I decided to join this race pretty much at the last minute because a friend was participating. 
I have not done any speed training or racing in a few months and I thought this would be a nice distance to get me back in the mood or running hard.
Saturday morning, I drove to the great Saltair in Magna, UT where the event was taking place. The weather seemed great when I arrived, but by the time I picked up my race chip, clouds started to amass.
Within an hour things went from a nice winter morning to the blizzard weather from hell, with thunder and lighting! The wind picked up a lot a well and it was becoming clear that the race conditions were turning out to be the toughest I have ever faced.

A few minutes before the race I met with my friend Christin and we headed to the start line.
There were some 75 - 100 courageous runners there, bunched up together as if to keep warmer. 
3, 2, 1 - go! I started towards the back of the pack and launched myself on the right side of the path to overtake as many slower runners as I could. The trail was covered with 3 to 6 inches of snow my overtaking maneuver almost landed me in the ditch a couple of times as I slipped on the rounded edge of the trail. After about half a mile, the run started to be less crowded. I could not feel the wind very much, Sometimes, I would feel a gentle push on my back or to the side, but nothing too bad. After 3/4 of a mile I could not feel my face though. Some ice was forming right on top of my cheek and chin.
I passed mile 1 in 6:50. Not really fast, but just about where I wanted to be. I passed a few people and maintained the pace for a couple more miles. 
At mile 4, I was getting just a bit tired. The running in the snow, the lack of fast pace training was catching up with me. I settled for a 7:00 to 7:05 pace.
2 or 3 runners passed me, I passed a couple other...
At the turn around, I took a full measure of how bad the conditions really were. The wind felt actually pretty strong and was picking up speed as the race progressed.
When I faced the wind, the run felt much, much harder like I was running a minute per mile faster. In fact I had slowed down to about 7:35/mile. 
After a few more miles, the wind really increased another notch, and gusts were pushing me strongly back and from side to side. I was wiping my glasses every 30 seconds to remove accumulated snow just to be able to see where I was going. 
I was working really hard against the wind at my ventilatory threshold. Yet, when I looked at my watch, I was horrified to see that I was moving only at about 9:00 - 9:15min / mile.
By mile 7, the wind calmed down a bit, but by then, it was hard to pick the speed back up. At mile 8, I was back around 7:30/mile.
I had been following another runner, about 3/4 of a mile ahead since mile 2. 
I was going to try to take him down. At mile 8.3, with 1 mile to go, I accelerated to about 6:55/mile, and gained back some ground on him. 
With 0.5mile left in the race, I was getting close to him, maybe 100yards. 
I pushed harder, and harder and soon, I was passing him, slowly. He was trying to keep up and when I passed him, I didn't have much left in the tank. 
With about 200 yrads to the finish line, he came sprinting back from behind, and I tried to follow. I focused on increasing the cadence of my feet and turn them around as fast as I could be could not quite keep up.
He crossed just in front of me. Bummer!
I finished in a pretty slow 1:09 and change...
I recovered for a few minutes, and then went running back for my friend Christin, still working hard on the course. I found her about a mile from the finish line and finished the race with her.

After the race, and a couple of hot chocolate, I changed in my car and went straight to work. Yes, on a Saturday!
The driving conditions were horrible. Snow was falling horizontally, the wind was blowing snow from the ground and fog was omnipresent.
After a few miles driving in these conditions I was a bit tense but getting comfortable with the heater full on and heated seats.
Suddenly though, I found myself engulfed in a thick fog with snow rushing in front of my headlights and wind shaking my car violently from side to side. I could not see anything! Well, I could barely see the end of the hood of my own car. I immediately slowed down and pulled to the side of the road, as far right as I could without slipping in the ditch. As my car was slowing down to a full stop, I realized that right in front of me, not 6 feet ahead in fact, the road was completely barred by a huge car crash pile up. I could not move forward and was feeling quite unnerved that someone could rammed into me from the rear and make me participate in this pile up.
What could I do? I could not move forward. From the left to the right of the road the cars were pile up densely. I could not turn around. Returning to the center of the road seemed risky in these conditions. Leaving my car seemed equally suicidal. 

Not 20 seconds after I stopped my car, I felt a slight shake of my car and from the corner of my eye I saw another car going pass my left side at great speed, an inch from my window. 
The car must have been going nearly 40 mph and crashed into the pile adding another destroyed car to the scene.
Apparently there were no major injuries in the accident but 1 snow plow and 7 or  8 cars were totaled. In fact, my car was the only one to survive nearly untouched.
People, if you can't see where you are going, stop the car!!

This week was a bit more of the same (emphasis on MORE). The spinning class reached a high point this week.. On Tuesday we did a 30 time trial in zone 5. Ouch! 
Actually, it did not feel as bad as I thought it would . Sure it was painful to maintain my maximum heart rate zone for a full 30 minutes but with my friend Ashley beside me pushing me, I even managed a sprint in the last 2 minutes bringing my heart to its limit 191bpm. On Friday at the pool, I had another small break through: 1000 yards without stopping. The pace is still really bad (about 41min/mile) but I can see my endurance improving. For bried periods of time, I could even feel my form improving, trying to apply the learnings of the Swimsmooth book.
Saturday was another tough spinning session. After various short intervals designed to bring the heart rate up gently to the upper zones, we spent 35 min between zones 4A and 5+ 
Yes, 5+, meaning going to your ventilatory threshold plus 3 to 5 bpm more. Needless to say I pushed even harder than that trying to touch the absolute limit of my heart rate. For a second or two at the end, I clocked at 193 bpm! 
This has to be the highest heart rate I've ever reached (and I felt it). I was drooling and really pushing beyond reason. That's the way I like it (well I get the satisfaction mostly after the effort  ;)
Here's a short "preview" video of the class. You can briefly see me in with my yellow shirt, sweating bullets.

As for running I took a 2 day break (Friday and Saturday) to give a break to my feet which have been increasingly sore. Today however, I ran outside with the dogs for 17.3 miles. It was an epic run. I started with the ascent of Suncrest (about 1300 feet elevation gain) then ran back down the other side. Going downhill, I felt a strong wind pushing me down and nearly knocking me over a few times. When I turned around after 4 miles running downhill, the wind felt incredibly strong. At times gusts of wind would hit me in the face with ice crystals and snow as if to challenge my resolve. 

But even at a painfull 13min/mi, yelling at the dogs some encouragements (they were also struggling in the wind), I was not about to give up. After another 2000 feet of ascent, it was time to run downhill again. I dropped the dogs home on my way as one of them was limping and went back out for another hilly 3.5 miles. 
A tough week, but I felt strong through it despite the annoyance of my ever present tendinitis-es..
With the Boston marathon coming up in April, it is now imperative that I do not skip any long runs. Doing my long runs in these hilly conditions will probably help on race day too. I have not added any speed to my runs but I am not going to Boston to break any records. I feel that with the focus on biking and swimming, I am probably already pushing it a bit, and I don't want my body to break down.
I am still working on stabilizing my weight which I am finding a bit challenging at the moment.  After the run today, I weighed myself at 59.9kg (132 lbs) which in my opinion is entirely insufficient. It is not that I cannot gain weight, but in order to maintain weight I would have to eat more than feels comfortable on my stomach. When I eat 1500 cal at a time, it really knocks me out for hours. I usually have to take a nap to assimilate that. So I am trying to eat more reasonably and more frequently which can be challenging with my schedule...

This week felt good, I am now well used to my grinding 'exercise 3-4 times a day' routine and feeling good. My weight has been my focus this week though. I have finally reached what I believe is my ideal weight and so now I have to work on stabilizing it... I started really working on my weight about 3 years ago.  
There is a magic number on the scale that, when you reach it, it triggers a realization, a motivation, a decision for drastic and irreversible action. For me that number was 75kg (165 lbs) ( I am 5'8 ).
Coincidentally (or maybe not), it is about at that time that I ran my first marathon. After my first marathon, and my perceived counter performance I decided it was really time for action.
Weight control has really no big secret for me now. I have consistently and slowly shedded pounds and after nearly 3 years, I have finally reached what I feel is my absolute high form weight. Meaning, that I think that if I lose more weight I will start seeing diminishing returns. I am now 135lbs and feeling great. 
My method was not to exercise like crazy in order to lose the weight. In fact when I exercise a lot, I get so hungry that it becomes more difficult to control my intake sometimes.
The tools I used to manage my weight were:
          1) Track and measure my weight daily.
"If you measure it, it WILL improve"
Yes daily. Of course the weight varies daily based on transit, food intake, hydration level, so I am not too worried about any one weight reading but I found that to wait one full week to measure my weight is too long to keep me focused on it and motivated. Taking my weight every morning at the same time has become a ritual (no, not an obsession) that I've come to look forward to.
To track my weight, I use the body fat scale Withings which uploads all my weight / body fat measurements wirelessly and automatically to my phone without having me to remember to do it. It's great because it allowed me to keep a detailed record of my daily weight for 3 years now almost without interruption.
In addition to the Withings record, I log my weight daily on an excel sheet.
I have set up the excel sheet with a chart with a "goal" weight line that guides my weight loss on a day to day basis. Basically, if I am under the line, I am doing good, and above, not so much. But the other purpose of the line is to ensure I do not lose weight too fast! It can be tempting and rewarding to shed 30 lbs in a month but if I want to keep the weight off, that is exactly what I want to avoid. In fact, the best statistical predictor of long term weight gain is people who do diets. My method calls for a long term plan for weight loss. This is NOT a diet and is absolutely sustainable ( I've been doing it for 3 years). Also by starving myself, I'd have no energy to be able to continue working out and my metabolism would quickly shut down, disposing of as much muscle mass as possible to save energy, making more weight loss a lot harder. 

               2) Evaluate my daily calorie needs. 
In order to do that, I visited a nutritionist and did a test to evaluate my basal metabolic energetic consumption. Basically, if I stayed in bed all day, what would my body require in terms of calories to maintain its weight.
Before doing that though, I used the rule of thumb of 2000 kcal daily which for me is pretty spot on. If you are heavier, more muscular .etc you might be more around 2500, if you a tiny woman maybe 1500, but without sophisticated testing and a bit of reading you can get pretty close to your actual needs.

               3) Measure food intake
Here is the thing... To lose weight is an extremely simple mathematical proposition: total calorie intake < total calorie needs.
I use a 200 to 300 calorie deficit per day to lose weight. This is slow progress, but if you track the weight loss, it keeps you focused.
My calorie need is 2000 - 300=1700 calorie budget per day
I used a kitchen scale with 0.1 g accuracy and started measuring precisely my food intake and by reference to an online database, evaluated precisely my calorie intake.
This process really feels daunting to most newcomers. A lot of people that approached me about weight loss, were allergic to the idea of following such an apparently obsessive habit. But the goal is to (re)educate yourself to proper portion control. As my mother used to tell me: " your eyes are always bigger than your stomach..."
A friend of mine who wanted to lose weight to start running and exercising more, could not understand why he could not lose weight easily. He reported eating only salads for lunches and generally light meals. He laughed at me when I suggested that he should measure his food intake. But I convinced him to do it for just one week. After doing it for only 5 days, he told me it really opened his eyes. The addition of various oily condiments to his salads, a few high calories muffins, cookies here and there and he was easily reaching 3000 cal/day.
With a few adjustments, he maintained the same type of diet he was used to, never feeling hungry but managed to lose 20 lbs last year.
It is virtually impossible to lose weight if you do not understand your calorie intake. 
To help me I used some applications on my smartphone which made the process of establishing a calorie budget and entering the food consumption fairly effortless. You can actually scan the bar code of the item you are eating and it logs it in. Awesome!. One more excuse you can't have...
Fatsecret was my favorite app, but there are a lot of other just as competent apps out there : Myfitnesspal and a bunch of others.

The best ting is that after just a few weeks, you don't need to use these apps anymore. Now, I am so aware and educated to my portions that I can keep a mental tally of the calories for each meal of the day. Ex: for lunch I've decided that my budget should be about 750 cal. When I go to lunch, I''ll buy items that fit that budget. Even if I have to go to McDonald's I can request a calorie brochure (any chain is required to have them now) and I'll know exactly what I should order to fit that budget.

Quality vs Quantity
This methodical approach will allow anyone to lose weight gently and surely regardless of the quality of the food intake. However, for increased performance in sport and generally speaking for a healthier life, most of these calories should come from higher quality nutrients. (ex: prefer fish protein than red meat protein, eat fruit rather than candy...). But in order to just lose the pounds, the harsh reality of calorie density is the only thing that matters. In other words, you can go on a chocolate bar only diet and you'll lose weight provided you don't exceed your calorie needs. 
But one thing is key. To remain thin your diet must be sustainable. In other words, if you feel that you are doing a diet day after day, it is very unlikely to work and in the long run, and you are likely to re-gain more weight than you started with. An effective diet should feel like it is not a diet.

Diet while exercising.
Wanting to lose weight while exercising is more challenging than a simple diet. I know it has been a challenge for me to control my food intake after an 18 mile run. I can feel so ravenous, that any attempts to control the intake is futile. When I hear people say that they want to start exercising again so they can lose weight, I never quite understand. In my opinion it is a lot more difficult to lose weight while exercising.
I found 2 strategies to help with this.
               1) Adapt (i.e. increase) my food intake in the meal prior to the exercise session so I don't starve by the end of the session. This in itself can be challenging, because if you eat too much, it can make the exercise miserable. There is definitely some experimentation to do there. The main thing I know is that if I let myself starve and actual feel very hungry during an endurance session, it will be very hard to control the food intake afterwards.
I have actually gone shopping for groceries after a long run where I had been starving and found myself buying anything in sight...
               2) Evaluate the energy consumed during exercise so you can compensate for that (no more and no less). I can be tempting to use exercise as a calorie drain to lose weight but again, it is not sustainable. I found that staying around 200 - 400 calorie deficit per day works best. Besides, not refueling properly after exercise undermines the quality of the recovery and therefore the benefits of the workout. 

In fact, for me, the real goal was never weight loss. And maybe this is why I managed to control my weight for many months even though I can easily over-eat. What I found is that I've always thought of weight control as a means to perform better in sports.
When I watch the champion ironmen on TV, there is no denying that they all share similar bodily proportions. And if weight control is a way to get a performance just a bit closer to theirs... Well that's what I'll do!

This Saturday I had an awesome long run with my canine running partners (Luca & Vigo). The weather was great, temperature cool but perfect, and the miles went by effortlessly.
In the afternoon, I went spinning for a hard one hour workout, then did a little strength training and finished with a quick 500 yards at the pool. Pfew! 
After the long run, my left foot hurt again and on Sunday even though I had planned to go skiing, I did nothing. Oh well. The legs are slightly sore today so I think I needed the rest anyway. Next week I'm gonna kill it!