With new snow having fallen — a dusting or so of dry snow — I thought I’d go out yesterday and enjoy a walk, taking care of an errand on my way, and then scooting home.

Little did I realize how awful the conditions were!

I left the house bundled up, knowing that it was very cold outside.  Generally, my torso stayed warm, but the farther I got into my walk, the colder my legs got (I was wearing jeans), and the colder my hands  got.  I was wearing some new running gloves I’d picked up around Christmas, and they just were cutting it in the biting cold and slight wind.  I suspect I’ll need to think about some better gloves for these really cold days, as well as layering a bit more on my legs!

However, what I didn’t expect was for the course to be so slick.  That light snow was actually the best traction I had!  There were places where the radiant heat from the sun melted the snow, with ice forming during the cloudy times.  But the worst was on Wren Trail.

I’d mentioned a week or so ago that the city had done some renovations on the trail, smoothing it out, and turning it into a really nice surface.  However, there was a thin coat of mud left on the trail from the work.  That hadn’t been a big deal… until you put a little snow and re-frozen ice on it.  That little bit of mud turned into a slick-as-snot surface that was awful to walk on.  I ended up walking on the newly planted grass next to the trail, because that was a more gripping surface.

After getting my errand completed, I started toward home, and was getting colder and colder.  The wind chill index was down to about 3°, and the closer I got to home, the more I realized I was fighting an uphill battle to stay outdoors.  I clocked just about 3.5km, and threw in the towel.

However, in the spirit of trying to make this race as close to 5k as I could, I rode a little over three miles on my stationary bike, which translates to about another mile, giving me the overall distance I was looking for.  This was a clunky, clunky way of doing things, and if I hadn’t been so cold, I wouldn’t have even thought of doing it this way.  Obviously, Mother Nature had other ideas for my miles yesterday!

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Winter.  Global warming.  Maybe some of both.  Today, it was  68°, and Sunday, it’ll struggle to get to  15°.  Welcome to winter in the Midwest!

I’d been jonesing to go for a run all week.  I had a good running weekend last weekend, and I knew I was in a good place with my stride.  However, life, the universe, and everything conspired to get in my way, making today my first opportunity to get out and chug along.

As soon as I logged off from work, I headed out the door… and quickly realized that my legs weren’t what they were over the weekend.  Ya see, when I don’t run for a few days, it gets hard for me to get my feet moving.  And I know it’s all in my head.  I forget how it feels to run effortlessly, how it feels to cruise up and down the hills, and it takes a few kilometers to remind me that running feels good.

After a few kilometers, things got easy, and I got into my groove.  Life was good… the sun was setting, the air was pretty neutral, and I watched the distance fall away.  It was, once again, a great running day.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll remember how that felt!

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We were finally blessed with snow yesterday in Da Lou — the first snowfall of the season.  It made an early arrival, however, and I mistimed some running around that I needed to do.  When they started falling, the flakes were mammoth — hamster flakes, as one of the meteorologists calls ’em — and it was beautiful to watch.  I’d intended to be home, and ready to run when it hit, but it just didn’t work out.

With that timing fail, I ended up waiting until later in the day to put my running kicks on.  I had (and still have!) some virtual races to complete from the end of last year, so I plucked one off my virtual shelf, and put myself on the road.

With the snow, and some bizarre melting and re-freezing in sub-freezing temps, I decided just to walk, rather than run, as I wasn’t sure what condition the sidewalks were in.

We’re very fortunate to have plenty of sidewalks and trails here.  In fact, I got on Wren Trail for the first time since it was renovated late last year.  The new surface is amazingly smooth, and so much nicer to be on.  Before the renovation, the surface was “lumpy” from the growth of many tree roots over the years, but now… wunderbar!

Despite the chill in the air, and the windy conditions, I stayed reasonably warm, which is encouraging as we get more winter weather this season.  I really don’t wanna fall off the wagon due to crazy ol’ Mother Nature!

This race benefitted Action Against Hunger.

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I’d been putting off this race since Christmas.  The longer distance had me a little funked up, I think, and that funkiness helped me rationalize this race to the back of the upcoming race medal drawer.

It’s finally warmed up here, and I knew today would be a great day for a run.  I geared up, and headed to the Greenway.  I wanted to use my regular 5K course, add a little distance in the middle (up to the photo studio on Pond), and then add whatever distance I needed to fill out eight kilometers.  Easy plan.

I set out, anticipating that I’d be walking some of this distance as I got beyond five kilometers, as I usually do with longer distances.  I did put it in a slower gear between three and three-and-a-half kilometers, and somewhere along the way, I found a great second wind.  I ran the rest of the course — about four and a half kilometers.

I don’t know what clicked, but it felt awesome.  I know I could’ve run a much farther distance!  The only way to describe it is to say that each step felt easy.  It wasn’t effortless, but the effort came easy… probably the coolest run I’ve every had.

So, I put another five miles in the books today, which is probably good.  The next two days are a little bit of a dope slap of reality.  Tomorrow, I prep for my next colonoscopy on Monday.

I always get the jitters when it’s time to scope my semi-colon.  I have no symptom to be concerned about, but it’s a reminder of the fight I had with colon cancer four years ago, and of course, you do the scope to ensure everything’s still okay.

It’ll be radio silence for a couple of days, and no racing until at least Tuesday.  Enjoy the break!  🙂

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Being the first day of the new year, it only makes sense to take on a Resolution Run event, and commit myself to yet another year of running.  This is the beginning of my fifth year running these crazy races, and I’m so excited about how far I’ve come, and what’s yet to come this year.

Today was the first time I’d run on the new route I’d mapped out and walked last week from the house to the east end of the Greenway.  It’s a nice change of pace from the trail I’ve been running on the other end of the Greenway, and eliminates the need to drive to the trail.

It’s been so crazy rainy here over the last couple of weeks, and finally the weather’s turned cold.  However, the last couple of days have been damp, cloudy and windy, making the conditions pretty tough.  This morning though, it was still, sunny, and a wonderful day to enjoy and begin new year.  The fact that I’m still here, still running, and still enjoying it was just a bonus.

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I picked a wet, wet day for my first post-Christmas outing.

Yesterday, we had somewhere between four and six inches of rain, and today, we’re adding another two inches of wet stuff.  Great weather if you’re a duck.

I wanted to get out yesterday, as it was gonna be a bunch warmer than today, but unfortunately, yesterday rains brought lightning with them.  I love running in the rain, but I draw the line at running in the electricity.

I’d been planning to check out the east end of the Greenway, and see how it connected to my driveway.  Today was the day to pull that off, with a slow walk to check it out.

I took off from the house, and journeyed down the uneven sidewalks.  As it ends up, with all the rain, there were plenty of opportunities to fjord water hazards of some length.  My tootsies got pretty wet as I continued.

The eastern trail end was about 1.5km from the house, and was a lovely new piece of paving.  I wended up and down the little hills to my turnaround point, and pointed it back toward the house.

With this walk today, I’ve pretty well covered the whole Greenway (across several events), and have enough mileage data now to build great courses leveraging the Greenway for whatever distance I need.

Woot!

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Yesterday was Festivus.

Unless you’ve watched a lot of Seinfeld, you may not know what Festivus is.  For those of you not “in the know”, here’s a graphic to help.

For almost two weeks, I’ve been tending a tender left knee, so I figured I would take it easy yesterday, and walk.  And not only did I walk, but I ranged far away from my normal path on the Greenway, and took the “White Trail”.  This trail wends through a beautiful neighborhood, and was amazing.

We’d gotten off work a little early, so I took advantage of the time, and made a mid-afternoon event out of my newly freed time.  I walked.  And walked.  And walked.  I was a tourist in my own town, seeing places and roads I’d never travelled before.  It was an awesome, relatively pain-free walk, and wasn’t too crazy slow.

And while this wasn’t the last event of my race year, it is the last one for a few days.  For all of you reading this, I hope your trails are how you like ’em — flat, hilly, snowy, clear, rainy — your shoes are comfy for the run, and the Big Guy brings you everything your heart desires.  And for those of you with a little 70s in you, remember that the Christmas we get, we deserve.  Merry Christmas!!!

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After my slow run on the Greenway yesterday at lunch, I figured I needed to redeem myself, and put some good miles on my shoes.

Today, the only way I was gonna get some miles in was to do them after work.  That puts me out there right at sunset, which is a time I really don’t like to run.

Tonight, I needed some miles though, so I hit the trail about 30 minutes before sunset.

I ran west, into the sunset, and frankly, it was beautiful.  And I was chugging right along at a great pace.  I have a traffic light that I hit on the course, and at this one was a particular jerk-driven Corvette who decided after the light turned red to not only stop beyond the stop line, but essentially but the wide backside of his sportswear across the pedestrian crosswalk.  I thought about doing a lap around his car, but it’s a quick light, so I only turned around and applauded his stopping prowess as I went past the back side of his Chevy.

However, that patent disregard for me on the trail put me in a pretty foul mood, and that translated into keeping a nice pace through the rest of the course.  And once I hit my turnaround, I was facing the moonrise.

Again, I was facing such a beautiful sky as I returned to my Jeep via the eastbound trail.  And once again, I had good speed through the second half of the course.

With the sun having set, the temperature started to drop, and the radiant heat I was enjoying from our glowing ball o’ goodness was gone.  It started getting cold, and conveniently, I was back at the Jeep.

It was nice to have a good run today, although once again, upon getting home, my left knee started getting funky.  I’m gonna have to ensure that I do good things for that knee, as I have a few more runs to get in this year!

This race benefitted Doctors Without Borders.

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Yesterday, I took to the trail for the first time since my 15k race downtown.  Normally, I would’ve been out on the trail earlier than eight days after a race, but…

I bowled on Tuesday.

Now, I used to bowl in leagues for years and years.  I was never all that great, but I enjoyed it, and occasionally had sparks of … mediocrity.  🙂  However, last Tuesday was the first time I’d bowled in a decade.  It was a work event, so we had a good time, and tried to cram as much bowling as we could into two hours.

By the time the next morning rolled around, my left knee was pretty tender, and I knew I needed to let it rest.

And rest it did, until yesterday.  It was time to return to the trail.

We’ve had crazy warm weather for Da Lou in December.  In fact, the weather dudes and dudettes have already called this the third warmest December on record here.  When I hit the trail, it was 64°, but cloudy as could be.  Big ol’ winter clouds filled the sky, looking like they could start dropping rain at any moment.  Regardless, I headed out.

I took it pretty slow at first, and kinda felt like I was gaining speed through the course.  However, the data didn’t exactly back that up.  I was really slow, with my slowest 5k time in almost two months.  My knee held up reasonably well during the run, although once I got home and rested, it started to be painful.

I think I just need to make sure I’m relatively careful with it, and I’ll be back to my normal lunatic running in no time!

This race benefitted K9s for Warriors.

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