You're beautiful, now change

Rolling into work late at 9:45 because you were slow in getting on the trainer at home has its advantages. For one, the brilliant January sun sits up high enough in the sky to glisten upon the snow-covered trees, lighting up the highway landscape. Driving up over the last rise on Route 24 brought the Blue Hills into view, where photographic inspiration came over me like a pack of field sprinters with 200m to go. Although failing to get the camera out in time for a shot through the windshield, the cube farm has a nice balcony off the third floor conference rooms, from which I captured the mur in all its gelid white splendor. This last storm really was "pretty," but I got my photo so now if you could please melt, that would be great.

I'm not a big fan of this winter stuff. So far I managed my usual mix of trainer, gym, and running workouts, but I'd much rather do the latter in a snow-free environment. It looks like I may get my wish for the weekend, as even though the temps are single digits right now, my area is forecast to see some rain tomorrow, maybe cleaning things back up. That's the good news. The not so good news is the forecast temps for Sunday's race in Raynham are way cold again. Although last year it was pushing 60 on race day, this is winter and they don't call it the Frostbite 15k for nothing. The competition is super-tough there, with all the marathon hopefuls coming out for the first race of the year. I haven't been getting in enough running to race it hard, and winning an age-group prize of a deluxe ice scraper would be impossible for me in that field anyway. Tom V from work is running it too, and he's a very fast, reliable pacesetter AND finisher, so I think I might just try to stick with him over the first half and then see how things play out in the final stretches. Last year this was my first "long" (i.e. more than 10k) race ever in my life, and I ran 6:50's, which should not be too hard to better this year.

There, an excuse for a post, complete with picture. Now I'm going to try to get into work early so that I can take a long lunch of repeats over on the access road. Stay warm, thanks for reading.