Running In The Snow ... Sort Of.

We got 3" of snow between 4pm last night and 2am this morning. Despite the little bit of slipping and sliding I did on my way home from seminar last night, I'm doing a happy dance. It's January in Ohio. We should have snow. Period.

Anyway, I was actually excited to get outside and run when I woke up this morning. My parents (well, mom) didn't get it:
Mom: Why don't you just wait until tomorrow? It's supposed to get up to 40* and the snow will melt off some.
Me: Because TODAY is my long run day. Tomorrow is a rest day.
Mom: *blank stare*

Yep. That was pretty much how the morning went. I had an almost identical conversation with dad, too, though he ran cross-country in high school (eons ago. lol.) so he SORT OF gets it. Anyway, I blew it off because the temperature was hovering right around 25*, it was SUNNY, and the roads looked mostly scraped off by noon when I was awake and ready to run. I had no idea what the W-C Trail would look like so I wore my trail shoes (I haven't bought myself a pair of YakTrax yet ... soon) instead of my sauconys.

I used the walk from my house through town to the trail as my warm up. I was pleasantly surprised when I got to the trail. There was still some packed snow in the shade, but it was mostly clear. Actually, there was less snow on the trail than there was on the sidewalks in downtown Whitehouse. Weird. There was hardly any breeze at all and the sun was WARM. I'm so glad I just wore my vest and not my jacket. I would have had serious over-heating issues with the lack of breeze. I wore my gloves as always, and ended up having the mitten-part peeled back the whole time I was running (though they DID get pulled back down during my warm up and cool down). I wore my longer [US Rowing] beanie too, which was appreciated since I HATE cold ears. My sunglasses were a must too. The reflection off the snow was just as painful to my eyes as the sun itself was. The run itself was great. My legs felt strong the whole way and even with my iPod on, I found myself paying more attention to my form and not really trying to loose myself in the music. I felt a little sluggish during the first couple miles, but I knew I had to watch my pace if I wanted to run the entire 5+ miles without a walk break. I was really proud of myself for how I was able to pace myself by feeling instead of constantly watching my Garmin. Plus, I think this may have been my longest continuous run. So, over all, pretty freaking awesome.

Though nowhere near my "good" 5k time, I used the last 3.1 miles (35 minutes 33 seconds) as my entry for the Twitter Road Race. I knew I wasn't going to be very competitive with the world-wide attention this virtual race has gotten, but it was fun to do anyway.

I've been thinking about races and goals a lot lately. I have a couple smaller local 5ks I'm looking at, but I'd LOVE to be able to do a half marathon for my 26th birthday in July. Well, the Chicago half marathon is the day after my birthday. But ... Chicago in July? Yea, right. Plus, I don't have the money for that and I don't know if I'll have a job on the other side of the country by then. Grrr. I hate being in limbo.

On another note, I'm thinking about re-starting Jillian Michaels' 30-Day Shred. Or I might just jump in head-first and use my nifty month-long unlimited BCOR Bootcamp membership. I haven't decided yet.