Progression Run - 14 miles w/ last 30 min. moderate. Average pace: 9:49. I checked on the Highline Canal Trail yesterday afternoon and it was snow covered, so we decided to run around the neighborhoods today instead of running on the trail. Michelle and Michelle came to my house and we headed out from there just before 7:30 in the morning, which is shortly after the sun rose. We decided to stick to neighborhood streets because most of them were relatively clear and don't have a lot of traffic. Sidewalks were unreliable because they were shoveled in some places and not in others. Despite running mostly in the middle of the road where it was clear, we did hit lots of slick stretches where we had to stop and walk. As a result, our splits were pretty slow. I came really really close to falling a couple of times, but did not fall. Michelle and Michelle ran a little over 8 miles with me at which point we were back at my house because that's where their car was. After they left, I went out for some more on my own. I stuck with our neighborhood roads approach, but had a little less trouble than we had had when we were together because by then the sun was up more and things were melting. There was a stretch of pathway in the greenbelt that we had avoided when we were together because it was icy, but I was able to run through that stretch near the end of my alone run because by then the ice had melted and it was just wet. There was one part when I was on my own where I got to a park and I thought the path in the park would have been plowed and it wasn't, and so I had to trudge through the snow there. Thanks to the improvement in the roads during the course of my run, I was able to hit closer to the pace I wanted to on the progression part. Splits for the easy part were 10:09, 10:12, 10:45, 10:52, 10:14, 10:39, 10:15, 10:54, 10:34, 9:52, and 0.3 miles at 9:50 pace. Then I turned of auto lap so that I could time the 30-min. progression with the lap timer, so I just have an average pace for the next 30 minutes. I ran 3.7 miles during the 30 minutes for an average pace of 8:06. It's quite warm now and should be warm again tomorrow. A lot, though not all, of this snow should be melted by the next time I run, which will be on Monday morning. Happy Halloween everyone.
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