Sunrise/set

51 min
Start 8.00
Up early with Joep and then out again at the end of the afternoon.

4 day total 206

Trying to get a bit ahead at the start of this short month as I'll no doubt miss a few runs due to bad weather and a few weekends elsewhere.

Sparkling Circuits

58 min
Start 12.00
Bright sunlight reflecting off the snow made it literally sparkle at me for most of the run. Stayed out longer than I'd planned as after the last of the RunRunLive podcast I'd been listening to yesterday I started a play and I wanted to hear the end of it. Just kept looping around the various paths, zigzagging back and forth around the buildings, making prints on as much fresh snow as possible. Spotted lots of animal tracks, deer and hare/rabbits and wing tip feather prints from the buzzards.
Joep amused himself following tracks and dragging sticks and branches about. We also climbed to the top of the bunkers at one point to admire the view and play at being mountaineers. The dog wasn't too impressed at me grabbing his tale to help pull me up the hill but it's so rare he gets the chance to be useful that I didn't want to miss this one.

Joep in the Snow

51 min
Start 16.00

Joep and I left our footprints on every path of the complex, figure-of-8-ing our way up and down all the various possible routes till we'd been over them all at least once.

Circuit Training, Frozen Face

41 min
Start 17.15
After my first short warm-up circuit I noticed my cheeks were freezing (almost literally) so stopped to smear some vaseline on them and to snort some Ventolin before going on to do a couple of faster circuits. First 11:30, second 11:35 with a shorter recovery run in between where I deliberately tried to do some heel-landing instead of my usual forefoot stride. It's apparantly good to use slightly different muscles in this way to avoid tiring one specific set of muscles on the longer distances.

Hard Frost

56 min
Start 16.45
Ran home from IJsselstein from behind the Shell station then a couple of circuits of the complex - one at 'full speed' in 11:30. I've noticed a vague feeling of use in my thigh muscles since I've started upping my effort a little. Not pain, just an awareness that they've worked harder than usual. Ground was hard, most of the smaller ditches are frozen solid and even the wider stretches of water are almost closed. Because there was no mud sucking at my shoes and there was a cold east wind behind me I made record time on the path behind the road

Month total 1236

Better start to the year than last year when I got behind my target already in January in Marocco.