Long Snowshoe

With another blizzard rolling in on Sunday, Ryan made the call to change Sunday's snowshoe race to Saturday. So, my weekend running plans kind of got shot to hell. Still, what I really wanted was to be able to get in a long run today and then get in a short early morning run tomorrow morning, especially since I didn't get out on Monday or Thursday. This would allow me to just do nothing on Sunday except hang out with Ryan and Sam while the snow falls, and still have gotten in four days of running. Not ideal, but hey, sometimes you just go with what you got.

But since I had to drop Sam off at school this morning and get a few things crossed off the list before heading up to the gallery for noon, the best time to actually do said run was this morning at 5:00 am. And, given the conditions, I chose to make the morning run a snowshoe run. Which means that since I wanted to go long, I was planning to run for 2 hours, or the amount of time 14 miles on the roads in good conditions might take me. Yes, I have officially crossed the line into stupid, err dedicated, err crazy.

Now, I am a morning person, but 5:00 am as a start time is damn early when it isn't a race. I managed to get out the door by 5:10, and man, it was pitch black out there. For a long while, it was just me, a small patch of snow-covered trail at my feet, wafts of light snow and my breath in the headlamp. Talk about a narrow view! I ran out to Lover's Lane and back to the foot of the hill. From there, I headed further out on the powerlines, and took a left to run the back of the dump loop. That stretch is normally one of my favorites, but sadly, not many snowmobilers had been out that way, and man, it was slow going for a few miles until I hit the long straight-away at the far end of Lover's Lane. I took the path out to the pond at the edge of the dump and was greeted with a view of the sunrise above the pond and fields. I ran the lollypop out in the woods beyond the dump and was able to turn off my headlamp and enjoy the soft morning light on the trails coated with a few inches of fresh powder. The crescent moon hung in the sky, and the sun was rising through the snow-covered evergreens. It really was gorgeous.

I ran back along Lover's Lane and then retraced my steps back home, stopping atop the hill before Rt. 24 to take in the view of the orange orb of the sun rising above the treeline, the sky streaked with pink and purple and gold.

I had worked up quite a sweat throughout all the miles, and after my photo-op, I really did start to get cold. Still, it was a lovely morning without much wind and I stayed comfortable for the majority of my run. I ended up with 10 miles in a moving time of 2:00:09, about which I am pretty darn happy. And hey, you know, running all that time in snowshoes really wasn't all that bad! Now, that's what I call crazy ;)