Brrrrrrick Reservoir

(credit to icekristals.com)

I can't feel my face.
It was cold this morning, and I will spare you any metaphors, cliched, clever, or otherwise.
Let's just say it was 16 degrees Fahrenheit, windy, and leave it at that.  (yes, know you Chicagoans and others laugh in our face ... but again, I can't feel my face.)

I tried to go tech-less this morning, no headphones, and I really did accidentally leave my phone at home ... but what about my watch?  A recent Runner Academy podcast episode featured Tyler McCandless and the concept of running without a watch, and just running by feel.  Well, I confess I kept my watch on, but didn't look at it until the end of mile one, when I made myself slow to a walk for a few seconds.  I'm trying to apply Matt Fitzgerald's 80/20 principle of running 80% of your miles easy (really easy apparently) and 20% hard, as most runners do "medium," which is not as beneficial physiologically and speed and endurance-wise.
At this point I'm still not 100% sure what my easy pace should be.  Some advice says your easy pace should be "50-75% of your 5k pace.)  Well, my 5k pace was 7-something, but that was in a previous life, (much has happened and I'm not that fast anymore), so I'll go with my half marathon pace of about 10:10, but my marathon pace was about 11:10.  so I targeted about 11:30 pace for my easy run today.  I didn't look at my watch until the end of mile 1, and I saw that it was 10:49.  Too fast?  I don't know, felt easy.  I ended up running 6.14 miles today, walking about 30 seconds every mile, to also get water from my car, and overall pace was 11:19.  Close to my target.  Felt kinda easy-medium, and I think I'm supposed to feel really easy, like I could run forever at that pace.  So I'm not sure if I'm happy that it was 11:19 .... OR MAYBE I'M JUST OVERANALYZING!!

STOP!

It was cold, but still fun.  I still enjoy running outdoors.  Again, I hate the outdoors in general.  I don't even like walking the short distance from the car to the mall in cold weather.  But for some reason, when it's a run, it really does feel good.

So week one of the Runner Academy marathon training program is in the books.  Goal race is the New Jersey Marathon., on April 6, 2015. What I'm trying different this time is to really focus on the purpose of each run, whether it's a base building easy run, a tempo run, or others.  Also trying to keep up with the cross training and strength exercises.

Anyone else training for a Spring marathon in this cold weather?  The NJ Marathon perhaps?  (Hopefully I'll be able to feel my face by then.) comment below.