On the cold.

A masonry heater my brother  and his ex built.
Want cheap heat?  Got a spare $30,000?

Well, it's really not all that cold.  Outside it's 51 degrees.  The problem is the house isn't heated.  So, it's 51 degrees inside too.  That might be fine as far as my brother is concerned, but you know what:  I like it warmer in the house.

Speaking of my brother.  Several years ago he ripped out his furnace and installed something called a masonry heater.  For a year that was the only source of heat in his house, but he ended up deciding a wood stove for supplemental heat would be nice.  He was proud when the temp in his house was above freezing that first winter.  I guess I'm just a wimp...

While my brother and I may be at odds regarding what constitutes comfortable temperatures indoors, a masonry heater would be the perfect addition to our house.  Essentially it's a big pile of bricks which get heated by a wood fire once or twice a day, trap the heat in a series of semi-complex channels and slowly radiate the heat throughout the day.  A person ends up burning about 3 armloads of wood for 24 hours of supplemental heat.

Enough whining about the cold indoor temps, if it's not raining - this is perfect running weather.  Yesterday form work.  1.5 hours with high knees, butt kicks and "spin ups".  I went out in a short sleeve shirt and shorts and my wife warned me about the cold.  It was perfect.  Oh well.  Two and a half more hours today and tomorrow is a rest day.

Thanks for reading and be safe out there.
J

Frustrations and Form Work

Everyone here has a car alarm.  For some reason, last night ours decided to go off.  I'm not entirely sure why we have a car alarm - our car looks like a beater.  Maybe it is a beater.

Anyway, the doors locked outside of the market where Nataly was buying diapers and wouldn't re-open.  She was actually able to break in through the back window (effective alarm I know), and drive it home, but now we can't reset the damn thing.  It's incredibly frustrating.  She's supposedly going to call the mechanic who'll hopefully come help us out, but for now I'm not going anywhere - and I need to buy coffee.

On the other side of things, yesterday I worked on a couple of Danny Abshire's form work drills for natural runners.  Similar to the high cadence stuff I've been doing the last several form workouts, I did intervals with 1 minute on and 4 off.  I alternated between high knees and butt kicks.

The high knee drill kicked my but you might say.  In fact, 1 minute long intervals were on the fringe of being too long.  Toward the end of my workout my lower back was screaming toward the end of the interval and I was doing things to compensate.  I should have cut the intervals short, but it didn't occur to me during the workout.  I'll have another chance to be a better self coach.

Got a tough workout on tap for today and I'm feeling tired.  We'll see how that goes.
Thanks for reading and be safe out there.
J