Back to Snow

Tuesday morning, I got out for a run on Highland Green Road. With most of the snow melted around here, the ground was either bare or glare ice. I was able to take the high route on the powerlines over to the road, in my Inov-8 Ultra 290s, and encountered all dirt with only two small patches of ice, one at either end of the powerlines. Pretty sunrise.

Decided I'd see if I could start a trend of one "speed" run per week. I have tried this before and failed, but I really do think I need to work on this a bit, so I'm putting it out there - 1x speed a week. I'll add in 1x hills later this winter. Of course, speed and hills are all relative ;) I'll put my Simpson's Point run from last week in the "speed" column, so this would be speed #2. Ha. I kept it simple - uptempo in the middle three miles at a doable not super speedy pace, but it's a start. 8:29; 8:12; 8:26. 5 miles total for the day.

Snow started over night and on Wednesday morning I didn't want to be out on the roads with snow still falling in the dark so I took the day off. We got about 3" of snow. Woke up on Thursday morning to another 1+" of snow, and was unsure what I'd find condition-wise, but donned my screwshoes and headed out anyway :) Ran the high route on the powerlines through the powder and found Highland Green Road unplowed. It was slow going with powder atop iced over pavement and icy dirt road. Of course, I also got the idea to run the short 0.75 mile lollypop down to the river and back along the way. It was beautiful out in the woods, with the the snow sitting atop the evergreen boughs like frosting, but the screwshoes were not enough for the ice under the snow. Then, I had the dumb idea of taking the new path and sidewalks back for the final mile. I found the path completely unplowed from the past 2 days and the sidewalks piled with snow from the plows. Not the best way to end a run, but sometimes what can you do in these conditions? Well, other than stay inside or run later in the day, neither of which were really options... ;) 6.2 miles for the morning.

This morning, I met up with Keri and Mindy over at Bradbury. Due to schedules, we didn't start until 11:00 by which time it was nice and sunny and warm out. I figured our best bet was to head out onto the Snowmobile Trail, so we all donned our spikes and headed out. Conditions were pretty good, with solid footing and we were able to keep in the fat bike tracks the whole way, which helped a lot. The only funny thing was that with the warm temps and new snow, the snow was clumping and creating lovely balls along our spikes. Kind of like hobbling around on extra cushy Hokas ;) Ha. We had a great time chatting away as we ran along. We hit the corn fields and turned around for a nice 8 mile out and back. Lots of tracks along the way - deer, turkey, squirrel, snowshoe hare, little rodents - and a lovely sky out in the corn field.

We met up with Ryan and John, who had been out checking out and running Sunday's snowshoe course, at Edna & Lucy's for lunch, so a fun morning! Much better to be out in the woods than pondering the state of our country during the inauguration.