Yesterday my plan called for 3 miles. Actually, it called for 4, but I moved my schedule around this week to minimize the amount of time I would have to spend running a) in bad weather or b) on the 1/13 mile track at my gym. So far I've managed to avoid that track and I intend to continue to do so as long as possible.
That meant that all day yesterday I sat in the office watching flakes spiral past the window in all sorts of directions thanks to the unrelenting March wind, checking the weather, looking forward to my first real run in the snow. Well, maybe not looking forward exactly, but I hadn't run in any kind of accumulation before, and I wasn't sure if the path at my local park would be anything resembling treated, but I'd already mentally committed to getting out there and giving it a shot.
The good news is that by the time I got off work and to the park it was no longer snowing. The wind, however, was every bit as piercing as I had imagined it would be. I piled on the layers - thermal top, technical top, zip vest (for pockets), and finally a zip-up fleece. Winter gloves. I pulled my Buff on over my trusty SCRR hat, balaclava-style, and on a whim tugged on my everyday winter hat on top of that. I was phoneless, since my most recent RMA's screen died about a week and a half after I got it, with the replacement sitting on my porch waiting for me to finish my run and come home (the FedEx driver actually tucked it between the screen and the main door--thank you!). So I started up the timer on my Fitbit and off I went.
The paths were really not great. Because of the wind, some areas were completely clear, but there was a fair amount of crusty ice (okay for traction), a few deep drifts, and the most dangerous spots, where at first glance it looked clear, but where the path was really covered with a thin sheet of ice, to be avoided if at all possible. As far as I could tell, I was the only person silly enough to be out in it, though older tracks were apparent, but already being scoured away by the wind and driving snow.
I took off, substantially slower and more careful than usual, but got into a pretty good rhythm right away. There's one section of the trail that I do two small loops on, in order to round out my distance perfectly, and when I got to the second loop I could see my tracks from the first go-round, endlessly leading me on, like a ghost pacer in Mario Kart, which amused me enough to distract me from the occasional arctic blast right to the face.
That wind did something else that was pretty cool, though, and made me regret that I didn't have my phone with me to snap a picture. In the final straight section leading back to the parking lot, snow had drifted and blown in such a way that it looked like etched sand dunes, all sinuous curves and shadows. I was tempted to stop and appreciate it for a little while, but stopping would mean that all the sweating I was doing under my layers would catch up to me sooner rather than later, so I pressed on.
Today I was back for another 3 miles and almost all the snow was either cleared or melted when we got a bit of sun today. I needed fewer layers than I did yesterday, and ran about a minute and a half per mile faster overall. I'm definitely ready for spring, but my first snow run was pretty great, and given the right circumstances, I would be happy to do it again.
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