End of the week/Racing Plans/Random Thought

The last two days (since I claimed spring was kind of here) it has been more seasonably normal and back in the 20's. The sun has been bright though, at least midday when I've gotten out, and it is noticeably stronger than it was during the super cold from a couple weeks ago. This leads me to my random thought:

(Yesterday on the run I was thinking about how strange it is that winter begins with the shortest day of the year and it also begins ten days before the end of the calendar year. I'm always thinking about the days getting longer during the winter months and trying to celebrate each minute of extra daylight, so I was dividing the year into other categories and I came up with this:

if you divide the year into 5 equal portions, you come up with 73 day intervals. If you centered the "first" interval around the shortest day and just for simplicity call that December 21, you'd have the shortest 20% of the year, which I'll call "the dark fifth", from November 15th - January 26th, which means that today is the last day of that interval. It gets a little trickier from there, but I decided that I would add the 37 days from Jan. 27 - March 4 and the 36 days from October 10 - November 14th and call these "the gray fifth". It's confusing because they're not continuous, but it's just a gray season before the dark season and a gray season after. "The bronze fifth" is March 5-April 9 and September 3 - October 9. Silver is April 10 - May 16 and July 29 - September 2. and, finally, the golden fifth runs from May 17 - July 28, centered around the (sometimes) longest day of the year, June 21.)

I ran eight miles in 57 minutes on the William Fairfield loop.

Today I did the Lord's Hill full snowman loop in reverse for 8 miles in 56 minutes.

I went over 200 miles for the year (just before JJ crests 300). The only month last year that I ran 200 miles was December, so I'm definitely staying ahead of where I was.

I'm also signed up for 5 races already, which is an unprecedented amount of foresight, and I'm hopeful I can make it to them all:

Bradford 5-mile and 6k; Sat., Feb. 10 - Heather and I are planning to run the husband/wife category for the first time since 2008, which ended a string of four years straight for us. We were first in '05 and '07 (we both ran our best times in '07). Since our last appearance their have been some really fast years (Mahoneys and Vassallos) and some years when we probably could have won. It will be fun to be back after ten years away.

Whitaker Woods Snowshoe 4-mile; Sat. Feb. 17 - this is the reschedule and should work out because I'll have some freedom to travel while Heather and the kids take to NJ for school vacation.

Half at the Hamptons; Sun. Mar. 4 - Heather and I signed up with five friends in support of our friend Amber's debut at the distance. I'm secretly hoping I might have to make Derrick Hamel work to run sub-1:15 for the win.

Merrimack River 10-mile Trail Race; Sat. Apr. 14 - I've only run this once before in 2015, post-Caumsett, in 1:04:58. I've been looking at the Master's records and particularly wondering if I have a shot at the 41-year-old single age mark of 1:02:30 that Ethan Nedeau ran a few years back. It would require being faster than I was at age 38, but I was pretty banged up and discouraged at that point in the year. I was running a fair amount still, but something was definitely wrong.

Mount Washington Road Race; Sat. June 16 - I get to go back for the first time since 2015, when I had hoped for a 1:05 (some months before) and mustered a 1:20:15. Improving on that time will be the first order of business, followed by a sub-1:15 goal, which I hope might enable me to be a part of a competitive CMS Master's Team.