Snow! Snow! Snow!!

Finally, we got some real, honest to goodness, stick to the ground for more than 10 minutes, snow. Yeee haw!

But first, good luck to all the people racing this weekend. I know today Shore Turtle & Red Head Fangirl had a 2-mile race, Elizabeth was doing a 5K, Planeterry had a Half, and tomorrow Danny has a cross country race (4 miles?) and RunnerSusan has a half. I'm confident I left somebody out, so sorry if I did!

Our weather this week has been beyond Goofy. Very light snow Sunday and early Monday, all melted by lunch Monday afternoon. Still cool, but by Tuesday afternoon we're talking 50's! That day we ran in short sleeves and shorts! Wed also warm, and by Thursday afternoon we ran outdoors again - and it was 67! We did a fast 4, and averaged 8.43/mile overall for our four miles. YEAH!! I'm starting to get fast again and I **like** it! I had a hair appointment, so 4 miles was all we could fit in. Storms moved in Thurs night and it was 34 when I woke up to walk Pippin Friday morning. It's so strange to go from no coat, back to all the hats, coats, scarves, etc. They had said it might snow, and since I never tend to believe them I didn't. When I woke up at 8 this morning I peeked out the window and couldn't believe the ground was covered, and it was still falling. Yeah!! Brent and Pippin weren't as excited as I was.

We ate some oatmeal and headed out for our scheduled 8 mile run. We've never gotten to run in more than just small flurries, so it was a lot of fun. I have an 8 mile path through the neighborhood where you do very little repeats and double-backing, so we went that way. We ran at a slow pace, some of the snow was icier than others, and some parts of the sidewalk were totally clear. We carried our headphones but never turned them on, nature was our soundtrack! We headed out the front entrance of our subdivision and up the main road into a different subdivision with sidewalks. One guy was salting his driveway and gave us strange looks. Every .25 - .5 mile I'd have to stop to clear snow buildup from my Mizunos. They are NOT snow shoes!! Some of the road slush was pretty deceiving when crossing roads, so my feet were pretty wet the whole run. From this subdivision we head up, loop through the small neighborhood park and then up a rolling .5 mile hill where we turn around and come back down the hill. Snow was falling the whole time and heading up the hill was miserable. It was straight in our eyes and the snow was mixed with ice and really stung. I was so glad when we got to turn around and go DOWN the hill. This was the first time we got to see our footprints in the snow and it was so cool! Our stride length is very similar, and I could tell I was really pronating today. I already knew I was because I could feel a twinge in my hip, but I think the slicker surface was making me compensate with increased pronation. We ran back up the main road, enjoying the sights of all the kids sledding at the middle school. From there we ran to our usual hospital track and did 1 1-mile lap and just a portion of another before turning to head home to complete our 8 miles. We passed a couple walking their dogs and they said "great day for a jog!" and I said "yes, it's a great day!" I tried to wave and smile for most of the cars we saw, and I really enjoyed the shocked looks people gave us when they realized we MEANT to be out there. Someone else ran on the sidewalk while we were at the hospital track, we saw their footprints on the return trip back. Some of our earlier footprints had already been really filled back in, and when we got back home all the footprints from earlier were completely erased. Our overall average was 10.44/per mile, but time didn't matter today. It was all about fun and we FOR SURE accomplished that. (Our Fuel Belt bottles were a bit frozen though....)










We tried to get Pippin to play in the snow but we was SO not interested. He was pretty disoriented and shaking like a leaf so we took him back inside. Our daffodils has started blooming in all the warm weather this week, I don't think they're going to survive this though.










But, he has enjoyed eating the snow off our shoes.

Have a great weekend!! It's 22 degrees now!! Crazy! It was 27 when we ran this morning, and it just keeps falling!