Snow Excuse

Things have steadily improved with my training. Since my last update, I successfully completed a seventeen-mile run (albeit with a few stops along the way - taking nearly a month out injured meant I wasn't quite as fit as I could have been) and I'm happy to say that my feet seem to be fine and that I have (so far) not had a recurrence of that annoying foot injury.

No sooner had I got back into the swing of things with the training, then factors beyond my control threatened to derail everything. On Friday it snowed heavily, and even though it had stopped by Friday evening, it meant that the long run that I had planned for the weekend would be out of the question.

Perhaps I could have seen the snow as a blessing in disguise and used it as an opportunity to get some much-needed rest and relaxation, curling up in the foetal position in the warmth of my home, but no, not me. The glutton for punishment that I am, on Saturday I decided to go outside and run in the snow, in the biting cold. I was never going to exceed ten miles in that sort of weather, with that amount of snow on the ground, but I felt that any running was better than no running at all.

So, defying all common sense, and a number of comments such as "you must be bloody mad", "you'll slip over in that", and "don't say I didn't warn you", I put on my trainers and ran around my local park, where the snow was more than a couple of inches thick. There, I learned one important lesson: running through snow is not as easy as it looks. Sylvester Stallone made it appear perfectly simple when training in Rocky IV. For me, I felt more like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.

I managed six-and-a-half miles. It was an exhausting six-and-a-half miles, but in the snow, I was working much harder than I usually do. I had to raise my knees up higher, I had to move my ankles a bit more and it gave my body and joints a much-needed workout that I wouldn't get from the usual surfaces on which I run. I also had to be more cautious about slipping or tripping. As it was, I never once slipped. The snow that had just fallen acted as a nice shock absorber and I think my body felt all the better for that run, physically exhausting as it was.

Having "only" accomplished six-and-a-half miles on Saturday, I went out again for another run this morning. Over Saturday night and this morning, more snow had fallen. However, this snow had covered most of the pavements so I was able to run along the pavements without worrying about slipping on ice as there was a fair covering of snow. I again managed six-and-a-half miles, bringing my weekend total to thirteen miles, which is fairly close to what I would have liked to achieved in a single session, but two lots of six-and-a-half miles in the snow is good enough for me.

Hopefully the snow will have cleared up by next weekend so I can get some more "proper" running done. On the other hand, if there is freak weather in April when the Marathon comes, and it snows heavily the day before, then at least I will be adequately prepared to run in those conditions should that situation arise! Mind you, the organisers would probably just cancel the event...