sips her tea wrapped up in her fleecy clothing and quilt It’s waaaaay to cold to leave the house. I got home from work about 15 minutes ago. Just checking the weather it tells me that right now it is… -44C shivers I nearly got frostbite on the 5 minute walk home. But I’m all nice and cozy now.
I’m sitting in a suburb of St. Paul wondering if its snowing too hard to drive a mile up the road in a 4 wheel drive Subaru to get the McDonalds I promised my daughter for lunch if she could get through the morning in a single pair of underwear…and you are going to run fourteen miles!!!
Well, I’m back. Thanks for the warm thoughts, everyone!
What a morning. Oh wait, it’s afternoon now.
Left the house early in anticipation of crappy road conditions. Oh yeah, they were crappy. Plows hadn’t even hit the highways yet! Arrived at Minnehaha park at about 8:50 AM; the coach and one other woman were there. Coach says that only the St. Paul side of the Mississippi River Road is plowed and suggests that we come back tomorrow to do our long runs. (He also says that both of us need only run 10 miles this weekend.) I was disappointed at that prospect; long runs on SATURDAYS, dammit! Luckily, the other woman (I’ll call her Jo) seemed to feel the same. She offered me a guest pass to her YMCA so we could run together. It has a 1/10 mile track and treadmills. I quickly agreed. An hour later (normally a twenty-minute drive) we reached her house, greet her dog and husband and grab the guest pass. Thirty minutes after that, we entered a YMCA located in a northern suburb.
Jo’s normal routine is to run 20 laps (2 miles) and hit the treadmill for a mile, all the while working the Galloway method (nine minutes running, one minute walking). Walking to the treadmill after the second mile counts as the minute of walking. We folllowed her routine and man, what fun! I thought I would slow her down too much and she’d have to go off on her own – she’s an experienced marathoner who is aiming for a 3:30 this time – but we ran the together the whole time and talked most of it. I felt energetic and only the slightest bit tight in my calves.
So I didn’t have to slog through snow and didn’t have to do the whole thing on the dreadmill. A great first “official” long run that I hope was an omen of things to come.
Hey rocking chair - I have the walkers. They rock! My footing is solid as a rock on ice and snow; I slide the tiniest bit on bare pavement.
I bought a pair for my best friend who runs faster than me; one of the arms wore through within three uses but that’s not surprising. The pros are more heavy-duty, I guess. When my walkers begin to wear out I’m gonna order those bad boys.
hhhhmmm, the problem with my deathspikes was bare pavement. they really filed down the spike. also the rubber on the spike holder was horrendously foul.
I went outside for a run, my first outdoor run of the season. I’m supposed to do a half-marathon next weekend. It’s not that cold, but the wind!
Anyway, 10 minutes later, I’m reading this thread. I guess I’ll go down to the treadmill. Fortunately I got “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” out of the bargain bin, so I’ll have something to watch.
Dude… I’m in Alberta… right now it’s around -27C so not as bad as yesterday but I don’t like the cold. Wish it would warm up before tomorrow. I really don’t want to go to work tonight then school tomorrow in this cold weather. Waaaaaay too cold for me.
Ah Scylla, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot - quality entertainment.
I can’t wait 'til spring is here. I had a dream about it last night. What a glorious time of year in Minnesota. Bare trees become explosions of bright green overnight. I live near a bridge over the Minnesota River that has trees all around it; crossing it daily becomes a celebration. Every year winter becomes “worth it.”
as we used to say in Denmark, “If you use the weather as an excuse, you may as well not run.” Actually, the snow provides some much-needed illumination on those dark winter evenings, that has to count for something.
I never used spiky footwear, but I had GREAT results with cross-country ski wax on my shoes - the sticky kind of wax (the type you’d apply to the center of the ski), obviously. Worked pretty darn good.
And yeah, running in adverse weather does have that “taking on the world” quality.
