Last night was clear and starry, and this morning each blade of grass was coated in white frost. There was more frost because yesterday was relatively warm and there was a lot of moisture in the air. In the chilly night the dew froze into sparkly white coatings on everything.
We're walking M, T, and Th, 3.5 miles, plus a long walk on the weekends. Last weekend we ambled along with a companion who's not a serious walker -- we spent more than four hours walking, but stopped frequently to take pictures and probably only logged 11 miles. We're building toward a marathon at the end of January. This weekend we'll do 12, and then increase by 2 miles each weekend. We're going to do two weeks at 18 because it's a hard distance.
Today we did intervals: very fast racewalking from telephone pole to telephone pole, then a rest interval. It was hard -- lungs were aching, throat was burning, breath was ragged. We backed off to a racewalk interval, a jogging interval, and then a rest walk interval. That was a little more bearable. The relief going from a very fast walk to a jog is dramatic. If you think running is harder than walking, you've not tried to walk at this pace. We did this for about two miles, until the part of the trail where there were no telephone poles. We just walked on that portion, and for the last quarter mile or so we finished off with the intervals. Phew. It took us 48 minutes to do the loop. That's about a 14 minute mile, and we were pooped. Back in May we did a half-marathon at a pace just above twelve minutes. Yikes. We're way, way out of shape.
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