Week In Review: Cold, Rainy, Icy

Yet another crazy weather week. Anyone who believes that climate change is not real should do some comparisons of Maine winters from now vs. when we were back at Bowdoin. It's not that we're not getting snow, but we are getting many more wild swings in temperature that, for example, resulted in 6" of sugary snow followed by a few inches of rain and ice on Sunday, real feels of -12 and -9 on Monday and Tuesday to 40s and rain on Thursday and back to 17 degrees yesterday. The fluctuation is making it tough to actually be able to enjoy winter. I mean, we take what we get and we try not to get upset but some weeks it is a bit rougher than others...

Monday was a day off for Sam and I but a regular workday for Ryan. I wanted to get a run in but after Sunday's snowstorm, I didn't want to be breaking through an inch or more of ice atop a number of inches of sugary snow on the trails. Things were still messy enough out there, though, that I wore my Hillsounds and ran a few laps around the neighborhood roads and found the spikes most useful on the snow packed roads. Of course, it was a real feel of -12 and windy in the pre-dawn hours, so I was also decked out in a million and one layers, feeling like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man 😂 (5.0 miles)

Sam had a haircut and we got lunch at Ricetta's - her choice- before heading over to her friend Anne's house for a little tromping in the woods and then the necessary tea/hot chocolate warm up before some inside play time. A fun, if chilly, day off!

Tuesday morning was another freezing cold morning so I chose to stay in bed instead, but by Wednesday, pre-dawn temps had warmed up and 9 degrees felt downright balmy! 😆😏 I ran my typical Highland Green loop. Soft snow greeted me on the powerlines and sidewalks but the back dirt road was nice running. Overcast, dark morning. (5.1 miles)

Thursday it poured all day long. So depressing. There was no running.

I had planned to meet up with Val, Anne and Xar on Friday over at Brad but I was not feeling good at all, so I chose to stay at home and just run the trails around here, just in case I needed to turn around. 20 miles was not in the cards. Sigh. But I did get in some adventurous, slushy, icy, uneven miles out in the Cathance. Definitely not ideal conditions but I did have fun out there despite ending up with frozen laces and putting my feet through a whole bunch of semi-frozen ice. The river was roaring and there were lots of animal prints to be seen. (8.1 miles)

So much water!

Neat print patterns. (Mice, I think?)

Saturday dawned cold and beautiful. I ran another loop out in the Cathance and founds things much more solid, but still quite icy with a few slushy spots remaining. Glorious light. (6.1 miles) And then it was off to Sam's swim meet for the rest of the day!

Well, third times's a charm, as I finally got in my 20 miles this morning! 😂😁😀 Up early and out as the sky began to lighten. Cold but windless with yet again a beautiful sunrise. After two days on the uneven, messy trails, I decided to stick with the roads. My original plan was to head out through Brunswick but there was still so much ice on the sidewalks and edges of the roads, that I changed my plans and decided to run the Foreside loop which has a nice wide shoulder and which I knew would be fairly quiet early on a Sunday morning. From there, I added an out-and-back on Highland Green plus a loop around Canam to round things out. 3 hours, 3 podcasts and 20 miles done! A good way to wrap up the week!! (20.0 miles)