Tuesday morning I headed out to see how things were on the trails. It was a practical lesson in variable conditions, with very uneven footing, lots of ice, stretches of bare ground, undermined ice, packed snow, soft snow, undermined snow... you get the idea ;) I had planned to run further out into the system along the river but turned around due to the fact that the river had overflowed its banks and ice was covered a large swath of trail with one of the feeding streams all iced up/flooded over too. In the dark, it was tough to tell if it was safe or not, so I decided not to risk it. Still, I did get to see some lovely pancake ice floating along in the currents though, so all was not lost :) (6.5 miles)
Snow started to fall overnight on Tuesday and I woke up at 5:30 on Wednesday to a call saying that school was cancelled. Given the forecast, the cancellation was not a surprise, and I had brought work home with me as had Ryan. I decided to go downstairs early as I normally would and get a few hours of work in before the rest of the house woke up so that I could get out in the daylight for a run. I headed out at 9:00; there were a few inches of snow on the ground and snow was still falling. With the new snow, I knew anything I ran would be slow so I figured I'd head back out into the Cathance and run along the river. Sure, most of the dangers would be covered in a layer of snow, but with the daylight, I figured I still had an advantage! The river was roaring and the trees were covered in a lovely layer of snow looking like frosting. No pancake ice today, but some beautiful ice droplets along the river bank edges and lots of animal tracks. A fun, if slow, snowy wander! (7.1 miles)
Yesterday morning, I didn't get out to run before work so I relegated myself to the indoor track during Sam's swim practice. Man, that place is busy! Listened to a Michelle Yates podcast, tried not to get run over, run anyone over and got those 65 laps done :0 (5.0 miles)
Today I headed over to Bradbury. I was hoping for a long run, but much like last Friday, conditions were simply not enough to tempt me to slog it out. With the new sugary snow atop the icy, uneven, unstable ground beneath, it was a lot of slipping and sliding and it was pretty slow going. Maybe I'm becoming less tolerant of marginal conditions as I get older or I just let my head get in the way of it all, but whatever the reason, I simply was not having fun out there. It was quite pretty in the woods with the new snow and there was a lovely light from Northern Bluff and the summit, but I just didn't want to continue for another 8-10 miles. So, I stopped ;) I sometimes can't decide whether it is better to simply gut it out or accept that it is just not what was in the plans for the day. Not sure what I feel at the moment, but I do know that I will now be doing my long run on the roads at o'dark thirty tomorrow morning in exchange for stopping my run today. But such is life. Now it is on to cross things off the to-do list! (6.5 miles)
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