Notes
This is a run I was very unprepared for. I'd brought clothes to work thinking it was going to be a mild 30+ degree day. But a cold front must have come in as after noon, the temps quickly dropped to 20 and the strong wind stayed. I made a few modifications to my outfit; 1) I put on shorts under my running pants (shorts for climbing) and 2) I doubled up on gloves, using my leather ones I wear to work. I think this run would have been much worse without these changes.
I met Jake and we both agreed we weren't prepared and decided to take the risky route of keeping the wind at our back at first (this was a loop, so the middle stretch would be into the wind). This, to me, ended up being the right decision as we had a few miles to warm up, and then had some tree protection during the worst of it. The downside was that with the wind at our back, we quickly started running 6:30's and didn't back down.
With wind and hills, today had some of the toughest stretches of running that I've had in months. I'd say I'm pretty proud of myself, though all that work may have been unneeded at this point in January. Once we got the wind back at our backs, we maintained the effort and hit a 6:10 mile. With that out of the way, we'd had enough and dawdled in the last mile (which was still <7).