Raw Eight

As long as the weather wasn't too bad, the plan was to head to Portland to help celebrate little Emma's 2nd birthday mid-morning, so in order to get in my run, I was up and out around 6:15. It was snowing and the wind was blowing as I headed across the street. My plan wasn't really a plan, but it did include not running down the Connector in the dark and in the snow, so I was really happy to see that the roller had been out overnight and rolled the snowmobile trail. This made the powerline running fairly solid. The snow was still a little soft, but I stayed mostly on the surface.

Highland Green Road wasn't plowed, and the back dirt portion was blocked off with a big pile of tires/dirt, so I ran out and back on the road through the 2+ inches of powder. I took a small detour to see if the Heath was runnable, but sadly it was not, despite the fact that it looked so nicely packed by the snowshoers. Darn. When I got back to the powerlines, I ran down to Topsham Crossing and back. The roller had gone straight down over the steepest part of the hill - it was a lot of fun to slide down but not as much fun to climb back up :)

By the time I was heading back, the sky was finally lightening. There was no sunrise per say, but there was a glowing soft light on the bank of trees and the wonderful quiet that always seems to come with an early morning run through the softly falling snow. All this crazy snow and cold weather put a bit of a damper on this week's mileage, but there is always beauty to be found out there as long as I am willing to pick my head up, stop my complaining and take a look ;)

I ran back along the very wind-swept high school road. The wind was picking up and my face was pretty cold. I added on another mile around the neighborhood to round things out to 8 miles for the morning. I probably should have run farther as I didn't get in the long run this weekend as I had hoped, but honestly, I was more than happy to come inside, take a warm shower and have a good hot cup of coffee instead.