This has to rank right up near the top of my all-time worst runs. Of course the trails weren’t plowed, so I was blazing my own path. That got old in a hurry, so I tried the roads. They weren’t plowed well either and I didn’t want to dodge cars in those conditions. Worst of all was the snow being pelted in my face by the strong winds. When I was running northwest, I had to basically run with my eyes closed. You know how you have your eyes open and you blink? I was doing the opposite. I had my eyes shut and I’d open them for a fraction of a second to make sure I was in the middle of the path. After about 20 minutes of this shit I realized I could run back-and-forth under the awning of a strip mall. The sidewalk was clear of snow and the building blocked the wind. It was probably about a 200 meter stretch that I ran over and over for another 12 minutes before calling it a day after 4 “miles.”
I had shoveled the driveway before work, but since it snowed throughout the day it needed to be shoveled after work too. My wonderful wife was just finishing when I got home. Of course, the snow plow can by soon after that, so I had to shovel the end of the driveway again. I haven’t seen the numbers, but I’d guess we got close to a foot of snow. I told my daughter that it’s hard to believe we didn’t have any snow yesterday.
I thought about running again tonight, but with the long run yesterday, shoveling, a workout tomorrow and a race this Sunday, I decided to skip it and make this my easy recovery day.
Quote of the day:
“Everyone is an athlete. The only difference is that some of us are in training, and some are not.” Dr. George Sheehan
Not so fun. Brings back memories of one winter when the lakes ran dry in New Zealand so to save electricity they turned off the street lights between 4am and 7am. I borrowed my dad's old headlamp with fading batteries and ran 2.5km to a train station where I could run 200m up and down the platform to get my run in. After about a week of this economy measure so many runners, dog walkers and public safety advocates had complained that they turned the lights back on.
ReplyDeleteThis is all true, by the way. Not a word of exaggeration.
Hey Zeke,
ReplyDeleteUp until a year ago, I was training / living in SoCal so pretty spoiled in the weather dept. I thought we had "weather" to deal with up here in Oregon- but I guess I was wrong! That is some serious treadmill weather you are dealing with! ;-)
Evan, just when we start thinking we're crazy we come across someone doing the exact same thing we are. Alison's 2 hours in 30 second loops at the airport is right near the top.
ReplyDeleteHey Mike, I found your blog the other day too - just haven't commented yet. You know, it's not like this weather is terrible, but the timing sucks. We're at the point where winter should be over. Nearly all the snow was gone, then BAM!!! It's back - along with temps in the teens.