Cold and Windy Cathance

Brrr! Oh, baby, it's cold outside! Yup, and windy too ;)

After I dropped Sam off at school, I scurried back home, got myself organized and was out the door a little after 9:00 am. I was surprised by how raw it felt out, and I was pretty much freezing for the first mile. My initial plan was to run 3 Snowplug Loops along with a bit of extra to get to 20 miles. I decided to add on the extra in the first loop, so once I had turned up from the river, instead of taking the back right straight home, I looped back along the trails through the woods, back down along the river in the opposite direction, returning to the quarry along the Heath, before finishing up the final two miles of the Snowplug Loop on the back dirt road and powerlines. The wind was whipping along this stretch, and man, was it cold!

I got back to the house around 7.8 miles. I ran into the house to use the bathroom, throw away my trash and grab some more gels. I realized as I was running the second time up Snowplug hill that I had run last week's long run on Sunday and with today being Friday, no wonder my legs were feeling a wee bit tired. Only 5 days in between 20s. Still, I'm going to be running 40 all in one day on two weeks, so I guess I had better not complain too much right now!! I decided to change plans a bit and do a second loop like the first, then do another small loop down to the river, which would keep me off the roads and out of the winds at least a little bit more.

The river was running high, and a bit of ice was already building up along the rocky gorge on the rapids loop. Three inch deep hoar frost was everywhere, rising up like little frosted buildings through the dirt along the trail. A few cotton sedge waved in the breeze along the ice-covered Heath. It was beautiful out there but damn, it was cold and windy, and once my Garmin hit 20.0, I sure was happy to be done. Then it was off to Woodside for some volunteering!