Two on the Road, One on the Trail

I kind of fell off the training wagon this week. The weather was not my friend in terms of getting in the mileage I had hoped or my long run. A bit disappointed with that, but I had planned on it being a down week, maybe just not quite as much of a down week as it turned out to be! Ah well, such is life. There is always next week ;)

Friday I had planned to join Ryan at Bradbury to do some loops around the snowshoe course, but due to Thursday's snowstorm there was a 2 hour delay for Sam in the morning. So, after dropping her off, I headed around town to get my errands done and then came home to eat lunch and clean the house. It was in the teens with a 'feels like' temp of -3 and despite the sunshine, it was wicked windy and well, darn cold! I was not feeling highly motivated, but I donned all the layers and headed out around 1:30 anyway. As the roads weren't looking too bad, I just wore my Ultras and took the new 'bike path' along the Connector to connect across to Highland Green Road. The path was so-so in terms of being cleared but HG road and the back dirt road were in great shape and I was able to push the pace at least a little bit in the middle miles, with the caveat of all the layers, the wind and the cold ;) Returned via the path again to get in 6 miles and was more than happy to be done and get warm!

Sam had movie night at school and then went to a sleep-over at Anne's, so Ryan and I went out to dinner at El Camino - yum! - and I had grand plans of awaking early on Saturday morning to get in a good run before meeting up with Sam and the clan up at the Y for swim lessons. Well, I awoke to snow falling and made the silly decision to head out without my screwshoes, and found myself feeling less than safe on the roads with icing-over eyelashes and snow falling and so I cut things short to finish up with a rather mediocre 4 mile loop. Ack, blah, meh.

My one final chance for a long run was scrapped in the pre-dawn hours this morning and I settled on a bit more sleep instead. Sam and I headed over to Bradbury to volunteer at the snowshoe race. This time around, there was more than enough snow for everyone to play in, a good change from January's race!

Ryan had a great race, coming in 3rd overall, timing and finish line duties went smoothly, Sam had fun playing in the snow with Emma and helped with awards, and everyone seemed to have a great time. We finished up the morning with a yummy lunch at Edna & Lucy's and then headed home.

After getting things put away, I quickly headed out to sneak in my own run, hoping I could beat the start of the blizzard. My own snowshoe race for the day ;) In the end, the blizzard won, with snow beginning to fall with two miles to go, but it was great to get out, despite being a bit tired from standing around in the cold all morning and with a full belly from lunch. Ryan nicely put the deep cleats in my snowshoes, and boy, was it nice to have good traction and grip ;) Ha ha ha. When he told Bob Dion about my cleats breaking, Bob said, 'wow, that's hard to do.' Yup, leave it to me ;) In any event, 5 miles on snowshoes to end the day and finish up the week.

School and work are already cancelled tomorrow in light of the blizzard, so we're planning on lots of games, legos, relaxing and many cups of coffee while we watch the snow fall!