What ever it takes!

What a morning, woke up at 4:00am so I could get to the gym and get my run in, about 200 feet from my house figured out my car wasn't going to make it so I turned around and took my wifes 4x4.  Made it to the gym and ran as fast as I could so I could hurry home and shovel out the driveway before leaving for the airport.  Took me 2 hours to get to the airport but now I'm here and weather seems to be much better now.  Hopefully my next run will be in Paris.

9 miles in 56:12, last 1 mile in 5:45.  Avg pace 6:14.

Humm, somehow missed a day in there :).  If anyone ever asks how to deal with Jetlag here is my advice, no matter how bad you sleep that first night, and no matter how tired you may be, get up early and go get that run in.  Kicks your body right in to "normal" mode.  I actually slept pretty well last night though so It wasn't to much an issue.

6:00am, record cold and snow here in Paris, the humidity just makes it bitter cold and since I really have no idea where in the city I am, haven't studied the map yet I went to the hotel gym.  Cutest little treadmills I've ever seen.  Normally cute or little aren't qualities I look for in a treadmill and was worried they wouldn't be able to go fast enough.  I'm only capable of doing metric conversions in 5K increments :) so I decided 15K in 1 hour was a good goal for this morning and to my surprise the treadmill was able to handle it (at first) started out a warm up at 14km/h and then started bumping it up.  Right about the time I started thinking to myself it's going to be tough fighting for the 1 working treadmill once a bunch of jetlagged americans get here for the conference, the stupid thing shutdown on me and I never could get it to reset.  So I finished up just lifting weights.  Could be a long week for running unless I toughen up and brave the elements.

So workout ended short.  I'm calling it 7.5 miles in 48:00  6:24 avg pace.

6:30 am.  I don't know why I fight it so much, When my alarm went off this morning I kept trying to tell myself to just go run on the treadmill again, but I had mapped out a run last night and finally gave in and went.  I brought 2 sets of winter running clothes with me this trip and put them both on cause I was afraid of the cold.  Found out quickly that 1 set would have sufficed.  

Set out from the hotel, there was a light snow the entire run this morning which was actually quite enjoyable, started running up the road and quickly decided that I had already ran way past the street I had planned on going down so I turned around, right about the time I got to the road my Garmin started working so perfect timing anyway,  headed down a road that looked much bigger on the map to the Louvre,  went through the Louvre courtyard and planned on running through the Naked Statue park (Jardin des Tuileries) but it was closed and I had to back track to run around it.  Ran to the Farris Wheel at the end of the Champs-Elysees and then run up the Champs-Elysees, slight uphill.  It made me really amazed to think how fast the Tour De France guys fly up that street up-hill with Cobble stones.  Made a victory loop around the Arc De Triomphe which wasn't very victorious cause I kept having to stop for traffic at all 7 intersections, then headed down to the Eiffel tower, I had to walk down some very slippery steps,  my plan wasn't to go across the river to the tower but once I got there I decided it didn't seem right to run through Paris without running under the Eiffel tower so I went across the bridge and ran to the end of the park (Champ De Mars) and back, which added 1 mile which I was happy about.  Ran back up the river to the Louvre the naked statue park was now open so I made some fresh tracks through the snow went through the Louvre courtyard and back up the same street I had come down.

Amazing run, so happy I did it and let myself know that I'm not stuck on a little treadmill this entire trip.  I have tomorrow off of work and plan to extend my run to 13 or 14 miles.

9 miles in 1:05:16  7:15 avg pace. 

Here is my garmin route and flyby just for fun.

    

6:00 am.  Slept terrible last night, I thought I was over Jetlag but I guess not.  I woke up at 12:00 am and couldn't get back to sleep, then by the time my alarm went off I was finally sound asleep and didn't want to wake up.  Got out of bed and my bedroom was freezing, apparently I didn't close the window tight and it had flung open in the night, so my room was like 35 degrees.  Figured the only way I could get warm was to go run, so I did.

I wanted to get in at least 13 today, did a similar route as yesterday except I took a more direct line to the Arc de triomphe, which was dumb cause it cut 1/2 a mile from my run and the Champs Elysees was the funnest part of my run yesterday so I wont do that again.  Then I circled the Champ de mars 4 times to try and get some extra miles in, and then coming back I ran along the river to Notre Dame to make sure I get all my sight seeing in and then back to the Louvre and home. 

For some reason my run only ended up being 11.5, Garmin said 11 but I added .5 for the time it took to start reading.  It sure felt longer than that, but by the time I got to the hotel I was ready to be done.

11.5 in 1:22:02  7:08 avg pace.

Garmin Link

6:00 am. Same route as Thursday with same added efficiencies. Took the shorter route around Some of the round a bouts to cut on the number of intersections I had to stop for, and then coming back along the river I took a lower trail that I had missed before that went under all the bridges so I didn't have to wait for traffic at every bridge. Much more fluid run today than the last 2. A bit nippy out this morning, tried to keep the pace up just to keep warm, Paris has the same sort of thing going on Saturday mornings that San Francisco does, lots of people wondering around the streets drunk still wondering where they parked. I'm glad I could add some entertainment to their lives.

My Garmin had a harder time waking up this morning than I did, so it was a bit buggard. I'm going to say

9 miles in 1:04:00 7:06 avg.