opposite' of this summertime post regarding the humidity vs. the heat .. its kind of funny how things change so drastically in just 5 months time. I've had some people comment and email me telling me that I seem to be obsessed with the weather .. I write about it all the time both here on the blog, and on both twitter and facebook, i'm not sure why, maybe deep down I need meteorology in my life .. (gosh I hope thats not the case)

Anyway, as I thought yesterday, it was somewhat challenging this morning as I headed out at 7am for a 16 mile run into the 22 degree weather (which by itself wasn't too bad). The sustained wind though, was at 12-15mph at least with gusts up to 22mph .. which made the wind chill in the single digits, however I think I found a way to get through these cold conditions. I knew that the wind was coming from the NNW, so I planned my course to avoid going into the north or northwest as much as I could... Its almost impossible to not go a certain direction, but the stretches when I needed to go into the wind, they were early in my run and broken up so I wasn't running in that direction for really long period. At only one point did I have a 2 mile stretch directly into the wind. I also prepared better for it this time, by not wearing my face mask the entire run so it got it all sweated up so it froze. I pulled it out and put it on when running into the wind and took it off when I was done ... I also had a second hat with me to put on for the last half of the run so it didn't freeze up.. it all seemed to work out pretty good.

The question for the day though, is did I slow my pace down like I planned? I think slightly... I still got the 16.1 miles in at 2 hours and 18 minutes, so thats slightly faster than a 9/minute mile, which is where I really should be. I guess its better than an 8:35/minute mile like last week ... I was happy with my run today though, a good time, felt good afterward although I was slightly chilled afterward... tomorrow appears to be yet another challenging weather day, its expected to be windier, with gusts up to 40mph .. great. There's nothing like cold weather, wind and hills ...

So i've been looking for another way to track my calorie intake, since I have the task of losing a few pounds during this training cycle, and I found "my daily plate" on Live Strong. I like it better than Fitday, which is what I used to use, it just hasn't seemed to evolve much. I find that Live Strong has all the foods already loaded into it that I eat, so it makes it easier for me. The funny thing I noted today is that I entered my 16.1 mile workout at a 9 minute mile, and it calculated that I burned almost 3000 calories .... How do you figure??? I guess i'm more old school, and always just calculated a hundred calories for every mile I run. seeing that number was absolutely shocking, but I think i'll stick to the way i've always calculated it.

This weekend marks the starting point of 18 week marathon training plans for spring marathons on May 2nd... I know there are a few decent sized marathons that weekend. I only know this because I got an email from the folks at the Flying Pig marathon reminding me .. believe me, I remember, each morning when I get out, I can't forget the reason why I do what I do each morning ...

I guess things are going well after 2 weeks of training ... my runs are good, i'm dealing with the weather, i'm eating better ... things are slowly coming together, just 12 weeks to go now until the Ocean Drive marathon.