Let It Snow!

 What better way is there to lead into Christmas than with a little snow?  Aside from the hour it took me to get home from work on Monday night, I love the snow.  There's nothing better than that silent moment when you go outside and everything is completely white and still before angry Bostonians come out to shovel and ruin it.

Since I was just starting to run last year, I only really ran inside on a treadmill, warm and out of the elements.  Because I now run longer distances and the treadmill doesn't really simulate the rolling hills of a road race (and trust me I wouldn't want to experience a treadmill marathon anyway), I try to run outside as often as possible to build strength in my legs from running hills but mainly for my sanity to have some change in scenery.  Sometimes that means running in the cold, rain, or in the case of Thursday morning, the snow.  When I stepped out my front door at 7am, it was still flurrying and not many of my neighbors had shoveled the sidewalk in front of their houses yet.  For the first 10 minutes or so of my run I had to deal with an occasional snowflake stinging my eyes, but the real challenge was that my normal running shoes, which I think are on their last leg anyway, don't get quite the same traction as they do on dry pavement...big surprise.  I felt like I have to take one and a half steps for every step I would normally take to do the same distance.

This was the sidewalk immediately outside of my front door and my struggling footprints in the snow.  Luckily, when I got out to Beacon St., the main road, a greater proportion of the sidewalk was not only shoveled but also salted in some places.  I'm not sure I would have made the full four miles if the entire route had been snow covered as it felt like I had to work twice as hard as I normally would.  As the snow started to subside I even saw a few other runners and despite a slower minute/mile the run went pretty well.  All in all I had a great morning:  had a successful run, worked from home, got some Chipolte for lunch and then left for Christmas vacation in at my parents' house in New York...all sans pain and injury.